A lack of beggars

One of the differences we'd noticed in Manali was a lack of beggars roaming the streets. In Dharamsala there are days when you can't walk fifteen feet without having someone call out "Sister, hello! Hello! Namaste!" or a woman with a baby on her hip come up, tap you on the shoulder and say "No money, milk. Hungry baby." You feel bad, but you also can't save everyone. Apparently the ones who ask for things other than money, like milk, take these items and sell them back to the shopkeepers. I've heard stories that the children don't even always belong to the women holding them; one of my students told me the beggars go to daycare centers, borrow the kids, and return them along with a share of the day's profits in the evening.

Anyway, we're back in D'sala and that means our reprieve from the begging has come to an end. Manali was also a lot cleaner. Oh well.

Something else I first noticed in Manali but that has also carried over in other areas of the mountainous Himachal Pradesh is a profusion of sweater vests. This makes me happy. Well, their presence in general makes me happy, being a knitter... the fact that they are all made out of what is obviously cheap acrylic makes me sad. There are sheep and goats around here, you'd think they'd have some woolen goodies to wear. I guess all the good stuff gets exported. I've been working on a pair of fingerless gloves lately, because I forgot to bring some from home and I have a feeling I'll need them before too much longer. I'm a little bummed that I'm missing fall at home, but oh well. You can't have everything. I guess I'll just have to settle for spring when it rolls around.

In English teacher news, my students took their Unit 3 test today. This means that they'll probably get through 6 or 7 chapters total by the end of the semester, out of the 9 in the book. I guess that's not too bad, right? According to the veteran teachers, it's next to impossible to actually finish the book in the amount of time we have, so I'm not worrying too much about it. It looks like I'll be spending the evening grading.......

Oh yeah, don't send me any more stuff please. I am kicking around the idea of cutting my trip a little short and coming home earlier than originally planned... I don't want anything showing up here after I've left, because it'll be a real pain to get back! India's great, but I have things I want to work on at home. We also have had a big influx of teachers at Tibet Charity, so it's not like I'll be leaving them hanging if I take off a little early. I was actually the only teacher who was scheduled to be here the entire semester anyway, which I didn't realize until I got here; everyone else signed up for one to three month stints. I guess I'll see how the next couple of weeks go and go from there. Even if nothing changes, I'll be back in Chi-town on December 6th -- less than 2 months away!

Just because I think this post needs a picture:

This one's for my runner friends.

No, I didn't go. I didn't even bring my running shoes to India, which is probably for the best... the roads are really dirty here and I'd be really sad if I ruined the only comfortable pair of shoes I've ever owned (Reebok RealFlex for the win).

Catch you guys later!

Adjectives, yarn-snobbery, and travel plans abound

I arrived at Tibet Charity this morning and was told that I had received "another package." Apparently this is not a common occurrence around here, because even from the very first one, people have seemed surprised that I am receiving mail here. Everything I have gotten so far has been fantastic (you are fantastic!), but I've gotta tell you -- I really don't need any more stuff! I really appreciate everything I've gotten, but it's expensive to send things from the US to India... don't feel obligated. Really. If you still decide to send something, though, we are no longer in serious need of dry-erase paraphernalia. ;)

This morning's package from my dear friend Nicholas included replacement knitting needles (which I was extremely happy to get since the ones I brought from home have sadly been broken.. all they've got in Dharamsala are crappy plastic ones):

No, I can't tolerate plastic knitting needles. Yes, I'm a yarn snob. I am okay with that.

I shared the dark-chocolate-covered almonds that accompanied them with my fellow teachers and the few of my students who were around. It's nice how we have a little community here: it's not unusual for someone to bring a treat to pass around after lunch for all the teachers and staff here. For a while it was dates, sometimes dark chocolate, and once we even wound up with gulab jamun.

Class went well; we wrapped up our lesson on adjectives that we had started on Friday. The book had, inconveniently, given a rule as "in English, an adjective comes before the noun it modifies." On the surface, I don't have a problem with this. The confusing bit came in during the one set of examples where it gave sentences like "That car is expensive." I'm sure we can all agree that in this particular case, the adjective most certainly does not come before the noun it modifies. We wound up spending some time going over how one sentence can be said both as "These boots are new" and "These are new boots," thus shifting around the word order, and other such examples. I decided to give them the homework of writing me a page in which they describe their homes to me. I'm interested to read through their work tomorrow.

This evening, after classes, I accompanied Gill, Marie, and the newly arrived Gustie (from Austria, who has taught here once before) to one of the local travel agencies to see about booking a trip at the end of the month when we have some time off from teaching. I may get some dancing in after all! We then walked up the road to Nick's, one of the better restaurants in town that also has the magic trio of qualities you want in a restaurant: good food, reliable wifi, and a toilet. They also do some damned good dessert. If you're ever in town, make sure to check them out.

We eventually found ourselves in a discussion about the Beijing Olympics and how some of our group couldn't believe they had been allowed to be held there, given the human rights violations that occur regularly in China. The others of us mused that in general, people seem to support the Tibetan cause, but governments are more concerned with keeping economic superpowers like China appeased. Sadly, it's nothing new; it's exactly what happens every day, all over the place. I could go into a rant about it, but I'll spare you. Suffice it to say I've felt like this on a regular basis for the last few years.

So it goes. At least I've escaped the rampant materialism of the West for a little while; I think I'm going to have to get rid of a bunch of my stuff when I get home. If you want to call dibs on any of it feel free to let me know; be advised, however, that I'm not going full-on ascetic or anything, so don't get your hopes up for any of the particularly good stuff (like my PS3 or my sewing machine).

Technical Difficulties

I've got a post all typed up for you about the adventure we had today, but sadly my phone's battery is low and it doesn't seem to want to upload the photos. The USB SD card reader I got hasn't been working lately either, so I need wifi in order to get the pretties off my phone and onto the laptop, and then on to the internets where you can marvel at them.

If anyone is planning on sending a package to me, please include either a couple of washcloths or one of those bath loofah things you can get for $1. I have yet to see either anywhere in Dharamsala, and I miss being able to scrub in the shower (and it's so dirty here it would be really nice to be able to get clean once in a while).

Universal Yoga

I do yoga once in a while. Julie says she has done yoga basically every day for the last year. We are in India. If one is going to do yoga, this is the place to do it.

Yesterday, two weeks in to our stay here, we finally made it to a yoga class. Julie and Kalden found it; a little studio called Universal Yoga that involves following a series of handwritten signs down a few flights of steps and through a dark hallway or two into a seedy-looking residential building. If I had been in the US in a place like this, I would have turned around and gone home. But this is India. It's just the way places look here.

We got there a little early and there was a Vinyasa class still in session. We were asked to remove our shoes outside the studio room, and then we were allowed to sit quietly while the other class finished up, since there was no electricity in the hallway outside and it was a little dark and scary.

The Vinyasa class was taught by a tall, dark yogi who spoke as though he, too, was right from the States. He seemed like a good teacher, but I admit I was a little bit disappointed; where were the Indian yogis? Seriously, I travel to the other side of the globe and attend a yoga class in the country that invented the practice, and I find an American instructor?

Their class ended and the students for the next class started trickling in. Julie and I rolled out our mats near the front of the room; it was a good thing we got there early, because we ran out of space. There must have been about 15 or 20 of us; there were a few people who couldn't fit their mats into the room and didn't get to do the class.

A lanky, dark Indian man who looked to be in his mid-twenties took a spot at one of the mats at the front of the room and started leading us in a warm-up. It took me a few minutes, but I eventually decided that his very unexpected, just-thick-enough-to-be-distracting accent was Scottish. It was... well ok, it was just plain weird. Kind of cool, though, too.

He finished with the warm-up and a different instructor stepped in. Let me tell you, THIS guy was the sort of person you'd expect to find teaching yoga in India. Super thin and all muscle, you could tell he'd been doing this for a while. Periodically he would instruct us to do “comfortable Vinyasa” -- which Julie later informed me means a sequence of moves that involves being up, down, and eventually coming to rest – and he himself would do this elaborate series of handstands and the splits and other such feats of balance and strength, and all I could think was “I'm in India... doing yoga... with Dhalsim from Street Fighter.”

Accurate representation of my first yoga instructor in India.

There were a handful of young (in their 20s) Indians assisting in the class, adjusting us students when we weren't doing an asana quite correctly. They had clearly been doing this for some time, because they nudged just enough to put you in the right spot and then deftly moved down the line to the next students.

At the end of class, during the relaxation period, Dhalsim began chanting in this slow, deliberate way that reverberated through the room and my body, and it really was extremely relaxing. I've never been to a yoga class where that was done before. It became so easy to really let go of the distractions and chill for a while. When we came out of Shavasana, he bowed to each of us in turn and thanked us for coming to class.

I dunno, I thought it was pretty cool. Apparently it's one of the best yoga studios in the area as far as cost/quality ratio.

On our way out we met Rico, one of the many hipster-ish Caucasians in the class. Almost everyone there was western, or at least they looked western. Tattooed, unshaven, and muscular, Rico had the look of a wanderer, which he later confirmed in his answer to my question of where he was from (“I don't even know anymore. I spent a while in Boulder...”). He seemed like a nice enough guy. He and Julie discussed tattoos for a bit, he asked what we were doing in Dharamsala, and he invited us out for dinner. We declined because we already had plans, but told him we'd be at the Green Hotel tomorrow afternoon giving English lessons to our monk friend, Palsang. I'll also be Skyping with my parents and hopefully my sister. We'll see if our new yoga buddy shows up.

In other news, a few of you have been asking what you can send me to make my stay in India more homey. I have begun compiling a list, though I want to stress that NONE OF THIS IS NECESSARY – we are surviving just fine (and more or less comfortably, really) on what we can get here. These are simply things that would be nice to have, should you feel the urge to send them our way:

Protein bars. I like Lara bars, especially the chocolate and/or peanut butter ones (obviously). Some Luna bars are good too (Nutz Over Chocolate... I'm sensing a theme here...). If you find a different brand I'm down for trying something new, please just make sure it doesn't have any high-fructose corn syrup in it. Some of 'em will surprise you, like GeniSoy. :(

Oskri also makes delicious coconut bars... they come in a few different flavors, all of which are great, and look like this:

I would like to have more of these plzthx.

Dried papaya, pineapple, and/or apples. In that order.

Seeds, like pumpkin or sunflower seeds. Nuts are easy to find here but I don't see many seeds. They make for good snackletons.

Licorice. Panda makes “sticks” that would be perfect. Any flavor is welcome, but especially the regular black kind.

Turkey, veg, or ostrich jerky (pepper Ostrim is pretty tasty). I can't remember what the turkey jerky I had on the plane was, but I got it at Fruitful Yield in Joliet and it comes in packs of 2 sticks. I think it was on the top shelf.

Good Q-tips. Here I've only seen the crappy ones that have hardly any cotton on the ends and cause you to always poke the inside if your ears up. You have to take small victories where you can get them.

GameBoy Advance games. I brought my system and three games: the original Super Mario Bros, Phantasy Star Collection (which includes I, II, and III), and Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town. Some Zelda would be cool, or Phantasy Star IV. Or whatever else, we'll take it all. Don't spend a lot of $$ on 'em, though.. only send them if a) they are mine to begin with (lol... this means you, Dad and Lonnie), b) they are yours and you won't play them anyway, or c) you get them super cheap, like on eBay or at a garage sale.

Drawing pencils, chalk pastels, or charcoal. I have access to sketchbooks.

Those small packages of Kleenex, the travel size ones that have like 20 in each thing. I found a 3-pack at Target for a couple bucks (at home... there are no Targets here).

A size 3 circular knitting needle, preferably 40” long but I can work with shorter if I need to. I'm already roughing it so I would even appreciate a 16” metal circular, or DPNs... Lindsey and Casey will probably be the only ones who (might) get the humor in this; it's hilarious, I promise. (Seriously though, wooden 29” or 36” would be awesome. Knit Picks will hook you up.)

Photos of you! Facebook is slow here, so send me a couple of real photos for me to decorate my room. I brought a small collection with me but I can always use more.

Flash cards or greeting cards that have art on them. The Art Institute usually sells sets of them, and I'm sure Amazon does, too. They are good for passing out to students and having them describe the painting/picture/photo to each other.

Books of exercises for ESL classes. I can't remember the titles of any of them off the top of my head (and the internet is too slow to do a good search), but look for ones involving phrases like “5-minute warm-ups.”

A USB stick filled with movies that use simple English. It's good for students to have a variety of sources to listen to. Specifically, I'd like to request Toy Story.

An emergency phone backup battery thing. It holds a charge so when your phone dies right before you need to make a Very Important Call you can hook it up and take care of business, like a boss. This is also by no means necessary, but if you can find one that's not expensive and feel like passing it along I will totally make use of it.

And finally, plastic bags. I cannot stress enough that I do not want a lot of them, but if you have space to fill in a package and want to throw a few intact plastic bags in for cushioning, we could use them for trash bags. Plastic bags were outlawed in Dharamsala (which is awesome for the most part) which means you don't find them floating around in the street, but it also makes it a little tricky finding something to put your garbage in.

My address is:

Magda Ksiazak

c/o Tibet Charity

Below Temple Road

McLeod Ganj, 176219

Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, India

Please only nice presents. :)

Thanks everybody! <3