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.
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.
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