leisure pursuit.

exploring cheap new forms of entertainment, nan, lauren and i found ourselves putting down our books and journals to devise and put a few games into action. turns out, we must have been feeling a bit nostalgic for college life..

we created our own version of bags. while it is quite simple and awfully hilarious looking, it does the trick and has provided us with many hours of entertainment. the basic premise: toss the 'bag' (a lentil/bean filled sock) into the flower pot and receive 3 points, make it into the square for 1 point and if it hangs on the pot's rim, 2 points. such a simple game but do not let the pretty flower pots deceive you; it often gets quite cutthroat.

pot 1

pot 2 (the plant was not harmed)

we often have to take breaks to let the Zamboni clean the court

enjoying the simple pleasures in life, we spent a splendid afternoon celebrating my 24 year of life. the sun was shining, the beer pong was on the porch, and the company was splendid; i couldn't have asked for a better birthday. my mind can hardly begin to fathom the ways in which my life has changed this past year. one year older but i feel (and look) like i have aged about ten. the experiences i have had and the things i have seen seem to have tacked on the years.

i no longer have to crush coffee beans manually with a bowl and spoon. talk about advanced technology..

school is beginning to wind down, graduation is this weekend and finals week begins next saturday. which means i might actually have time sometime soon to sit down and write a good, meaty blog post and respond to the emails that have been piling up.....maybe...
thank you everyone who has been in touch, it is great to hear from home and live vicariously through you all. keep on keeping it real. i miss you all.

spun.

last week i spent some quality time in the health center, got on antibiotics, and am officially back and kicking..except for recent sleep deprivation resulting from a ridiculous series of events:

i was under the impression that is was completely normal to change your sheets, oh every 3 months or so. apparently this is not the case and i fail yet again in becoming a real adult. anyway, indian mattresses are the equivalent of a piece of ply wood which means i have to flip mine and try to beat any cushion into it much more often than i would like. this weekend i went on my biweekly fluff mission and when i pulled my sheet out, my brain momentarily stopped working. i would give anything for the 2 seconds of bliss in which it took my mind to fully process what my eyes were seeing. since this moment, i have not been able to function even close to normally and average about 3 hours of sleep tops per night.
there was a large. no, huge, spider ON TOP OF A FREAKING EGG SACK attached to my sheet. the sheet that i sleep under. (i must insert here that for the past week or so i was finding mysterious bites all over my body and dreaming of tarantulas....probably because this spider was crawling on my face). i flipped shit and went on an intense cleaning/purging spree that lasted 8 hours and included washing ALL my sheets, pillows, blankets, rugs and moving my bed across the room.
convinced that i had successfully cleansed my room and could sleep soundly, i had a glass or two of wine and settled into bed. after a night of not sleeping because i was paranoid that bugs were crawling all over me, i woke up at 5:15, rolled out of bed, went to grab my book from the floor, looked up and discovered that, well, i had been sleeping with a cockroach. awesome.
i figure next on the list is scorpion...real excited for that one. needless to say, i have been walking around like a zombie and hallucinating bugs everywhere.
other highlights of the recent week.
1. monday: i slept for 18 hours straight
2. tuesday: i thought that i had killed a student by forcing her to breath into a plastic bag because i couldn't find a paper bag and she passed out in the hallway.
3. wednesday: i mastered the art of stool samples yet again. carrying it up the mountain in my backpack alongside my school computer.
4. thursday: successfully set up the hammock.
5. friday: observed my two good friends, one who is 50 and has been down and out on account of typhoid and another who is 23, shoot a slingshot at a can of shaving cream hoping it would cause a controlled explosion.
6. saturday: i spent my night at the eighth grade formal dancing to kesha with lauren terry and a whole bunch of 13 year olds...and enjoyed it.
7. sunday: spider incident from hell

jealous?

a picture to make everything better

i recently realized i never posted my hike up to school on the blog. if you are extremely bored and have nothing better to do for thirty minutes, take a gander; you might be impressed, but definitely will be entertained. i would advise popping a motion sickness pill if you are prone to it...it gets a little bumpy. the video is from last monsoon (a time in my life i am trying to forget) but the walk still is the same, the breathing is just a little easier now that i have done it every single day for the past year...

ok it takes way too long to load a video on a blog and i have nowhere near enough patience. here are the youtube links if you are really interested
daily climb
part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0Z23ps0fjA&feature=related
part two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuPWaP1G4Wo
part three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0TxRoZpdNg&feature=related

still kicking.

for the past three weeks i have been fending off some sort whacked stomach virus, drinking enough chamomile tea to fill a small swimming pool and popping ginger pills like its my job. thus, the creativity in blogging has been nonexistent and i apologize in advance for the awfully lame post.

this weekend, the women of woodstock decided to venture down the mountain to the boiling city of dehradun for a day of fabric shopping and sightseeing. i have never spent that much time with that many women in my entire life, and somehow, i made it through alive..in fact, it wasn't even half bad..
we began the morning in clement town, a tibetan buddhist community that is home to what is believed to be the world's largest stupa (a mound like structure filled with buddhist relics used as a place of worship).

inconspicuous.

as is the case with tibetan culture, prayer flags were hanging in abundance, along with numerous dalai lama insights spread throughout the grounds.

odd. and of course, lauren terry had peanuts in her bag.

when uploading photos from dehradun, i discovered i have quite a few pictures i have not posted from random school events throughout the semester. featured here is midlands open house. midlands is the dorm for grades 10-12 girls; each month one dorm hosts an open house, the grocers bring their tuck (junk food) to sell, there are carnival games, talent shows, loads of good food and an all around good time. here are a few glimpses into the jungle of midlands..

saroj and paranthas.

priya and sara, midlands dorm parents serving a delicious jungle juice..non alcoholic of course.