Kolkata.

Here we are. For those of you with short attention spans, I apologize because I really feel the need to explain what life is like right now, and all that has happened. I can try to point-form it, which will go against everything inside of my English major self.

April 17. Wake up at 5:30, grab a 6 hour bus to Delhi. At 4, hop on the Delhi-Kolkata 24 hour train. Meet cool people hanging out in sleeper class.
April 18. Arrive at Howrah station. First blurred view of Kolkata through the windows of a taxi. Meet some Sisters at the Missionaries of Charity, get directed to an area called "Sudder St." (Our new home).
April 19. Volunteer Orientation with the Missionaries of Charity. Head to a Cricket match (Kolkata vs. Mumbai) with Felix and Sean (two Canadians from the train ride). Kolkata wins!
April 20. First day volunteering. Wake up at 5:30 after getting home from Cricket at 1 am. Head to Mass with the nuns, volunteer breakfast, bus down through the city to Daya Dan in the morning. Daya Dan is an orphanage mostly for children with physical and mental disabilities. Have lunch. Head to Kalighat (Home for the Destitute and the Dying in South Kolkata) to work from 3-6 pm. Head home for dinner.

So needless to say, after day 1 we were exhausted. The trick is going to bed early, and skipping mass when you're tired. But any way you cut it, they are long days. Last week I was working at Daya Dan and Kalighat with Eli. I have now started teaching at the Gandhi Welfare Centre in the afternoons, which is a school run for street children. The kids are hilarious but crazy. I switched there because they are really short on volunteers, whereas many people want to work at Kalighat because it was the first home started by Mother Teresa.

Daya Dan is a beautiful place. There are two sisters there who just glow with joy and love for the kids. We make beds, do laundry, and Eli and I teach a class with 4-5 girls. I normally teach Pompa and Sonia, while Eli teaches Puja and Gungun. Gungun is non-verbal and more severely
handicapped and really just loves to smile, play with toys, and make everyone laugh. After class we feed the kids, many of whom cannot feed themselves. But they have such vibrant personalities. Raju is a boy I've hung out with a bit. He has such an attitude, but if you dance around shaking his arms and making funny faces he'll totally crack a smile.

Kalighat has a pretty heavy atmosphere. It is a profound experience to work there as you essentially become a servant for dying men. They still have great dignity and there is a wonderful mutual respect between many of the men, volunteers and sisters there. I was left feeling quite useless there as I have no nursing training, I can't speak Bengali or Hindi, and I was the new guy. But I'm glad I had a week there.

The Gandhi School has 70 students, all of whom leave class (a mat laid out on the floor), and walk into their home, the street. Some of the students have families. None of the students are accustomed to having to sit still in a classroom environment. To get to the school on Monday (yesterday), I was told to go to Central station and walk west. After asking around I eventually noticed a sign on a chicken coop denoting "The Gandhi Welfare Centre - Missionaries of Charity." I walked in behind the caged area, in between a slum area of huts and a small building. I wondered where I was headed. After only about 10-15 steps however, a women sitting outside a door motioned for me to go inside this plain steel door. Hmm. Sure enough, when I went through I saw a couple of mats on the floor, a couple groups of children huddled around with little slates and pieces of chalk, and Alberto - a Spanish volunteer who is now my colleague I suppose.

The first week flew by, and I am so amazed that this is what our life looks like right now. We sleep in Modern Lodge, take city buses/subway to these various homes, hang out with other great volunteers on Sudder St., and we spend time with tons of cool children. Kolkata is a fun city. We are surrounded by interesting places to walk around, cheap restaurants, and about 15 million people. I am being humbled a lot. I find myself accustomed to the harsh realities of life here, and the book "City of Joy" helps put things back in perspective. The heat and humidity are becoming more bearable, or maybe it's because this internet cafe is air conditioned.

Donkey and Ogre

We have reached the end of our time together as 28 studious nomads: wandering India, learning together, sleeping in hot afternoon classes, and pulling all-nighters on our final essays, simply because Rajasthan actually cools down at night. It is actually quite strange. The way that I have experienced India so far has been in this tribe of Canadian students, finding the balance between studies and exploring, immersion in the culture and getting to know my fellow group members, and Indian food and western imitations. Now it will just be donkey and ogre; Kusco and Pacha; Bambi and that little skunk; off on another whirlwind adventure. Out of those dynamic Disney duos, I will leave it to you, dear reader, to decide which is Eli and which character I will be.

Last night was a final dinner party with all of our host families, professors, and of course, Chris and Mithila. We also had a final meeting just as a group together earlier in the day, as well as a final Ultimate game on the Cricket pitch of Rajasthan University. I'm going to miss those games. For the record, my team won the last game. It was a big deal. I think Matt Stock is currently losing sleep over it. The final days as a group have been great. We had an "awards" ceremony where people were awarded "best potential rickshaw driver's" (Olivia and Abra), "best facial hair" (Remy), and "Most likely to be a stray Indian dog" (Peter)...and other such awards. We wrote our final exams, finished our independent study papers, and began to get excited for everyone's different upcoming journeys. Some are going up north, some back south, some to Nepal or east Asia, but we'll all end up back in Canada, and I'll probably bump into most people at the Bull Ring or somewhere in the library in a few months. This shared experience is over, and it won't ever be replicated. Certainly, it could never - and should never - be replicated. It was a once in a lifetime kind of deal.

Dear India Semester Abroad friends: Ya'll a bunch of angels. Peace and joy for your journeys, thanks for an incredible few months. See you at home.

A donkey and an ogre, on a long train to West Bengal...a new chapter begins...

"The Rural Blur"

My favourite part about the long train journeys around India is something I've entitled "The Rural Blur." Standing at the doors of the train cars (which are normally open, with the outside world shifting past)

you can get an interesting look at India "behind the scenes," so to speak. India, as it is experienced by the traveller is often full of noise, crowds, colours, and generally, urban areas. From the doorway of a cross-country train ride, you get to see rural India in the midst of its peaceful stillness. It is a rare glimpse of the side of this country I have yet to really engage with. A group of men sitting on stools, smoking "beedies" together. A mother taking her children to their small shelter for bedtime. A single incandescent bulb, a campfire, or often no light at all during the late evening activities of farming villages alongside the railroad tracks. It proves to me that there are people with peaceful, unhurried lives. The world needs more people like that. I need to be more like that. My hands grip the support bars beside the doors, I feel the wind tearing at my beard, and I watch as these tranquil scenes fly by, often listening to the second half of the Weakerthans album, "Reunion Tour" (starting with the song "Sun in an empty room"). Put that on in your headphones and see if you can picture it.

The album finishes with a song called "utilities," and it has become a kind of prayer of mine:
"Got a face full of all this weather
smirking smile of a high pressure ridge
Got more faults than the state of California
and the heart is a badly built bridge.
Seems the most I have to offer
doesn't offer much.
Make it something somebody can use.
Make this something somebody can use."

As I head to Kolkata at the end of this week, that song may be playing in my ears, and that prayer will be on my lips. In the hope that when I reach that city of 15-20 million (depending on who you ask) I may be able to recognize my faults, humble myself, and be of some use to somebody, somewhere in that hectic urban jungle. May I have ears to hear, words to speak (when necessary), but most importantly, willing hands to serve. I know Eli wants the same. I'm so glad we're doing this together.

Sun Rhymes With Fun.

Apparently even Rajasthani people consider these things "heat waves." By these "things" I am referring to the days where time spent in the sun is like time spent as an ant on a patch of tar outside the house where the 9-year-old with a microscope lives. Y'know? Needless to say, the days where I play football (soccer) in the mornings with Eli and a bunch of Indian University students and Ultimate after school with some members of our group, without sufficient time in the shade, is enough to send me to bed with a headache for an extended period of time. Time spent in class is becoming more and more of a test of physical endurance. Luckily, it's April and class is almost over. But how weird is that!? My last 2 exams are on the 10th and the 12th, then I have to finish up my 2 independent study paper's and by April 16th, it's all over. Crazy.

I've recently been informed about my extended readership (ie - people that read this blog to get the latest news on Eli, Remy, Michelle, or other members of our group). SO, without further ado about myself, here is a quick update:
Remy's beard was looking luscious today.
Eli was wearing his usual brown T-shirt. Lookin' good.
Michelle Ball helped set up an easter egg hunt with our group in Udaipur (the town where we spent last weekend). It was good. I think I won.

Also, Alexia and I got to attend our first Indian wedding last week with our Indian parents. It was unbelievably extravagant. There was enough food there for a small city, and there was about the population of a small city in attendance. Very cool.
A group of us (Remy, Matt, Olivia, Steph, Abra, and I) also had a great adventure to a village about an hour from Jaipur last week. We ate lunch in a small house with the family of a man (named Monu) Remy had met on campus, had an impromptu volleyball game (where Remy had to ceremoniously cut a red ribbon and give a speech to all villagers in attendance...hilarious), and visited some of the sites with a jeep full of our "escorts." With traditional Indian hospitality, we were stuffed with food, treated like royalty, and not allowed to pay for anything. We also became the centre of attention for various crowds of curious people. It was a fun, but very hectic, excursion.

In other news, Eli and I have a train ticket for April 17th from Delhi to Kolkata. We'll be heading to volunteer with the Missionaries of Charity and hang out in that crazy city for a few weeks. Should be awesome.