Finally an update from India!

Hello dear friends and family!
Greetings to you from the banks of the mighty Ganges River in Rishikesh, India! Finally, I am getting around to sending out another update. If you missed the first one, I apologize, and please feel free to forward this on to anyone else who might be curious as to my whereabouts! Maybe one of these days I'll get around to the blog as well... and some pictures. This internet place I'm in today has air conditioning, and let me tell you, it's heating up over here, so that AC is pretty sweet.
So I'm approaching one month of being gone and have definitely had my up days and down days. Was feeling pretty homesick and questioning a lot the last few days, so I waited til I was a bit happier before sending out an email to everyone, so you wouldn't think I was miserable. Feeling much better today though, I think in part cause I am getting settled finally into the guest house I moved to, and also found a great GREAT yoga class that I went to this morning at 6am (I know - most of you know me as NOT being a morning person, but it was well worth getting up before sunrise for this class) I will likely be going every morning. It gets dark here by 7 and really dark by 8, and at that point I don't want to be walking around alone at night anyways, so I'm usually asleep by 10. There is no alcohol in this town since it's considered a holy pilgrimage place (no meat or eggs for that matter either!), so I'm not tempted to go out for a beer or steak dinner (ha ha ha), so it's easy to be in bed early, and my new guest house is way quieter than the ashram I was in for 3 weeks (ironic, huh?). I'll back up a bit since the last email.
The yoga fest. at Parmarth Ashram was GREAT - can't remember where I left off. It was just really really noisy in that area and a family of 80 or so Indians moved into the building I was staying in for a big spiritual retreat/reunion. It was absolutely amazing how loud things got around there - brothers yelling up and down the hall to each other at all hours of the night and morning, conversations outside my bedroom door (at all hours of the night or morning) and the worst part, you could hear every bodily function that went on in the rooms, and there is this clearing of the throat that is done constantly in India, maybe because of the pollution, I don't know, but every 5 minutes you'd hear someone making the most disgusting sounds imaginable. There was one night in my room that I just couldn't stop laughing at it all, because even my earplugs couldn't help me get to sleep. Anyways, it's all part of the experience. I hope you are laughing right now too. I had planned on staying at the ashram longer, for another retreat, but I wasn't really into the yoga being taught, though I loved the vedic chanting and could do that every day. Still, I was ready for a change of scenery and sounds and decided to find a place over on the other side of town, closer to the orphanage where I am doing some volunteer time. This part of town is much mellower - maybe a 40 min. walk to the area I was originally staying in, so I haven't been back over to my old stomping grounds for chocolate banana samosas, but will soon, I'm sure. With the help of the woman, Prabha, who runs the orphanage, I found a room in a little guest house just a 2 minute walk from the orphanage. It is owned by the sweetest family and one of their children goes to the school at Ramana's (the place I'm volunteering). Check out the website if you haven't - just google Ramana's Garden, Rishikesh, India and you should find it and you can read about it. An absolutely amazing place. My guesthouse has a little yard with some cows that I walk by every day, some gardens and on the second floor they rent out 8 or so rooms. I got lucky and have one with my own bathroom :-) My neighbors on one side (for now at least) are a retired couple from Israel (Alisa and Dan) and on the other side is a German man named Frank. So many foreigners - this town is crawling with people on spiritual quests - it begs the question (which I have asked myself almost every day), why are so many of us searching for something half way around the world when it is already within us? Is it just the challenge we are drawn to? The exoticness and excitement and newness of it all? I do wonder - so many seekers...
Anyways, the Israli woman, Alisa, said she has been going to pranayama classes now for a good week and hasn't had to take her insulin since she started (she's diabetic) Quite incredible what yoga and pranayama and meditation can do for us - I am continuously amazed by it all. Another friend, Cindy, who I met at the yoga fest. moved over to this side of town as well, in order to be closer to the orphanage. She found a wonderful new ashram just a 5 min. walk from me and that's where I went to yoga this morning. I stayed for breakfast and then a fire puja ceremony that happens every morning as well, where you chant and sing and do prayers. It was quite lovely and I plan on going every morning now. It is amazing what doing some yoga, pranayama and chanting can do for one's mood - I feel like a different person today from yesterday.
At the orphanage I have a handful of kids who I am teaching one on one guitar lessons to. Just a half hour each - they are some of the older kids at the orphanage and they catch on SO quickly. I told them the string names one day and the next day they had them memorized, as well as the 3 chords I showed them! Unfortunately there is only one guitar there at the school and it is sorta trashed. I want to buy a few guitars to donate to the school and have them stay locked in the house mother's room so that the younger kids don't break them. If any of you reading this are interested in donating to a guitar fund for the school, please let me know. I am thinking of going into Dehradun next week to see if I can find any to buy (there are none in Rishikesh) and hoping that I can get them for around $50 each, but am not sure yet. I've taught them some folk songs that we sing in the evening kirtan/satsang. They already know some that other foreigners have taught them, and they know many many chants and mantras. Get this, they have the entire hanuman chalisa memorized and sing it at the end of kirtan every evening - I was floored the first time I heard them sing it. So Mataji (the woman who looks after the 70 kids who live there) gave me a little book with it written in it. Maybe after a month of chanting it with them I'll get it down as well, but it's highly unlikely. Seems more like a year long project!
I started harmonium lessons this week, but after 3 lessons I fired my teacher. I really want to learn the instrument (though it's just like a piano as far as the keyboard goes) and learn some songs to play on it. The teacher I found is an older Indian man and he has lots of students (looks like 90% western) - tabla, flute, sitar, voice, harmonium. The lesson is an hour long and is 300 rupees (Mataji said that he shouldn't be charging more than 100, so he's already taking all us westerners for a ride on that one!) But he schedules a couple people at a time in different rooms, so only spends part of the hour with you (and is hanging out on the roof looking at the river for part of it as well). He wants his students to come every day and I have no harmonium to practice on, so my one hour lesson is basically practicing scales (which I've already done plenty of in my life) and he'll pop his head in for 5 minutes and give me a different exercise. I told him I could not pay 300 rupees to sit and practice for an hour a day and he said that's how he makes his living so I told him I would not be back today (that was yesterday). So, so much for my harmonium lessons! I bought a book and realized I can easily figure it out myself... Just for perspective, I am only paying 200 rupees a night at the guesthouse and pay 100 for a 2 hour amazing yoga class, so that was highway robbery as far as I am concerned...
Still haven't gone for a swim in the Ganges - I get mixed reports on the cleanliness of it. Yesterday I went for a long walk with Cindy and Frank down to the river and along the beautiful sandy/rocky shore. We came upon a group of Indians burning garbage next to the river (everything is done in the river, you name it, it's done). The non-burnables like metal and plastic were just tossed into the water. We were just 50 feet down the river from them as I watched their garbage float by. Someone said they saw a body float by one day as well. Hmmmmmm, so I don't know about swimming. I thought the Willamette was bad. But it is also very very beautiful - Rishikesh is literally right where the foothills start to flatten out into the plains, so there is some nice rafting that is done up river and gorgeous scenery. I'd like to do a rafting trip - you see rafters coming into town every day and it looks like a blast. On our walk yesterday we were joined by the sweetest dog - she followed us for a really long ways, made a little bed in the sand, cleaned off in the river, let us rub her belly, posed for some pictures, even started trying to play some. She sorta looked like a small Luce, so you can imagine I was quite thrilled to have dog company on the way. But when we were getting close to town again, she got afraid and wouldn't go by this other dog on the trail, so we went a different way and tried to cut through the orphanage with her, but she was freaked out by all the kids and commotion and wouldn't come in there either, so we lost her. I hope she found her way home - I've been thinking about her ever since. There are so so many feral dogs here, and most aren't very interactive, so this was a unique one for sure.
I'm not sure if I'll stay here in Rishikesh for the next 6 weeks or what. Definitely for the next 3 or 4 so that I can get at least the guitar basics taught to some of the kiddos and a teacher or two. I feel a pull to head north - I've talked to quite a few people who've headed up to Dharmsala and McLeod Ganj, way up north in the Himalayas and it sounds just beautiful. One long ass train/bus ride and I think I'd like to go with someone else, so I may just save it til Dad gets here. Seems like people are coming and going every day and I am always meeting new people here, so who knows what next week will bring! Maybe a new harmonium teacher and an instrument to practice on!
I could go on and on, describing this amazing country, but will sign off for now. I'll try and do better at keeping you all updated, and maybe I'll just paste the contents of this email onto my blog, so everyone doesn't think I'm still going around in cirles in the Singapore airport!
Appreciate the clean water you can drink from the tap and air that you get to breathe every day, the fact that our garbage and sewage doesn't get dumped into the river (at least most of it) and all the amazing ways we are blessed. And ESPECIALLY the clean organic greens that you can eat raw right from the garden or farmers market. I haven't had a raw salad since the first week when I got Delhi Belly for 3 days and thought I was gonna die. And if you're not already going to yoga on a regular basis, get off your butts and start going - it will change your life, I swear!!!
Okay, enough for now. Love to everyone and if I could send a little bit of this heat and sunshine your way, believe me, I would!
OXOXXO Laura

Singapore Airport! Feb. 23

Hi everyone!
This is my first blog from out of the country. Man oh man, that was a long plane ride! Eugene to San Fran to Singapore and now I'm getting ready to board the plane to Delhi where the real insanity begins, so I'm told! Connection is about to die, so I'll send more updates when there is more to tell. So far so good - nice napping and shower place in the airport :-)
Love, Laura

Jan. 27, 2008 Snow Day

This is what I was doing instead of getting ready for my trip to India. Sweetie the Snow Woman was built in front of Sweet Life Bakery in Eugene, OR by me, my friend Scott, and dog Lucinda. I'm just 3 1/2 weeks away from blast off and decided to go ahead and set up a blog so those interested could see what sort of craziness I was up to over on the other side of the world. More to come! - Laura