Monday, November 28, 2011

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Dinner
One of the adorable hand turkeys last week. By Richel, she means Rachel
After the church service at Pulard Church
TTC students and me in my Sari!

Monday, November 21, 2011

Mysore and More!



    Last Week I embarked on a journey with the 1oth standard classes at Buchanan. We went on tour to Mysore in two buses fully packed with students. There was one English Medium bus and one Malayalam Medium bus (“medium” means which language they focus most on in school) and I sat on the Malayalam Medium bus. I sat next to two girls, Adira and Shruti for the entire trip. They were very good companions to me while I was on the bus and off. So we sat down, ready to drive all night and some of the next day to get to our destinations. Parents crowded around the bus yelling in the windows telling the girls to stay safe. We pulled away and not 2 minutes down the road, the lights suddenly went off and the music was pulsing-in-your-chest loud. The girls all started dancing in the center aisle. The next time I looked up there was a LASER SHOW in the bus, I kid you not. The girls dragged me on to the dance floor and I danced with them like no one was watching. Dancing with them amidst the lasers and the far too loud music that first night is a feeling I will not soon forget.  The original excitement of the music (the first pop music I have heard since being here in India) faded over time. At 6 a.m. (maybe earlier) the music was bumping again. I tried to stay enthusiastic, but given my awful sleep in the bus, I was just plain exhausted.

Monday, November 14, 2011

The Pray-time in the Playtime


 I woke up Saturday morning with tons of energy. Breakfast helped me maintain an even happier attitude because it was one of my favorites, chopati and potato curry. Chopati is a flat bread very similar to a tortilla made with wheat flour, water and oil and cooked on a flat surface. The potato curry is really the best part of this breakfast because it contains all of the things I love about food: heaps of garlic, onions cooked until they are almost mush, mustard seed and small pieces of potato throughout. The resulting curry actually reminds me of a hearty, traditional German potato salad. I then asked Mariamma Kochamma if I could pray at evening prayer and she said yes!  So, while I lingered in heaven post breakfast, I actually sat and re-read one of my books called Praying in Color. The author outlines a way to pray with colored pencils and markers that really speaks to me. It is especially relevant for me to resort to this child like stage of “coloring” as I teach and learn from kids.  I did a drawing in my journal based on a verse from John Phillip Newell’s new book of prayers and then went next door to the children’s hostel.
 I brought a set of “I Spy” cards and played a memory game with the girls for hours. I forgot how fun it is to sit and play a game that really makes people of all ages think. At the end of each game when we counted up our pairs, none of the girls pointed to the person with the least amount of cards and called them a “loser.” One of us came in first place, one came in second, and the rest were in last place. There is such a huge difference between those two concepts, and they recognized that. It was such an amazingly inclusive philosophy, essentially pointing out that there are no winners and losers. We all deserved credit for playing the whole game. We took a break for lunch and when we came back there was a bit of a distraction from game playing. We had a snake in the bushes. The girls reactions were priceless and hilarious. They took turns shouting “pamba, pamba, pamba” (the Malayalam word for snake) and pointing so I could see it hiding in the middle of the bush. I did see it, but it didn’t seem that scary all hidden and tucked away. It looked like it was kind of….happy just relaxing in its natural habitat. The girls however, wanted to kill it. Reshmi and Anu were the funniest. Reshmi stood on the other side of the bush throwing handfuls of dirt toward the snake. Once it was out of sight Anu took matters into her own hands. She grabbed a long broom handle and started poking in the bush. I tried to tell them that these actions were probably not a good idea and may make the snake angrier, but most of it was lost amidst the screams and my broken efforts at Malayalam. When I said “Snakes isch ta mayi,”the girls looked at me like I was crazy because I had just said “I like snakes” in Malayalam. It was my feeble attempt to get them to back away from a bush that contained unknown danger. We also had a visit from a millipede that Anu could and did kill. We then had a funeral for the millipede and Kunya, Anu’s sister, acted as the wife in mourning. She pulled her hair and fake cried and placed flowers on the milipede’s grave. We were all rolling with laughter. We danced and sang and told the older girls later of the snake and the defeat of the millipede. I love spending time with the younger girls because I think at heart I am approximately 12 years old.
Later I went over to K.N.H. Hostel. I would like to correct one of my earlier blog posts because the hostel is actually financed by donors in (once again) Germany. There are actually K.N.H. Hostels all around Kerala. I went over and spoke with Jolly the child care coordinator about what day is convenient for me to visit and play with the girls. I noticed that in the corner of her office there was a nice computer with a wireless internet connection that was turned off and looked as if it hadn’t been touched in forever. I asked her about it and she said she can never remember how to do anything on the computer. That is one thing that I told her I could easily teach her. She was grateful and said we should work out a time to practice her skills. We went outside with the girls and played a name game, freeze tag and Badminton. Fun fact: Badminton is called “Shuttle-butt” here. I have no idea why, but occasionally I let out an immature giggle when it is mentioned. I hadn’t exercised or been out in the sun for that long since I got sick with my infection, so I went back to my room to drink water and relax. I came back to find the girls at my hostel pulling weeds and singing songs across the yard to each other. Not two minutes after my return, I heard a knock on my door. It was Joshmi and Lindu, two girls I have really bonded with since they are second year students and live on the bottom floor of the hostel with me. Joshmi said she needed to go to Aksa’s Studio and that they needed my help finding materials for teaching to put on a CD. I jumped at the first opportunity I have had to go anywhere outside the hostel with the students. Since it was a necessity for their school work it also didn’t come across as playing favorites, which I am thankful for.
We walked to Aksa’s and found that the website they were given didn’t work. I worked the keyboard as they told me what they needed for their lessons on animals. They needed photos of omnivores, lizards, horned animals fighting, carnivores eating their pray and the life cycle of a frog to name a few. They laughed at some of my squeamish reactions to animals brutally devouring other animals and oohed and ahhed at the results of each image search on Google. Each time a page came up they said they wanted all of the photos. We copied around 110 photos onto their CDs, so I almost fully obeyed their request. I then showed them my Facebook page and some photos of my time here in Kerala, family and friends. Lindu then shyly asked me if I could search a movie she wanted to see. She tended to focus on one very popular Tamil actor named Surya. She gasped, fanned herself and told me that he was her favorite and that she thought of him as a brother. I couldn’t help but love seeing this girl all wrapped up in her idol. It was so endearing to think that girls all across the world react to their favorite movie star this way. Josh Hartnett used to get a similar response from me when I was her age. I told her I could take some of his pictures on my USB drive if she wanted, and she jumped at the idea. We left happily and parted ways because K.N.H. had invited me to be part of their evening prayer.
At K.N.H. the girls used tambourines and drums to sing two Malayalam songs. We read Bible verses and I taught the girls “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”. I prayed and ran back to the Buchanan Hostel to make it to my scheduled evening prayer. I ran in a little late, but only into the first song. Kochamma thanked me for my prayer and then asked in her very small amount of English, “You pray for me?” I responded that I did every night, which is true.
It was a day truly soaked with prayer. I am so thankful that God sent me the gift of a day filled with rewarding worship. Maybe God is telling me that I am worshiping every day without even knowing it. I feel so blessed to be here sweating, singing, laughing, praying and playing. Tuesday until Thursday night I am traveling to another state with the 10th grade class. We are going on the class tour to the city of Mysore in the neighboring state of Karnataka. I am told it has nice gardens and a beautiful palace. I am excited to experience something new with this wonderful community. Who knows what thrills await on the trip! I am ready for another adventure in playtime.
“Play is honest. You can’t play unless you are yourself. When we pray, God wants us to be ourselves, not some image of ourselves, but the real thing. Playfulness can take us to a place of honesty and allow us to temporarily drop our external persona.” – from Praying in Color by Sybil MacBeth

Friday, November 11, 2011

Home


Meditating. It is truly an art. I don’t know how many times I have attempted to quiet my mind and just meditate on a saying, word or thought. It is difficult to concentrate in a place constantly buzzing with noise and life. The main places that I have recently enjoyed meditating sound a little funny, but I will explain. I meditate on the roof of my hostel in the early morning and in auto rickshaws.
The roof of the hostel is a big open area with a few clothes lines for drying, partially covered in case of rain. Being up there alone makes me feel centered. I feel as if I am surveying the land I now belong to kind of like Simba in the Lion King, except I am not a ruler of the land. The land is my ruler in many ways, and this fact helps me to quiet my mind and accept being part of this place. The people of this land almost worship it with their devotion. Connecting to it is the only way I can truly honor my time in “God’s Own Country.” I sit with my thoughts, do yoga, and sometimes dance up there when I feel like it. It is sacred ground. Sometimes I am “being still” and acknowledging God’s presence, and sometimes I get so happy I am forced to move. I feel so at peace when I celebrate nature in this way.
My meditation in the auto rickshaw is kind of the opposite of my rooftop meditation practice. An auto rickshaw is public transportation, like a taxi. It consists of a motorcycle- type driving mechanism in the front area where the driver sits. Fondly referred to as an “auto,” the vehicle has three wheels and is generally covered in the front and back complete with a small windshield, but open on the sides. The back is normally a long, fairly comfortable bench type seat. On days when buses are pretty chaotic sometimes it is nice to take an auto. I also take one every Thursday to my classes at Pakil and CMS school. I have noticed that there is just something about wind in my face that makes me want to pray. Bouncing along in an auto with wind blowing in at all sides, horns honking, and the smells of the road assaulting my senses, I meditate. I practice quieting my mind amongst these hectic surroundings. As I breathe I feel more and more patient. I forget my control-freak ways and simply trust that the driver will get me where I need to go. In the auto I also use a prayer that I learned from my Vocational Discernment Journal. It is called the “Here I am” prayer. You start by simply taking in your surroundings and saying “here I am in ________.” In this case I would say “here I am in an auto rickshaw.” As you get used to your environment you change the saying to simply “here I am,” declaring your presence in the space. You can repeat that as many times as you need to feel secure in this announcement. The final part of the prayer is a really cool conclusion that never ceases to amaze me. As I sit in the back of an auto saying, “here I am in the presence of God,” I feel like a part of something big. It is great to realize that nothing is untouched by God, and it reminds me to stay focused on the fact that no matter what, I am never out of God’s presence.
I also have started saying something new as I ride along. Thursday I quietly whispered “this is my home.” It just kind of came naturally as I took the familiar road to Pakil school. It felt right and true. I declared it many times as I passed workers and homes and trees. The wind luckily carries my strange whispering away from the driver and into the atmosphere. Even if the breeze didn’t hide my voice I think I would still talk in the back of an auto. I am that crazy, crunchy, hippie girl talking to herself again. That is alright with me.
Later that day at CMS Upper Primary school, I talked freely with the English teacher about a gift of mine that I really miss using. Singing. Singing is honestly another form of meditation for me and without having a choir to belong to, I feel like a teammate without a team. Sunitha, the English teacher said on the spot that there were two teachers at CMS who belonged to local choirs. She introduced me to both of them and they said both choirs would have no problem helping me along with Manglish (Malayalam words translated to English letters for easy pronunciation) to learn the songs! I am so thankful for the opportunity to praise God through music. It is an exciting development that will make me feel even more at home here.

“The one thing in the world of value is the active soul.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

First Year students in the hostel, my home.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Recovery


        November has already proven to be an interesting month, but for now I would like to revisit the end of October. I haven’t documented YAV retreat number 2 on my blog, so here is a quick review of some of the events. Wednesday October 26th was Diwali, so I left early Wednesday morning to visit Aluva. Nicole, Ian, and Claudia joined us on Thursday and we began Retreat number 2. Thursday, I searched and searched for Parks and Recreation on the Internet, and sure enough, I got to watch 3 whole episodes of my favorite show! On Friday our day was fairly….intense. We spent almost all day long sharing. First we shared reflections in Bible Study, then opened up to the larger things we have been encountering this past month. We shared all of the wonderful things about our sites, and also openly shared about our hardships. It was also Betty Kochamma’s Birthday on Friday! We had a nice celebration for her with friends and family, great food and great music. Binu played some really some of her favorite songs. Achen fed her cake. It was a really beautiful display of family love. I am so grateful that we are now a part of their family as well. On Saturday we went to a mall. Yes….a mall. We all found a few goodies from a bookstore very similar to Barnes and Noble. I spoiled myself with a few movies! On Saturday night I skyped with my family and I was reminded of how lucky I am to be blessed with their awesomeness.  On Sunday October 30th we went to church, had some lunch, and boarded a train back to Kottayam. I was sad to leave the little oasis that is the Aluva house. It was a great time for a little bit of pampering, comfort, and joy. I rested that night ready for school the next day and excited to be back at Buchanan.
 October 31st was full of a few scary things as usual, but not the kind with trick-or-treating. I woke up with a high fever. Luckily on the Buchanan campus we have a “hospital.” I put it in quotes not because it is a fake hospital or is unworthy of the title hospital, I would just like for all of you readers to adjust your idea of what a hospital is for a moment. In the U.S. people in hospitals are very sick, constantly monitored, and hooked up to all kinds of machinery charting the progress of the gravely ill patient. You probably recall your last trip to an American hospital, and when you read the word here, you may be projecting that experience ever so slightly into my explanation of the medical system. Please don’t. Stay Calm. In Kerala hospitals are for the sick, of course, but they are for all kinds of illnesses. Every illness is welcome in a hospital because each hospital has specialists who can cater to different sicknesses. So the hospital doubles as a doctor’s office for many illnesses that in the U.S. we would normally just get a pill for and go home. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I will continue my story.
The Doctor at the Buchanan hospital didn’t really know what to do with my unrelated symptoms of nausea, but he did see that I had a severe ear infection in both ears. If this diagnosis sounds familiar to you close friends and family, you are right! I had an ear infection in August after Stony Point before I came to India. So, with some advice from the teachers, I went to Mandiram Hospital. They told me I might be there for up to three days so I packed some clothes and hoped for the best. Nicole lives and works at Mandiram Society which is part of the hospital’s institution. Naturally, I gave her a call. She was sick too and her symptoms were eerily similar to mine, so we were going to be admitted to the hospital together. We were both suffering from dehydration, so we were treated for that. The ENT titled my illness a “chronic ear infection” since it hadn’t fully healed since August, and started me on Antibiotics right away. Nicole and I were right next door to each other in the M.Ward. It was a place of rest that looked very different than an Amercian hospital, but not at all bad different. There were no wires hooking up to complex machines, no bed that moved up and down with the touch of a button, and no TV. The room included a bed, an extra bed for family, and a bathroom attached to the side. My window overlooked the garden, a cleaning service came daily to keep things nice, and our food was taken care of by Mandiram Society. We were monitored very often by the nurses, and we also had many visitors from the outside world. Claudia came to visit, Jaimol Kochamma and her husband came twice, and countless members of the Mandiram staff spent their time to come see us. 
Nicole was released on Thursday the 3rd with a good report, and I was released Friday morning with many pills and an order to continue resting. To get back on my feet, I stayed at Mandiram Society until this morning. My days were full of rest, recovery, and really good company. Nicole has been such a blessing to have during these difficult times. We worked through the challenge of being sick and far from home together. We even helped give our families some peace of mind to our greatest abilities.
This illness also helped me to recognize some small opportunities for me. An opportunity to give myself grace for my lack of energy for the past two months, an opportunity to rest and not feel lazy about resting, and an opportunity to change my focus. I became very honest with myself in many of my discussions with Nicole and started getting to the root of some of my problems as a person. I often focus too much on affirmation from external sources to feel self- worth. I am sharing it because I am aware that it is a common issue in people.  I have been lacking in my ability to internally affirm myself for my whole life. In other words, I am very self-critical and my natural internal nitpicking is doing a lot to reverse the effectiveness of my year here.  I have been reaching out to those external sources ever so slightly even here in India, and that is something that needs to stop being about affirmation and more about support.  I am not doing this year to “find myself” but I am doing it so I can focus on what I like about myself here, and in general. A huge part of discernment is internal, and I feel that it is important to become more in touch with the good things about me and how to create affirmation for myself. So here I am, back at Buchanan, ready for another week of school.  The joy of interacting with children is one thing that really helps me be myself. I like me around kids. So until I’m at a point of utter nirvana with self-acceptance, you can find me here among the children, counting the many blessings they provide.Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. They were felt all the way across the world!

“If you hear a voice within you that says, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van Gogh (the first quote I turned to  today in my quote book)