yesterday, orientation was completed. tomorrow, i leave on a project trip. today, was a shopping day. in my week and a half here, little exploration has happened. most of the moments here have been planned with orientation and those that weren’t were spent recovering from those which were. but today, i was rested. today, i was ready. gretchen, rutu, and i set off for the bazaar. the walk down from the top of the hill is steep and my toes clutch tight around my flip flops. the trees we live amid are slowly replaced by shops and markets and the stillness in the air becomes consumed...
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write to you from the tea stall in chardakkan [four stores] down the hill from oaklands. the children run by and i smile in response to their contagious laughs. the motorbikes zoom by and i watch the faces as they walk across my view. i must make the trek back up with my computer in tow, still packing to do. i leave for the south of india soon…40+ hours on the train await and i am not so eager to respond. a hospital project calls my name in machilipatnam, and another part of india to discover, a new adventure awaits. until i...
Read Morei’d like to state for the record that i have now been a patient in two foreign hospitals. i would also like to state for the record, i don’t intend on adding any more to the list. the second day i arrived in india, i wasn’t feeling well. my stomach seemed to be at war with something inside of me. i didn’t try to fight back, i just let my system do its thing. i knew it would take some adjustment, i knew it would take some time. i went to bed that afternoon at 4pm hoping things would be better in...
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i had no problem finding my favorite place here at oaklands [the name of our house. there are no house numbers, just names…like the old days] i discovered it my first morning here and have spent many others there already. the house, the highest point in the city, is rather unusual, with little nooks and crannies everywhere. off of the northeast side of it, is a long, narrow porch. the roof extends beyond the edge and shelters me from a.m. sprinkles. the air here is warm as the morning sun rolls back the covers of the fog to wake up...
Read Morei’m not going to pretend this is easy. some people wished me well before i left on my 4 month ‘vacation.’ ha. not hardly. i knew it would be difficult to adjust to a new culture…but really, this tough? my nose doesn’t like the smell here. it’s monsoon season and everything seems musty. the cities smell dirty. i know i’ll get used to it, but it just takes time. my stomach can’t handle the food. i was in bed for 14 hours yesterday. i spend a lot of time in the bathroom. i know i’ll grow to love it, just not right now. i wore a salwar kameez for the first time...
Read Moreyesterday, i hiked the himalayas…or at least the part of them…ah…perhaps just the foothills. the hiking was…okay. but it was what i found on the bottom that i won’t soon forget. to punjab, this was just another day on the job. [names changed to protect the innocent, or not so innocent] there are eight neighboring villages he travels to over the course of two weeks, each a couple hours away from home base in mussoorie. you cannot get to the villages by car, not even by horse. you must hike, so hike he does. for a day, he took us along...
Read Moreplanes. ‘indian time,’ they call it. for two and a half hours we waited on the plane as an instrument was being checked. then, refueling compensating for the extra fuel we used up waiting on the instrument. a fifteen hour flight leaves the tank pretty empty with not much wiggle room for gas or in the plane. two, five, two is how the seats were laid out; we were part of the five. we made good conversation with the ticket lady who put us behind the cabin divider. with no seats in front of us, lots of extra room at our...
Read Moreall my bags are packed, i’m ready to go. today, to colorado [training]. saturday, to india. all is unknown, but all is okay. just breath. sigh. here we go…
i was on a quest for travel watercolor set when i saw it painted in the window of the art supply store. the words rested on an abstraction of an ocean wave. find your muse was all it said. i’m sure little was spent on the marketing campaign and definitely nothing for the paint. but the sheer brilliance of the statement was enough to still be imprinted on my mind weeks later…find your muse. i love this three word command for it causes me to ask a question before i can fully understand it. what is a muse and how do i find...
Read Moretwo roads diverged in a wood, and i took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference.
life is full of them… two and a half decades of life have taught me to recognize these changing seasons and i have even begun to appreciate the change that they usually bring. however, i haven’t yet learned to enjoy them. a transition is a passage from one form, state, style, or place to another. there exists an infinite number of transition examples…the day to day movement from outside to in and the notes woven together to form music, to the life altering transitions from health to sickness, singleness to marriage, death to life. i recognize that my dream of having life ‘under control’ is...
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