civilized existence.

After a month of easy summer living in Wisconsin, I have returned to the damp, monsoon-ridden hills of India for the start of another school year. It was great to be back home: the break from India’s commotion was much needed and it was absolutely splendid to spend time catching up with friends and family. Despite the extreme culture shock and week -long jet lag, I was able to squeeze quite a bit into my ‘vacation’, working loads, venturing out on the river, picking strawberries, relaxing in the sun, reading fiction, eating beef, and of course, frequenting all my favorite bars. I also managed to squeeze in a trip to las vegas with dad, mom and ali and I have returned feeling refreshed, well rested, and ready to hit India in a full on sprint.

the hotel.

The trip back to mussoorie began with an overnight taxi ride that involved a driver who most likely did not have a license, fording numerous rivers in an attempt to take ‘shortcuts’, a lot of drunk pilgrims all over the streets, and .5 hours of sleep. Thinking we were quite brilliant, nan and I dehydrated ourselves before the ride, assuming we would save time not stopping for bathroom breaks. By the time we finally got home I was thirstier than I have ever been. Running into the kitchen almost desperate enough to drink from the tap regardless or not if it gave me typhoid, I discover that the water filter is not working. At all. And none of the neighbors are home… This proves to be slightly problematic. Luckily, nan is a genius and we discovered that hot tea, drunk in large amounts, can serve as a means of hydration. And do not fear, the water filter has since been restored to its glory.

Tomorrow is the first day of school and because I know the next few weeks are going to be a whirlwind of disarray, I have been organizing every part of my life possible. Lauren is not returning this year, which is a huge adjustment in itself, but also means that we have extra space in our house. Therefore nan and I have been demonstrating extreme teamwork and took on the project of reorganizing and deep cleaning our entire house these past few days. One of the things I was asked about the most while home was the living situation. No, I do not live in a hut. Yes, I do have running water; I even have a shower! no, I do not have to operate by headlamp at night. Yes, I do have bedsheets and dishes; in fact, I quite like my home, even more so now that it isn’t moldy. To settle the qualms that many people have, I am putting a few pictures of my house up to serve as evidence as to how civilized I actually live...

our neighbor rebecca and nan (sometimes our house serves as woodstock's art department headquarters)

the clean half of my room.

I am hoping to be back in the habit of weekly blog updates, just try not to hold me too closely to it. ..while my summer ends tonight, many of you still have a month or more to go, please enjoy it and soak up some sunshine for me, I will do the same for you…just with rain.. and mold....

mammal nourishment.

i try my hardest to not live a monotonous life, but sometimes routine just seems to be the best plan of action. every morning i leave the house at 6:40 (this gives me 20ish minutes to make it up the hill) to go to the gym before morning assembly. now, not too many people are on campus around 7am which is normally quite nice because i don't start forming words until at least 730. last friday i would have given anything for someone else to be on campus.
nan and i meandered up the mountain quite a bit slower than usual, basking in the glory comes with the last day of school. we were right in front of the ramp leading up to the gym when we met our match: one nasty big monkey just sitting in the middle of the ramp. i made eye contact when the beast and realized two things... 1. he was a sugar fiendish monkey willing to do anything to get his fix- this was evident via the juice box he was violently ripping to pieces and 2. there was no way in hell he was going anywhere.
nan and i started to brainstorm our options and began to make sounds similar to frogs coughing to try and 'scare' the monkey away. this only further amused him and he came a little closer trying to figure out what sort of idiots were making such a ridiculous sound. we tried to have a staring contest..he won. frozen to the spot we could not get over to the 'garden' to pick up landscaping rocks to throw. no one was there to help us. so we decided to admit defeat and just wait it out. this is when i had my brilliant idea of the day: 'hey, i should take a picture of it..then maybe i can blog' nan agreed and i set my bag down, unzipping the front pocket to get my camera.
the second i left my bag, the monkey repositioned himself at the backpack. and guess who had left it unzipped...
the first thing the beast pulled out was my tampons...which really is excellent considering you cannot find them anywhere in mussoorie and my stock is beginning to dwindle down. he then began to eat them. awesome. next in line: my wallet. with all my credit cards, money, insurance, basically my life. as he was chewing on this i started thinking about how i was going to explain to the bank that the monkey stole my wallet..it's about equivalent to the dog eating homework..maybe worse. luckily, he didn't like the leathery taste and moved onto the next selection: my vitamin D. this is when i started hoping he actually would eat it, then he would die and it would be the best morning ever.
this is when i snapped the photo which he did not like. i don't know what exactly happened except that all the sudden he charged and i realized that shit, monkeys can run WAY faster than me. nan was in front meaning i was left in the dust.
damage was minimal, but i honestly don't think my heart will ever beat normally. talk about a great cardio workout. result: i have decided i should probably get my rabies shot immediately.

the beast. note the tampon on the ground and vitamin d in hand

school is out for summer. school is out forever.
not really, but with the kids leaving campus tomorrow and my grades submitted i cant help but feel a huge sense of relief. in celebration, noel, lauren and i took a trip to happy valley..we had been meaning to take this hike since day one, however time got the best of us and we had to squeeze the adventure into a simple afternoon jaunt. happy valley is a prayer flag filled tibetan neighborhood located on the other end of mussoorie at a place rightfully called cloud's end. we had loads of delicious tibetan food, loading up on the favorites: tingmo and momos, watched a killer storm roll in and out of the valley, saw a rainbow and hiked... happiness was found by all.

language barrier with a monk? NOOO

riding in style

time is ticking until i come home for the summer- the next few days will be filled with what seems like thousands of social events and sometime in there i need to pack, so i highly doubt i will squeeze another entry in until i am in amurica.. i hope to see many of you when i am home, drop me a line or two and we can make it happen.

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.