Mostly Complaining About School

   So I have been back from India for about two months now and it was a crazy ride! I have told the story a bunch of times now and I will put it all down here, but not tonight. Tonight I am going to just go over some things and express some stress I am feeling. So here it goes -

   While in India I came to the conclusion that I needed to move out of the house for some very good reasons (personal growth and mental health being two of them). I signed up for 12 credits of classes, planned on getting my job in Recreation Therapy back, and getting back into church and scripture study. Oh and talk to a therapist to see if I was going crazy or if the world is just crazy...
   Well - some of what I was planning on has happened. I still need to do better on the spiritual aspects of my life, the academic side is in a mess (I will expound on this in a bit), found out the world is crazy and I am getting there, I haven't moved out yet (this is wearing on me, because several other things need this to happen first), and I did get my job back (I still love my job and the amazing people I get to work with). So I got my job back and I spoke to a therapist, YAY (sarcastic emoticon here)!
   School is a mess! I should not have enrolled in this semester, I was not ready to be back and I have some personal things I need to take care of or I am going to SNAP! I may snap anyways! School just feels like it is in the way. I really have no idea what to do right now, except for suck it up and bust my arse to try and salvage something, but every morning when I wake up I just think how much I don't want to be anywhere right now and if I get out of bed I am hardly engaged in my studies. Oh I also fall asleep in almost every class, even when I get a full nights sleep! I think this may be task avoidance behavior. I am trying to keep my head above water and failing marvelously/pathetically. I don't seem to remember how to study or pay attention.
   Well that is enough complaining for now, I have to wake up tomorrow morning and go help bale a bunch of hay for work. I was supposed to take it off to go backpack, but decided I would catch up on homework/studying instead and then volunteered to go and help bale hay. I am some kind of IDIOT! Hey, but at least I am getting paid :)

Goodnight to you all and good morning to some! Yay for 4 hours-ish of sleep and manual labor.. and being stupid!
Really though, I hope everyone reading is doing well! Love you all and good night!

Letter to a Friend

I have a lot to talk about, we had our first large group of volunteers (40+), there was a bee in my shorts, I found a surfing beach, I took the school pictures for the UKG (Indian's kindergarten) class, and so much more... but I will have to talk about it later, because a very good friend of mine passed away yesterday. My heart and prayers go out to the Chalk family tonight.
If you hadn't already guessed, this blog entry will be a letter to one of my best friends Dave Chalk. Please do not feel awkward reading on, because this is one way I am celebrating his life while also dealing with his loss. There will be no other post I make that I will welcome feedback and comments more on while I am in India. If you are reading and you know Dave, please share a memory of him.

Dear Dave,
   You know I was planning on taking you out to dinner when I got back. You spent at least $80 to cover yourself, me, and Chris when we had that goodbye dinner for me a few days before I left. I was planning on paying for the three of us, which was why I invited Chris to come to. Had I known you were going to shout I would have done things a bit differently. I am really angry that once again you have trumpt me in our game of who buys who dinner... and you know what Dave? I feel extremely foolish that I made you promise to throw my ashes in the Antarctic Ocean if I died in India. You just did what you always have done when I say weird things or make ridiculous requests. You humored me - because you knew how paranoid and scared I can be. I don't even know if you knew you were going to be gone soon! You didn't say anything, you just enjoyed the moment and helped me feel loved. I wish I was half the person you are! I wish I had an ounce of your courage! and now I am crying!
   Dave there were so many times I wanted to ask you how you were really doing, but I never felt it was my place. I do not regret that, I am happy and grateful I was able to spend time with you enjoying life, food, and thoughtful discussions, but I wish I could have paid you back at least a tenth of the support you gave me.
   I do not know how I am supposed to feel right now Dave... I really don't. I know you were in a lot of pain a few months ago and that it has been really hard for you over the last year especially, but when I had dinner with you you said you were feeling much better. I feel so selfish for wishing you were still here. Of all my friends I wanted to talk to you most of all about India. Discussing your work in the humanitarian aid prepared me for a lot and I have changed my position on a few things that I know you would have liked to hear since it would basically be proving you right. Not that you would gloat over it. You would just be like, "Uh huh, you really can't measure some things. I knew you'd figure it out." And the food!!! Who on Earth am I going to be able to talk to about food like I did with you?!?!?!?!
   Well I think I am going to get in touch with your family and maybe do a food pilgrimage with Brad, if he is available, in your honor. I will also strive to be more compassionate and courageous in your honor.

Thank you and I love you Dave,

Shane E.K. Maryott


I will be posting one photo I took of Dave Chalk last year along with three photos from India.

As always, I am grateful for your readership and hope that you and yours are in good health and good spirits.  

This One is Rambling On

I would like to start this one by apologizing about not having the blog updated this last Sunday. We were coming back from the city of Tiruchirappalli (aka Trichy, located 6 hours SW of our home in India aka the Elephant House) and did not get in until almost 9pm. I was surprisingly exhausted, so I decided I would just go to sleep once I got everything unpacked and was comfortable. We visited two major temples while in Trichy, the Rock Fort Temple and Sri Ranganathaswamy. Both temple are over ten centuries old and Sri Ranga is one of the largest religious complexes in the world.

Our volunteer from the last session left this last Thursday, which was sad because he was AWESOME! Shout out to Matt G.!!! The upcoming session will have around 40 volunteers, so we will have a full house. I will be sharing a room with five other people, dude people... I would like to now thank all my friends who have helped me get to the point where I can sleep in the same room with other humans. This was not something that came naturally for me. My parents can attest that I have always fought sleep and many of my old friends will probably notice that if they look back I rarely slept when other people were nearby. I am now much better at it! I just feel bad that I snore... Oh well, bad feeling is gone.

Sorry this post isn't very interesting. I have been rather busy and not had a ton of time to properly collect my myriad of wandering thoughts. I will say two more things and then you will have some pics from the Trichy to look at.

First off - the other coordinators made a sign and chalked happy birthday on my floor for my birthday so that when we got back from Trichy it was there waiting for me. The next morning I was woken up by our VPO (basically the head coordinator) with crepes for breakfast! The man brought me crepes in bed! Basically I love everyone I work with here/food controls most of my emotions.

Second - Did you think I would leave without trying to cram something insightful in?  Of course not! I love thoughts put down with pretty words or visuals... That being said this isn't one of my best, but the following realization did make my eyes get a bit misty.
While we were heading to a colony last week I was looking out the medical van window thinking about how helping some of the children write letters to their sponsors was hard for me (at the peak of my emotions I almost cried), because there were so many kids asking for letters from their sponsors and I only had the ones I had that day and they are all so cute (they are extremely disarming) and I was just a visitor in their lives. Simultaneously, I was also watching the light fade from warm bronze to thin honey and thinking about how beautiful the rice patties and various vegetable plots were all hemmed in by teek, neem, and palm with accents of various bushes. This is when I realized that I am being forced open by the experiences I am having here. I have, over the last decade or so, closed many parts of myself off. Much of it has been in response to certain stresses that I will not go into right now, but the fact is I have not allowed any one person or single group of people to get in... not in a long time (sorry if this is too blubbery a post). After some thought I came to another realization - If you go out into the World it will work its way into your heart and open you up. I am so grateful to live in a world that is so strange and beautiful that it disarms you, that it opens you and forces you to live as part of it. You really can't do anything to change that and it is scary and comforting all at once.

Well that is it for now. I hope everyone is doing well and watches Jurassic World, because dinosaurs are always cool and Chris Pratt is a stud and I wish he was my best friend.  

Fragrant Strand Of Pearls

We got to travel to the state of Andhra Pradesh this last week to work in a couple colonies that are only visited once a year. Both colonies were great to work in and I got to stay in a hotel and eat delicious food.

Some of you may have heard about the rather high temps affecting Southern India as of late, it has been rather hot... Very hot. I want you all to know I have been drinking plenty of water and that as we drove back from Andhra Pradesh, on Wednesday, we were blessed with rain, but not before we bought mangoes. There were at least a dozen roadside mango stalls near the top of a large hill which we had to drive over in order to get back home. I was thrilled when we stopped, because I had seen these stalls on our way into the city of Tirupati and was sincerely hoping that we would have time for a visit on our way back. As I exited the volunteer van, my eyes feasting and my hunger roused at the sight of my favorite fruit, I was greeted by a white haired elderly woman selling threaded strands of jasmine blossoms. Her small bent frame and dark leathered skin, common features among the elderly selling their wears along the roadsides of India, did not strike me as anything new as I met her eyes. It was her eyes that got me. They were pleading. A strand of sweet white jasmine, "20 rupees", one of the stall workers translated for me as the old flower girl continued to speak in Telugu. I was already struck, she could have named her price at that point for though her hands were full of flowers her eyes had hold of me.
Many people, including myself, have said that the eyes are the window to one's soul. I do not think that to be the case, not anymore. I think, now, that the eyes of the people you meet are really mirrors that reflect your own soul back at you. What you think you see in the other person is really in some part of you. I could not ignore the beggar within myself when I looked into those eyes, for all their pleading and searching was my own. Pleading for someone to buy a lei. Pleading for some guidance or direction. Searching for a kind heart. Searching for some purpose or meaning. After we purchased our mangoes. I was sad. I was tired, my heart was tired. I wished I could have bought mangoes from all the stands. I wish I could buy flowers from all those who came to me. I wish I could do more.

My final words for this post are: First, the following pictures are from the Cuddapa and Tirupati Colonies, none of them are from the mango stands (those pics make me sad). Second, here is a poem - enjoy.

Blossoming white chains
Piled on a small clay plate
Fragrant in the breeze

Hands like dry tree bark
Will pass you that precious strand
For but a small price

You will take the blooms
Flowers you have not, instead
Fragrant strands of pearls

Some Rain Today

Today there is a storm and we have been asked to stay in the volunteer hostel because it is pretty windy and fruits (mostly mangoes) are flying off trees. This is sad for me because I love being in storms, but it is probably for the best because I love being in storms especially when it is dangerous. On the bright side we have a courtyard and no one said I couldn't go on the roof, so those are the places I have been enjoying the storm from.

Over the last week four more volunteer coordinators have come in, we visited Mamallapuram and I have helped with BP and blood sugar tests in the colonies as well as cleaned the patients ulcers (the ones we clean are located on the foot and ankle areas). I am going to be explaining what has happened this week in reverse order, so Saturday back.

First up, Mamallapuram! Mamallapuram was the site of a trade port anciently and is still populated to this day. There are a fair number of ancient structures, many of which are carved out of or into huge solid stones. I will include some pictures, but I haven't even gotten to look at all the different structures. The best time to be there would probably be around sunrise, FYI. We spent a couple hours at the beach and just enjoyed our Saturday.

As I mentioned earlier, there are four more volunteer coordinators here! Yay! I have gotten to go pick up three of them. This has been good, because up until the third pick-up I had been consistently waking up at 2am. I get a lot done when I wake up freakishly early, but I also fall asleep hard by 6pm. The third pick up got me to stay up till about 2am the next day when I had to be awake by 7am so I could be ready to go out with the mobile clinic at 9am. This is what caused my schedule reset and I am happy for it.

So visiting the colonies and patients is one of my favorite things so far. All of the people  I have met have stories etched into their faces and their eyes are just full of experiences that I will never have, many/most of which are experiences I am grateful to be without. They all have practically nothing, but just about every person I have smiled at gives me one of their own in return and some share their smile first. Cleaning the ulcers was very enlightening, I did not expect to have the response I did. I did not find the wounds particularly disgusting or anything like that (no surprise there), nor did I weep or feel super sad when I noticed the lack of fingers and toes. I was there to do a job and that job needed getting done. It was after we left the colony where I was helping to clean the ulcers that I really started to think on what I had seen. I am still trying to figure out how to articulate it... I am aware that many things are bigger than me, but I do not know how to speak on this thing yet... Till then I will just keep shooting, thinking, and working.

Love you all! Hope you are in good health and spirits!

Traveled to India Today

Some of you reading may remember that I didn't start packing till the night before I left. While I do not ever recommend last minute packing, especially for a semester long trip, I am happy to report that I have arrived safe and sound in India with everything I need... so far (knock on wood).

I think I should also mention that it is not a good idea to try and walk from the Siglap McDonald's to the Changi Airport (Singapore Airport). There are a lot of rules in Singapore and walking near highways may be addressed in some of them... I am not saying I was walking on or near a highway at any point, but if there is a law that addresses pedestrians and highways and a person were to get caught breaking that law it could be unfortunate for the perpetrator. So don't break laws!... Anyways, what was I really talking about? Oh so I watched the sunrise in Singapore, because when your plane lands at 3am and you are full of energy, and you have a 13 hour layover ahead of you why on Earth wouldn't you hire a cab, drive around the city, get breakfast at McDonald's, and then walk to the beach to watch aforementioned sunrise!?!?

Here is a walking route I do not recommend: https://www.google.co.in/maps/dir/McDonald's+Siglap/1.3166848,103.9776214/@1.3217824,103.9487568,14z/data=!4m24!4m23!1m20!1m1!1s0x31da22a491deec25:0xdac26e3ae25229b6!2m2!1d103.92325!2d1.312606!3m4!1m2!1d103.92444!2d1.3050319!3s0x31da22984bce5dfd:0xa7fdd6ab86a026a2!3m4!1m2!1d103.9385117!2d1.3076549!3s0x31da22c01ca08b75:0xdb25ce995aede034!3m4!1m2!1d103.9792583!2d1.3282212!3s0x31da3ccb9ddc472b:0x24f2206ac74f1874!1m0!3e2

Well to sum it all up - I love my trip so far! There have been little stresses here and there, but I am lucky to have this opportunity and to be going on this adventure. Here is a pic of the city of Singapore from East Coast Beach Park. I think I took it around 4:30am.