When I wrote last, I was just finishing up a week in Indian heaven: staying with my friend Schuyler and seeing the Dalai Lama. After seeing the holiest man in Tibetan Buddhism, I decided I should see the holies place for Sikhs so I headed to Amritsar and the Golden Temple. With the type of luck one has in India I arrived the day before the biggest festival of the year. This meant I arrived during a 5 hour long parade of school children and sword fighters. On the actual day of the festival, around 20,000 people crammed into the golden temple and listened to classical Indian music while fireworks exploded all around us. After the fireworks, I headed to the community kitchen where the Sikhs feed around 10,000 people for free on a normal day, but that day was not normal. Try to imagine a few thousand people all armed with clanging metal plates and bowls making a human battering ram to try to get through the barricade the cooks had erected. After we broke through, I quickly sat down, and almost immediately had rice, dal and chapati slopped onto my plate. After about 15 minutes a man came around with water and a squeegee giving me just enough time to get up so another could fill in my spot in the feeding line. Oh, India!

After a couple days in the free temple dormitory, I headed of to be tourist in Rajasthan. I saw camels and elephants, a Bollywood film in a huge theater and had the most unbelievable lassis. This time was ok, but I decided that I don't really like being only a tourist very much. I caught the bus to Delhi and met up with a wealthy Indian woman who runs a NGO in the South Delhi slums. Checking out the NGO was good; I got to see the shocking and unbelievable reality that is the slums, talk to some very committed people, and look into remaking the books I had distributed in Ladakh to fit the schools of this NGO. But, the best part of staying in Delhi was getting to stay at this awesome woman's house. She's from an upper-class family so I got to stay in my own room, have amazing western style food, have drinks in the lounge (which features a tiger pelt) and be waited on by many servants. I was living in the farthest reaches of both extremes simultaneously.

After Delhi, I traveled up to Rishikesh, a very holy town filled with many ashrams (Hindu monasteries) right where the Ganga comes down from the mountain. I went here because I wanted to see the center for Andrew Cohen, an American spiritual teacher who my cousin Joel had gotten me interested in. In brief, his teachings combine the eastern view of enlightenment with the western view of enlightenment. I'll hold back on saying more for now becuase I got so much out of my time there that I've decided to head back to Rishikesh in a few days do a month long retreat there. Other than my time at Andrew Cohen's center, I got to clean and give offerings to an 11 ft Shiva Lingum (pretty much a penis). I also got to watch a 40 foot statue of Ravana get shot with a flaming arrow and then blow up in an explosion of fireworks in honor of Lord Ram's victory. After a quick dip in Mother Ganga, I set off to return to my home away from home, Bodhgaya, where I am right now.

It has been so wonderful to be back in Bodhgaya. First, because three friends from Wesleyan, Angus, Claire and Anna, are here right now. It is so nice to see friends again and almost feel like I’m back in college. Halloween party! (I dressed up a a shiva lingam, Angus was a teradactyl) I’ve also got to meet up with all the friends I made in Bodhgaya this summer. Its pretty cool/strange walking around an Indian town and having lots of people know me. Bodhgaya has changed a lot since I left in August. Many of shops have been torn down because they want to make the place into a Buddhist Theme Park. There are lots more tourists now as well. I got to sit under the Bodhi tree in the middle of 1500 Bhutanese doing this Tantric practice where they play a drum and ring a bell while chanting and doing a visualization of destroying their body and offering it to anyone in need in order to get rid of ego clinging. I also took refuge and Bodhsattva vows, which means I have committed to aspire to not harm any sentient being and work for the benefit of all sentient beings. I’m hoping to take it seriously, but I have no idea how things will end up when I go back home. Now I’m off for a bike ride with Angus and in a few days I am heading into retreat. So, unless you email me in a couple days, I won’t be in contact until around December 10. Happy Fall!

Its been a long time

Hi everybody!

Its been a while. So, I've decided to write the blog as a choose your own adventure novel. That way you can keep it nice and short or make it really long. Just look at the bold parts for directions.

When I last wrote was the start of august and I just had left Bodhgaya for Varanasi. It was quite strange to start traveling all alone for the first time and Varanasi is an intense place to start. The city is one of the most amazing places I have been. It’s made up of tiny little alleyways where a cow may take up the whole road and you might find a vender sitting cross legged in a tiny hole in the wall selling colorful leaves and pastes of an unknown purpose. I spent a few hours at the burning ghats watching the cremations, and a few more watching bhramin priests spin fire to the tune on table and vocals. Its pretty intense place both visually and culturally. You see a leg sticking out of a burning fire and then learn that women aren't allowed to be present because if they cry the person might be blocked on their way to nirvana. It was a short one day stay, but an unforgettable one. Next, I took two days of buses through the deep, terraced valleys of the Himalaya up towards Katmandu.

I spent a day in Kathmandu exploring the historic old city, new, computerized city and the most touristy area I'd ever been (pizza, ice cream and nutella!) but quickly headed to an area of Kathmandu called Bodhanath. This is where the Tibetan community lives and it has about 37 monasteries. I spent two peaceful weeks there at Kopan monastery doing meditation and reiki.

If you want to see Reid become really Buddhist at a monastery, read on. If not, skip to the next bold seciton.

I did a 10 day Lam Rim mediation course at Kopan. The Lam Rim is the graduated path to enlightenment and gives a step by step list of practices which are supposed to lead to the final goal. It is very different than anything I’d ever done before. The course begins with trying to create renunciation of ego and samsaric pleasure. The way it does this is by spending a really long time talking about and meditating on suffering and death. I did a lot of analytical meditations where I would think about how many different ways I suffer and how horrible it is, for example. I also did many visualization meditations, such as a visualization of watching myself die. These are all supposed to make one renounce all the temporary pleasures of life and commit himself fully to seeking enlightenment. At first I thought this would be incredibly depressing, but I actually found it inspiring and realistic. There is no reason to dwell on a bad mood when you know you are going to die. I have continued to do an intense practice of saying "I am going to die" over and over again to myself before I go to bed every night.

After renunciation, the course focused on creating bodhicitta, or compassion. This focused a lot on the idea that the only way one can truly help oneself is by being only motivated to help others. There is no true self cherishing thought. The Dalai Lama calls it clever selfishness. One day I was almost brought to tears by getting a glimpse of this type of great compassion. I saw that it would be possible to have compassion for every person in the world, unconditionally and take it upon oneself to work only to helping all these people. Of course, I still don't have this pure motivation. But, seeing the possibility of this pure type of motivation left me intimidated and awestruck, yet determined.

The last part of the course was focused on emptiness, or wisdom: the idea that nothing really exists, at least in the sense that nothing exists independently. I had never done an analytical meditation on wisdom before and the one we did during the course was really cool. We were to look for who we are. Are we our body? No. Are we are our emotions? No. Are we are mind? No We’re all of those things, right? But all of those things change! What is it about those things that stays the same? What continues from moment to moment? So I looked in my thoughts. Am I this thought? No, there is some part of me that is aware of this thought. That must be me. But there is something that is aware of that awareness. And that awareness too. I went through this regress for minutes and then realized there was no end, but that that was the end. There was no “I” but the moment at hand and that “I” included a lot more things than I would ever consider “I.” Its pretty hard to express this experience, but it was very great and was enough to keep me happy for weeks.

Overall the course has made me look at myself and Buddhism in a pretty new way. Using analyis and skillful means was something I had never done before in Buddhism and I found it really helpful at practically changing the way I live. I think I am more determined than before but in a much less self deprecating way. I have greater compassion for others, but also for myself. It was really cool. I think I want to do a long retreat again before I head back home.

Read here for a good time:

After Kathmandu I got on a 36 hour bus to Delhi. The few hours I spent in Delhi gave me time to check out some schools in the urban slums in the morning and then met up with lots of hippies and Isrealis to catch the bus to Manali in the afternoon. They hot boxed the bus. After 18 hours on the bus, I got to manali, then got in a jeep with 10 other people to start the 20 hour ride to Leh, Ladakh. (Ladakh is the highest inhabited area in the world and is culturally Tibetan. Its just east of Kashmir.)

The jeep ride was ridiculous. I've never been so crammed. But the scenery was unreal: a desert in the middle of the Himalaya at an average of 14,000 feet. The ride peaked with a sunset at 17,500 feet. On the jeep I met a sweet Brazilian who I spent my week in Leh touristing around with. I talked almost only in Spanish for that week, which was unexpected but really helped my language. In Leh, some highlights were doing a 3 day homestay where I was harvesting barley by hand and eating pretty much only barleyflour and salty butter tea. I saw a traditional tantric mask dance at Tiksey Monestary, without question the most bueatiful I have ever seen. I cycled up 7,000 ft to the top of the highest road, 18,300 feet. It was six hours up, 1 hour down. I also climbed a really high mountain, Stok-Kangri. It was just a really hard, 3 day hike, but the mountain was 20,188 ft. I don't think I will ever again walk so slowly or be so high. However, most of my time in Ladakh was spent working on distributing books to the local government schools.

If you want to read about Reid doing volunteer work, read on. If not, skip ahead to the next boldy.
So, I headed to Leh with a list of email contacts and the mission to set up a book distribution project. My friend Willy had given me this admirable but somewhat ambiguous mission. After being quite jaded by my time in Bodhgaya, I spent a long time checking out different NGO’s in the area trying to figure out the situation of education in Ladakh. What I discovered was quite the opposite of Bodhgaya, where education is usually viewed as a good thing that is always lacking. Ladakh has a very well structured school system, often one teacher to 5 students or so. But, many NGO’s and activists think that the schooling has very negative effects on the area. Ladakh has a very ideal and idealized traditional culture. It was made up of tiny villages that where healthy, happy and sustainable. The education brought in the India has begun to bring about a destabilization of this culture because it takes students away from there homes and makes people want what they don’t have: the luxuries of west.

When I learned of this situation, I was forced to ask a question that keeps coming up in my travels. What do you do when people want what you don’t want to give them? I didn’t want to give the schools what they wanted: lots of grammars and boring English books that would produce lots of industrious young capitalist workers. But, I still wanted to do something. Luckily I came across an NGO called HEALTH Inc. that produces their own books, which are written in the local language, cherish local culture and teach community values. I decided this would be a good solution. Unfortunately, the government had just recently kicked all the NGO’s out of the schools. This forced me to go undercover with one very committed teacher and give the books, silently, to the local schools. I was pretty happy with what I did. I ended up supplying a couple hundred books to a dozen or so schools. But, I’m still not sure what effect my work will have. On my last day in Ladakh I was very disappointed to see a teacher using the books in the exact manner I was trying to work against. She was using it as a tool to repetitively drill English vocabulary into her young, malleable students. I’m really enjoying seeing how education functions in different parts of the world, though it really confusing and depressing a lot of the time.

Read here. Where I am now:

After Leh I hopped on another two days of buses and pulled into Dharamsala where I got to meet up with my friend Schuyler. Seeing her was definitely one of the happiest points of my trip so far. Traveling alone (even though I’m usually with other people) has been incredibly rewarding, but definitely difficult as well. Getting to talk to a close friend from home was so easy and comforting and fun.

The day after I met Schuyler we went to see H.H. The Dalai Lama give a teaching. The teaching was pretty good but just seeing him was amazing. His presences just controls everyone around him; people were crying, I’ve never seen so much devotion. Very cool to see the type of compassion I had only heard about before. Now I’ve just got a week of relaxing, hanging out, and seeing His Holiness ahead of me. Just a couple hours ago I gave a urine sample to a Tibetan doctor. He read my pulse then gave me some strange pills wrapped in little green bags. I think things are going to continue to be very good.

Thanks for reading. Let me know what you’re up to.

Om Mani Padme Hum,
Reid

Pictures!

Hello. I don't have time to say much, but I've finally gotten some pitures up. I thought my camera was broken for most of the time I have been here. Then, in Kathmandu I learned that almost all of the batteries in India are fake and that was my only problem. So, I only have a few picutures to show.
This is the view of Bodhgaya from the little mountain I climbed. You probably can't see it but top center is the mahabodhi temple where the bodhi tree is. This is a pretty typical view of what the area is like.
This is class 2 and 3 from my school. Class three had a bunch of punks in it. But, I still liked avery class. The building only had one room and then the other classes were outside on this patio thing.

This picture is out of order and sideways. This is the monestary where I am right now, where i did a ten 10 tibetan meditation course and a 3 day reiki course. This is a bad photo but the monestaryt is that foggy yellow thing on top of the hill. it is so beautiful but this picture doesn't capture it. When I first arrived, i could not beleive i was walking up a long hill to reach a secluded monestary. Just like ace ventura.

This is a picture from day 3 of the wedding i went to when I first got to india. This day was the blessing of the bride. she is in white on the left. Mom and pop are just above her. The hindu priest is front and center. As the bride was blassed with money, presents, rice, and some leaf all the other people would pour colored water onto each other. It was pretty sweet. A good way to realize you are staying in a completely different culture. This was day 3, on day 4 the bride and groom would see each other for the first time.
Me after the ordeal.

Here are some links of things if you want to check out more of what i've been up to.

sujatasdream.org my schools website. i think most of it is pretty far off.

kopanmonastery.com where i just finished my retreat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodh_Gaya where i was staying

you can also look up Varanasi, Kathmandu and Ladakh on wikipedia if you're interested.

I'm about to go on a 6 day series of bus rides.

Reid

Movin' on away from here

Its been about a month since I last wrote and so much that I have done. I will only scratch the surface here.

Almost immediately after the last time I wrote, I entered the second difficult phase of my trip so far. Weeks 5 and 6 were really hard for me. Here is kindof what happened. My life here is so different than at home; so much so taht I have found it is not even worth it to compare the two. But. this is what i started to do for a while. I think after finishing half of my commitment in Bodhgaya I started to analyze what I had done in the past month as well as think about the future. This made me think about the things I wasn't doing but wanted to be as well as start to critique my experiences through the value judgements I had used at home. For example, becuase of this critical view, the really amazing relationships I had found started to become less "valuable" becuase they didn't have the type of deep connections and commitments that so many of my relationships have at home. I meet so many amazing people here, but I meet them for a very short period of time. The most amazing thing i have discovered so far is how free I can be while traveling; just experiencing ang not judging. Luckily, after those two hard weeks, I started to relax again and the past two weeks have been a series of peak experiences.

So what have I been up to? I attended at teacher training at one of the schools that I think Is actually doing good work. This was really interesting but not all that helpful. I got to hear some really good classical Indian music while I was there and the Chai was maybe the best I have had. (I am really going to miss chai back in the states). It was good to see a well functionally school because the state of NGO's in the area is so corrupt and unproductive that it can get pretty depressing at times.

For three weeks I had these French friends. They were volunteering at another school and were quite fun to hang out with and get a good impression of the French view of America. Bodhgaya is a very international place, which is really cool. Maybe 20 percent of the white tourists are American so i get a really international experience, which is as valuable as meeting Indian people. The day the Frenchmen left we headed out to a really fancy restaurant in town. It was so strange, clean, napkins and chairs with cushions. Toilet paper. It did not feel like India. When I took my first bite of food I just started laughing. The food here keeps me happy, but it is nothing too special, and this food was unbelievable.

One weekend I learned how to make Tofu and then had a big feast with about 6 of my friends. Ir was really fun and delicious, but also a little funny. Most of my buds here are total loners, so putting them all together in one room was pretty interesting to see. Some pretty awkward group socialization I had another party for the people who run my school. They really wanted to eat chicken. So, I had to get two chickens killed for them. It was pretty strange to see this, I mean, I was directly responsible for the deaths of these chickens, and I'm staying in the main place of pilgrimage for a religion that says we should not harm any sentient beings. But, it was a fun party.

I learned how to drive a motorcycle. Which was really fun and surprisingly easy. But, probably one of the most dangerous things I have done in a while. A new driver, on a motorcycle, in India is not a good thing. One friend, Laxman, took me out to a village maybe 50 km from Bodhgaya. This was quite an adventure. About 5 km from the village we left the main road and headed down a government built dirt road. Maybe half way there, the road turned to complete mud, so we both got off the bike and had to just rev the engine while pushing as hard as we could till we reached the village. Then, when we got there he decided to "wash" the bike which meant just putting it in, fully submerged, in the middle of a river. This of course flooded the engine. And even with the help of 15 village kids helping, we couldn't get it running again. So, a nice walk back into town. But really fun overall, and so powerful to see an area outside the tourist support of Bodhgaya.

I went on a mobile health clinic one day which was really intense. I knew it would be, but still couldn't prepare for the experience. In a about 5 hours we treated 126 patients, almost all of whom clearly needed some help. There were two procedures done, which made me feel a combination of relief i was born in the richest country in the world and a huge amount of guilt about that fact. It just kept running through my head how this villiage has a clinic once a week and 126 new patients came in one week. The villiage only has this service becuase it is near bodhgaya. There are millions in Bihar (the state i am in) who do not have any services at all. If you've watched the news, you might have seen that flooding has displaced like 10 million in norther Bihar.

Jason, the American researched I have mentioned before was off traveling for a month. But when he came back a really cool scene started. Me and him and other tourists had about a week long series of conversations that were just really amazing. The type that make like Wesleyan so much. Very intellectual but unpretentious and about everything from faith to global hegemony to activism. One night Jason treated me to a going away party at this good restaurant. The scene was 8 people sitting around a circular table in a bungalow type hut where there were about 5 different countries represented all talking about world politics. These conversations have made me a little more interested in academics again.

The two weeks that were the most difficult for me were also the most profound spiritually that i have had in a very long time. Irs so hard to describe that sort of thing. The closest way i can describe it is that many things i had heard or read about before I actually experienced, at least a little bit. I would be sitting and have a short instant where i just knew thats it.

Well. I am just having to edit part of this post now because I forgot about something. The entire reason I actually came to Bodhgaya, teaching English. i guess that my forgetting to mention it may something about the experience. Teaching was incredibly difficult for me. Almost every day was a challenge. Not that this made it a bad experience, it was just a very hard one, and I was very happy to leave. But there were many highlights as well. I got to know some of the kids very well and had some very good days of teaching. I spent time at another school part time and that was much easier and enjoyable. I am so glad that I did it, especially because it brought me to a great place, put me into a really interesting and complex field of work and l earned a lot about teaching and what its like to ave a real job. But, it also would have been nice if it were easier. absolutely no regrets, but certainly a different choice in the future.

So, now I'm off to a Tibetan 10 mediation course in Kathmandu, which I think will be really cool. i want to check out all the different types of Buddhism I can. Now I am actually in Varanasi. Its fun, new and challenging to be traveling again. But i am enjoying it and interested to see where it takes me. I think I'll have to leave Varanasi for next time, too much to say.

I'm not going to be able to update this thing as much as I had thought, probably more like every 3 or 4 weeks. But I do love hearing from you. Enjoy the end of the summer. Reid

At home but so far away

Wow! I have been in India over a month now. It feels like home, but a very strange home.

My life has become much more normal in the last three weeks since I wrote last. Week 2 was still pretty hard for me, but since then I have adjusted to life in a new place, alone, and my experience is much less of a roller coaster.



I have a pretty regular routine of teaching, preparing for the next day, talking with my freinds, meditating, eating and doing other random stuff. In a sense, it is anormal life becuase i havea ruitine, but in another sense this makes it even more strange becuase it is like i have a normal life that is comeplty different than i had ever though life could be. I don't nkow if that made sense. I've got my pb and banana for breakfast at 5 AM, my 20 cent lunch at the dirtiest little place in the world (which is so cool, the chai comes from the buffolo they;ve got out back) and dinner meeting with freinds or tourists at the main restrouant.



Here have been some highlights. I met an american named Jason who is staying here for over a year doing research on NGO's. He has been great to talk to and hang out with. I have so many things to think about, we have been talking about what is development. WHat is teaching english doing for these kids? Are these schools giving an education or a schooling? Is education a universal right? It is really interesting stuff. Now he's off to varanasi for a while so i've gotten to use his bike, which is awesome. biking in india islike a video game/ war movie.



Ron is an australian who is my best bud, i havea lot of chai with him and talk about politics. rahul is this crazy indian man who always talks about dharma but is just kindof off most of the time. he read my hands on day and asked if i had an older sister. i said no. he said, oh, your mother is still alive. but he's fun, and a good help with my teaching. numal is the cook at the monestry and he is a classic cook. big, drinks a lot, gives me lots of food and is really loud. i've gotten to learn a little about burmese cooking and end up getting a lot of free food. mangoes fall from the trees in the courtyard, how sweet is that. i just bought a soccer ball and had an intense gave of pickup today with numal and some of the monks and workers. it was pretty good, its a lot more fun when there is an ant hill in teh middle of the goal and there are cows for obstacles.

yogi mike arived about a week ago. he is pretty sweet. i go sit next to him while he burns incense and we talk about the nature of awareness. but, its pretty genuine stuff. he's all about finding a good teacher (a heavy). i am thinking my next step wheni leave the bodh in a month willbe to find a teacher. but, i've found some spirutual guidance here finally. i met this spanish zen monk who i have been meeting with. i really like talking to someone who knows what they are talking about, it is so much better to ask a question and see that someone has actually experienced the answer. the way i met him was prety sweet too: me, him, and a dutchman were all atthe same table and spanish was the only language we all spoke.



a part from the people I have met I climbed the mountain I mentioned last time. I've decided that a trip to the himalaya must happen, i might have to go big. i spent a weekend at the vipassana center, got sick, and decided that vipassana is not for me anymore. i've been doing some volunteering on the side at this other school run by a crazy french lady. THe kids do karate and scuplture but i'm pretty sure they don't get all that much of an education. but, they are really fun to hangout with. we talk about marriage a lot, i get massages, and we play cricket (either i'm good, or they play easy on me). oh yeah, i met this really awesome tibetan monk underneath the bodhi tree. he told me all about how he had been given a dali lama photo, goten arrested and beaten, just escaped from a jail in tibet and made is way across the border six months ago. as we were talking the monsoon just started pouring, but we just kept talking. i'm not sure if he's a total hoax or not, but either way he's the man.

so many things so say, but this is probably already to long. if you remember any good games for elemntry school kids, let me know. teaching is definately the low point of my life here. it is just really hard. i've decided that it is more important to inspire teh kids and theach them compasiiion than to teach them english, but i think this hasmade my job even harder than before. the school is by farthe low point, but i think it will make more sense to me eventually.

its really good here. let me know what your up to and if you've got any connections in the subcontinent, send them on.

om shanti shanti shanti
reid

The first week +

Hello! I have been in India for a little over a week now. It is a very different place to say the least.



I arrived in Delhi and got scammed right off the bat in almost the exact way the guidebook told me to avoid. The taxi took me to a really expensive but horrible hotel that was not anywhere near where I wanted to go. Of course, I had no idea where i should have been going, so I didn

't do anything about it. The next day however, the hotel gave me a free ride to the "tourist office." Luckily, i love maps so i knew we weren't in the right place and I essentially got a free ride to almost where I wanted to go. I just left the rickshaw in the dust. I didn't stay long in Delhi, maybe 12 hours. But is very good to open my eyes to the craziness of India. THe main bazar was jampacked with locals, tourists and lots of people asking me for money. When I went to get my train ticket, there was a special office just for tourists and it was like heaven. The 12 hours really made me need some western comfort.



In the afternoon, I got on the sleeptrain and rode it for 16 hours to Gaya. Trains are really fun in India. There is a huge mix of people from rich businessmen to sadhus (holymen who leave thier family after they get old to search for enlightenment) to beggars. The latter two don't really have to pay, which is pretty cool. Riding out of Delhi was a very powerful expeiance. For at least an hour all I saw was a slum city. The poverty was unlike anything i have ever seen. Tiny houses, people washing in horribly green and trash filled water, but most of all, just so many people and all so poor. Eventually I made to Gaya, where I was met by Powan, Ranjan and Sanjay, who are the owners of the school I am working at.



The greated me by each one of them giving me a bueatiful marigold garland. I was pretty suprsied to see that they were only around 20 and none of them speak english as well as I had thought they would. THey took my to thier house and immediately told me to "take seat." EVeryone tells me to do this, i gues it is respectful to have me sit, but a lot of times i think its akward. I got to have my first chai and biskuts and spent most of the day driving around on a motorcycle delivering wedding invitations. This was really fun. THe roads are really craxy in india. THere are no lanes so the streets are like a battle zone. everyone just honks all the time and i don't know how there are not more accidents.



After spending the night in the house and not really having a place to sleep, I decided to stay in the Bhurmese monestary, where I have been very happy. I am meditating two hours everyday, sometimes in the meditation room where i stay and sometimes underneath the bodhi tree. That is pretty amazing. Without question there is an energy there, be it created by all the visitors or by teh place itself. Bodhgaya is prettymuch empty of tourists, which is a little disaponiting because I don't have too many people to talk to. But also, without the tourists i get to see the town in a much more indian way. I also stick out like a sore thumb so i am constatnly being hounded by people who say "hello freind", talk to me for 10 minutes and then ask me for money, to see their shool or to buy them books (which they would sell back for money). People are increadibly freindly, but i can't trust them at all. So meeting good people is a slow proces of weeding through many options. I have met two english speakers who stay here year round and have met a couple indians i think i can create a good relationship with.Being alone is strange and difficult but also rewarding. i am defintely lonely at times, but I think that is ok. all part of the experience. I am having one on one hindi lessons. I am very excited about this because i will be able to see more of what is really going on beyond the overlyfreindly english speakers.



I have been working at my school which has been very fun. The indian children are great, and teaching is fun: i like reading to the kids and acting things out. However, the school I am working at is defniately corrupt. I have learned that there are 800 NGO's in Bodhgaya, mnost of which just use a school, medical center, etc as a way to get sponsers from rich countries. It is a little strange spending time with my hosts when i know they run a corrupt school, but they are nice guys and I enjoy hanging out with them.



Most of my first week as been spent exploring Bodhgaya meeting people and doing things with Powan's sister's wedding. This has been sweet. One day I wnet to the groms house and watched Tilak, where people make offereings to the groom. I participated in this too and got put some sort of leaf on the grroms forehead. I'm sure i messed it up somehow. AFter the ceremony I ate a delicisou indian dinner sreved on banana leaf. BEfore we headed home, we went to a freinds house and secrectly drank a bottle of "For DEfense Personelle Only" whiskey. I made sure to ride home with the one kid who didn't drink. Another day of the wedding was for the bride. The first day was the man day and this way was the woman day. People blessed the bride with colored water, which turned into a huge colored water battle. BY the end, it looked like the whole room and everyperson in it had been tiedied. Prety crazy stuff. LAst night was the big party, which started with an hour long parade with a marching band, generator, lights and dancing. the envening finished with differ for about 300 people all sitting on a roof. the last night of the wedding, everyone spends the night and then gets up at 4 for the ceremony. that was very early. i gave a saree for a gift.

There is a hill that i can see in the distance, so i think i will try to climb that tomorrow.
Hopefully pitcures to come soon.