Namaste, USA.

It's cold. It's clean. It's quiet. Everyone is white, speaking English, and standing far away from each other. There is a garbage truck that drives around streets and picks up everyone's neatly packaged trash, and brings it to somewhere we don't have to see it. The government pays for this service. My room is full of stuff I don't need and never use.

My breakfast cost 250 rupees, which is 17 plates of noodles, which could feed either me for two weeks of dinners or a family for a whole week. Or it could be seven plates of noodles, and a sari. Clothing and dinner for a week. Or it could be two shirts, two pairs of pants, and seven plates of noodles. Clothe two kids and feed 'em for a week.

The average wage for an agricultural worker in (and around) Kolkata is 50 rupees a day. I spent five days of work on three pancakes.

Mmmkay, that's all for now.

But do I have to?

Printed my boarding pass.

I, uh, said goodbye to my girls.

And Dipa.
Who kept waving and turning around and looking back.

No blog post today.

See Facebook for photos of Kalighat and more Apne Aap.

I took a bunch of videos.
They'll get posted later.

Love,
Stephanie

Red-light #2 and some lists.

It's hot here.

So this post might be a blob.

What I Will Not Miss:
1. Men trying to talk to me (or just looking at me) while they pee in public
2. Not being able to sleep because of the heat
3. Having to grope-block men with my elbows seventeen thousand times a day
4. Wasting plastic by purchasing bottled water
5. Muttered comments about my appearance as I walk by men
6. "No problem, no problem" no matter how obvious the problem

What I Will Miss:
Everything else.

Really, everything. The beggars, the nauseating smells, the music, the bartering, the clothing, the colours, the dialects, the languages...and Kalighat. And my girls.

Everyone at Apne Aap keeps asking me when I'm coming back. "Amar ke khub bhalo lagbe, kintu kolkhon jani na." I would like it very much, but I don't know when.
Aaah! I'm considering lots and lots of options about returning, but I know that everything will happen according to God's timing. It'll all work out according to His will, thankfully.

Gosh, my brain is going bingbingbing today.

"There are times when love demands that you break the rules." - Father Patrick

This could be stretched to justify all sorts of ridiculousness, but in general...I'm a fan. It's a quote from this amazing priest at Mother's House. Father Patrick, from Tijuana. He plays guitar. And I'm stealing one of his talks as a devo for campers this summer.

Dear brain, please focus. Love, Stephanie.

Sonagachi. The largest red-light district in all of Kolkata. Hundreds of multi-story brothels. I went with Sam, my wonderful Kiwi roommate. Yet again, why do I have so many close friends named Sam?! We went around five pm, before it got dark, via Metro. We asked for directions at the internet place and at Paragon before leaving, and again in the metro station and no the street on the way there. Everyone had the exact same response - wide eyes, nervous smile, and why you want to go there?" or "what you do there?" or, at one point, "you know what happens in that place, yes?" Indeed, we knew. And that's why we were going. The last person we asked for directions was a police officer, leaning against his bike just a block away from Sonagachi. He walked us part of the way there.

SO WHY WASN'T HE DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT?!

I mean, I know why. Because he's a police officer, which means he gets first pick of the new girls, and in exchange he gets to lean against his bike all day and ignore the twelve-year-olds getting raped and beaten in the buildings next door.

The brothels are huge. The buildings are imposingly tall. And the women are EVERYWHERE. Hundreds, thousands of women, wearing make-up to make their faces lighter, bright red lipstick, dark black eyeliner. And western clothes. Flowy skirts and tight tank tops. Some wear jeans, the same skin-tight type we wear daily in America. And tall shoes. They look disconcertingly like someone in between normal American teenager and little girl playing dress up with mommy's make up. But they're twenty, thirty, forty years old.

And all they do is stand there and pose. Arms crossed, chin raised, waiting. In groups of five, ten, twenty.

And the men! Ugh. Many more men than women. Standing around, joking, trying to appear inconspicuous. Shut up. We all know why you're here. Hsdfjaldsjfkld! I wanted to get them all in a group together and show them videos about the emotional and physical effects of sex trafficking. I wanted to explain to them that women are more than their bodies. I wanted to tell them how their actions affect their wives. I...aaaaah! Sex trafficking will not stop until the buyers receive some sort of consequence for their actions. Apne Aap is working to pass legislation to punish the buyers. Currently, the women get punished for "inappropriate soliciting." How absurd is that? When they've been trafficked at eleven and twelve and forced through "debt" to stay in the brothel. What a ridiculous legal system.

Anyway, Sam wanted to buy sweets ('cause why not stop and buy sweets in the middle of a red-light district?), which ended up being a fantastic idea. It meant that we stood in one place for awhile, which meant that, after walking around a bit, we were called over by some of the women (two wearing saris, one wearing a green flowy tiered skirt and a black tank top and flip-flops - just what I would wear in the summer) the second time we walked by. I had been waiting the entire night to talk with women. Any women. We stood around with them for about fifteen minutes. Don't worry, no one thought we were prostitutes. And we didn't go inside the brothel. And we didn't face the street or pose with them. We talked about how I learned Bangla, our families, marriage, why I'm in Kolkata, their thoughts about America, my nose piercing and why my ears aren't pierced (Indian women love to ask me about my lack of holes in my earlobes) ...we pretty much exhausted my Bangla skills. And omigosh, it was wonderful. We laughed. We joked. They touched my hands and liked my henna. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH so wonderful.

I think two of them might have been pregnant.

And walking back, I realized something. I remember flipping through the YWAM guide post-Mexico, looking at all the ministry options. I remember seeing "prostitute outreach" and thinking "no freaking way." But now...yeah. I would love to do ministry with prostitutes, former prostitutes, children of prostitutes. I don't know if I have the stamina, or if I'm extroverted enough. I know I'm not mature enough, nor do I have the wisdom or the language skills to be effective in India.

But maybe I will eventually?

Okay, that's all.

Time to print photos for my girls.

Oh, also. One more list.

What I didn't expect to bring back from India:
1. An inherent distrust of men who walk by me on the street.
2. A lack of sympathy for many people's problems. After seeing a naked baby covered in flies sleeping on the street, everything else seems so minimal. I'm going to need to pray a lot about this. I know that suffering is relative to the individual. I just need to learn to feel universal empathy. And I'm going to need to ask for patience from my friends and family. Please be gracious to me if I say something like "but it doesn't matter" when you tell me about something that bothers you. I'm sorry in advance.
3. A passion for medical work. Thanks Kalighat.
4. A love of cold showers.
5. Lice. JK, I don't think I have lice.
6. A henna addiction.

Goodnight!

Love and preparation pandas,
Stephanie

Problem.

We all knew this would happen.

Today, the mother of my favourite child in all of India (Dipa) told me that she wants me to adopt Dipa and bring her to America.

For serious.

And I can't, 'cause I'm...
a) 19
b) not married
c) not done with college
d) not planning on settling down with a kid any time soon
e) not fluent in Bangla

However, explaining this to Shoma, Dipa's mother, was not fun.
Especially because, approximately two weeks ago, I posted a picture of Dipa on Facebook and captioned it with "Dipa Sardar. I'm bringing her back to the States with me."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Love and trying-to-not-adopt-a-kid,
Stephanie


(we've been making silly faces at each other since the first day I came to Apne Aap)

Some numbers.

Hmm. A few days. A week? A little more than a week.

Ten days.

Ten days is a long time, right? A week of camp is only five days, and if done right, it can feel pretty close to eternal. Ten days is darn close to forever.

I have this theory called India Age. Before I explain it, let me promise that it's completely flawed for many, many reasons. But I've been thinking about it, so I've decided to type it up.

Okay, so...I'm nineteen. I've met a few travelers here who are nineteen, three eighteen. And I'm friends with a lot of people who are in their mid-late twenties and early thirties. But what's strange is this: I've found that I never believe the people who tell me they're eighteen, nineteen, twenty. They look and act so much older. I tell them they're lying. They're really twenty-seven. And then when I admit to being nineteen, everyone looks at me funny and says "no you're not. Wait, really? You don't act like you're nineteen." And though they assure me that I don't seem nineteen, they can't tell me what age they thought I was.

A few days ago, I stayed up super-late with a guy from Australia, a girl from Holland, and a few other Americans (there haven't been many Americans in Paragon until recently; I don't know why they all decide to come to Kolkata in time for sweltering heat). After being generally giggly and joking about metaphysics (it was a fantastic group), we got to talking about age. Turns out there were two nineteens, one twenty-four, one twenty-five, one twenty-seven, and one twenty-eight. And the guy that I had clicked best with was, in fact, the oldest, and I was the youngest. And I didn't believe Simone when she said she was nineteen, and no one believed me until I showed them the graduation date on my IWU shirt.

Thus, I'm starting to think that maybe technical age, in terms of time spent on earth, isn't something we think about here.

I think we tend to think about age a lot in the States because it's easy to compare people by age. We're all on vaguely the same path - high school, college, job, family (which is a silly set of restrictions, p.s.), so it's easy to think of someone who's older as having generally more life experience. Here? No. We're all in India. We're all experiencing something completely new, and it's as if the moment our planes land our age hits the reset button. And I've noticed that it seems we all interact as if we're exactly the same age, with one clear exception: those who have been here longer are communicated with as if they're older, and the people who have been here for less time act more like worried children or teenagers concerned about their impression on others. Which creates an odd social conundrum for me, because I'm technically the baby of nearly every group, but I'm treated as one of the oldest because I've been here for four months.

Hm.

Second topic involving numbers: the temperature. It's freaking hot. This hot. But it feels hotter. I've never felt this type of heat. It feels thick, like constant damp heaviness pressing in on all sides. It's hard to breathe. It's near impossible to sleep. I've been waking up with migraines from the pressure. I asked Reshma (at Apne Aap) if it gets hotter, and she said yes. Much hotter. The forecast is 100 for the day I leave.

Third topic, then I'm off to Kalighat.

Money. Gosh, money is weird. For the next two weeks, I'm literally living off of two dollars a day, not counting rent. This is quite easy to do here.

Walk to Motherhouse: free.
Breakfast: free.
Bus to Kalighat: 4 rupees.
Tea at Kalighat: free.
Metro to Park Street: 2 rupees.
Lunch at Apne Aap: free.
Auto to Park Street: 6 rupees.
Dinner at Khalsa, Tirupati, wherever: approximately 25 rupees.
Water during the day: 20 rupees.
Internet: 20 rupees.

Actually, that's 52 rupees. Which is a dollar.

And then there's rent, which is 125 rupees a day.

That's around 180 rupees a day, which is about $3.50.

The exchange rate is so screwy.

I'll write more about this later.
About how McDonald's is one of the most expensive restaurants in Kolkata.

It's Kalighat time.

Love and numbers,
Stephanie

Red lights and grapefruit concentrate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHUQht1HRmY&feature=PlayList&p=EE44B22B10AF8653&index=0

Best song ever, seriously.

Okay, this entry might be a bit chaotic.
I think I make that disclaimer every time I post.

I leave Kolkata in two weeks, and I'm having difficulty not thinking about returning to the States. Not because I want to leave, but because I'm so conflicted about it. I'm so excited to see my friends and family in America, but really, you all are the only part of America that I miss. If everyone close to me in America were to come to India, I don't think I'd have a reason ever go back to the States.

Tonight, I went out to dinner with a bunch of Americans, and it was weird. They're really sweet people, and I like them a lot. It was just...being around so much AMERICA was overwhelming. And the American accent annoys me. I'm so used to India - I feel home here. America feels disconcertingly foreign.

Okay, enough of that.

I went to the Red Light District on Tuesday.
It was awful.
The street itself looked like any other slightly out-of-the-way Kolkata street. There were children running around everywhere. Streetside restaurants. Little shops selling water and biscuits and chips. The only difference was the women. There were loads of them, maybe fifty. They waited just outside of the buildings - the younger ones (my age and a little younger) wearing spandex-y skirts in day-glo colours and tight tops, the older ones (30, 40) in saris. The older ones sitting on barrels, boxes, the sidewalk itself. The younger ones literally posing in groups together, arms crossed, seductively staring into nothingness.

The younger girls are hidden inside the brothels. The women are only allowed outside when they've been there for awhile, been beaten, raped, broken in. Inside the brothel are the girls, as young as seven, who have been sold, trafficked from Nepal and smaller Indian villages with the promise of work and money.

We got out of the cab and walked through part of the district.

Looked the women straight in the eyes - namaste, di. They smiled.

What to do? I have no idea.

In the cab on the way back, I asked Sraboni what would happen if we just swiped a girl by cab from the street and took her somewhere else. She said the girl would think we were trying to traffic her to be a prostitute in a different city. It takes years to earn trust, which is why Apne Aap's self-help groups are so committed to work with the same women for so long.

I finally found out why I'm teaching English to my specific group of girls. At their age, they're about to get married. Many of them will be tricked into becoming prostitutes in the name of marriage. So instead of being sold (dowry) into an arranged marriage, their families will accidentally pay a pimp and they'll be relocated to the red-light district.

I'm teaching them English because, if they get trapped, girls with job skills are more motivated to break free and find different work.

This is such a mess.
I hate sex trafficking.

While walking through the district, I talked with Mimi, our guide. I met her back in January on my first day at Apne Aap. That was the day I sat in a room full of women who I didn't realize were prostitutes, and didn't understand anything they said 'cause it was all in Bangla. I hadn't seen her since that day. On Tuesday, Mimi and I spoke. In Bangla. About her family, and the area through which we were walking. Yeah, my grammar sucks, but I still understood a little and could speak a little. Enough that when she asked me in Bangla if I had children (tumi chelemeye ache?), I responded quickly with "ami chelemeye bhalo lagke, kintu ekhon na." I would like children, but not now. Wow. I didn't know a word of that the last time I saw her.

I've been having a few full circle moments like that one. Yesterday, I bought a skirt near New Market. There are a bunch of guys who sell skirts on racks outside the market, big flowy skirts, the kind I like. My second day in Kolkata, I was looking through the skirts, and ended up having a skirt shoved at me and I didn't know what to do so I paid 250 rupees and walked away. And at the time, I tried to speak Bangla, but didn't know what I was doing...it was bad. Thus, I promised myself that I would buy a few skirts before I left, but not buy any until the last two weeks.

Yesterday, I looked through every skirt stall. Weirdly, there were only a few skirts that I wanted to buy. I remember looking through the stalls a few months ago and wanting all of them. This means my sense of clothing has completely morphed without me noticing. And the skirt is orange and purple and pink. Hmmm. Anyway, I settled on one skirt. Bartered it down to 75 rupees, in Bangla. I said no in Bangla. I asked for colours and smaller sizes in Bangla. I said "stop, I know what I'm doing" in Bangla. Everything in Bangla.

And it was so much fun.
Amar ke bangla khub bhalo lagge.
I like Bangla a lot.

Awesome moment at Kalighat earlier this week. There's this woman named Chanda who, a few weeks back, another volunteer told me was "dramatic" and "faking for attention." I believe her. Chanda asks for bedpans when she can walk just fine, and then cries the entire time on the way to and in the bathroom. Argh. Thus, I haven't spent much time with her.

A few days ago, there were a ton of volunteers, so I sat down and massaged Chanda's feet for awhile. I didn't know what else to do, so I asked one of the Sisters. She pointed at Chanda and said "this one needs a lot of love." Wow. The one the other volunteers said to avoid, Sister says needs love. So I massaged her hands, back, legs, feet, for...an hour? A long panda time. And we didn't talk. And when it was tea time, Chanda just stared at me. And I touched her forehead to mine, 'cause that's a blessing. And that was all.

Apne Aap. My girls are amazing. I adore them. In an effort to figure out how well they can distinguish English sounds, I gave them a dictation test. "Industrial engineering" and "grapefruit concentrate." Man, that was a mess. I've decided to ditch the white board and teach them everything via speech.

Uh, Kohinoor is adopting a kid. She's 17, Kohinoor. And she mentioned something about her son, and I was like what? And then she told me that he's six years old, and is learning to read, and his mother is very poor, so she's adopting him. And she's SO EXCITED about it. I asked her if she wanted to get married, and she said no. Gosh. Kohinoor's adopting a kid eleven years younger than her.

I saw a naked baby sleeping on a mat on the sidewalk. His mouth was encrusted with dirt, his stomach was super-bloated and he was covered in flies. I didn't know what to do, so I took a photo.

This + red light district = I'm just starting to understand the ridiculous suffering in Kolkata.

I'm going to try to go to Sonagachi tomorrow. Largest red-light district in India. Place Born Into Brothels was filmed. I've heard there are children dressed in make-up and tight clothes everywhere. Please pray for them.

Okay, this was long.

I'm gonna go back to Paragon now.

Love and three-months-late culture shock,
Stephanie

Quick moment.

Most of this is paraphrasted (paraphrased + pasted) from a message I sent to Josefin.

God did something super this morning. Actually, He did super stuff all day, but this was something I wrote in my journal. I was sitting in a travellers' cafe eating lunch and reading Luke. And because I'm ADD, I was daydreaming while reading the story about the possessed pigs who run off the cliff, thinking about the moment I'm going to see my family in the airport at five AM, and whining in my head about how, even though I really like my family, I also really want to stay in India. And then, while in the midst of my thought stupor, I read this:

"The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying "return home and tell how much God has done for you." So the man went away and told all over the town how much Jesus had done for him." - Luke 8:38-39.

When God rocks our world, He doesn't want us to just follow Him along, kissing His feet. We're supposed to thank God for what He's done, and sing praises and all that good stuff. But there's a difference between sitting around thanking God and being motivated by God's love to go actively love. God wants us to run back to the people who knew us BEFORE He rocked our world, and tell them what He's done. More than that, He wants us to show the people closest to us how He's changed us. The guy in Luke 8 had been chained to a rock, hidden away, because He was possessed and unwanted in society. When he went back to town, it must have been obvious how God had healed him. I've written before about how I still don't know quite how God has changed me in India, and I know it's nowhere close to kicking out a legion of demons. But I'm still excited to run back to the US, to telltelltell about the awesome stuff God has done in India.

Hmmmmmmmm.

Thoughts?

Love and gogogo,
Stephanie

Leprosy and Philippians 4:13

Something amazing happened today. I feel so ridiculously blessed, and I don't know how to thank God enough. When I was first at Kalighat, there was this woman named Barka. I'm not sure whether I ever talked about her. She's pretty young, maybe 35, and I didn't really understand why she was in Kalighat for so long. She seemed healthy, except her foot was always bandaged. We got to know each other pretty well because she used to sing, all the time. Like, she would see me and start singing. In Hindi. And she sang beautifully! She'd follow me around the room with her eyes and sing until I sat with her. When she was tired or upset or in pain, I would sing Sufjan to her, and then her mood would lighten, and she'd sing a Hindi gan (song) back to me. She was super. Then I walked into Kalighat one day, and she wasn't there. I assumed she had been released, because really her foot was the only thing medically wrong with her. She never came back. Weird. ...I'll come back to this in a few paragraphs. :-)

Today, I went to the leprosy center about an hour outside of Kolkata! Woohooooo!

Yesterday, I realized that the trips to the center are the third Thursday of the month, and suddenly was like "oh crap this is my last chance!! Aaaah oh no!" So I went to registration at three, and the sister told me that registration for the trip had been in the morning. I asked if she could add one more. She said absolutely not, because only 25 are allowed. More than 25 is just too many people for the leader of the trip to handle, and the trains are really crowded. I pouted, but understood. No trip for me.

...and then I found out that Peter and his parents (P.S., Peter's parents are here, and I adore them) had registered, so I decided to go anyway, prepared to be sent away if anyone found out I hadn't registered.

Peter and I woke up super-early and walked to Motherhouse. We were supposed to get there for a pre-departure meeting at seven, but we got there near the end of the meeting. My friend Jeff (not Jeff who left [but he's back again], a different Jeff) was briefing everyone on info about the center. Two minutes later, Jeff walked over to me and said "hey, you can lead this, right?" I said no, I hadn't been to the center before, but at the same time Jeff quieted the entire room, pointed at me, smiled, and said "this is Stephanie, she'll be your leader! She knows where she's going, so follow her." What? As everyone began to talk again, Jeff turned to me and said "it's okay, no one I appoint as leader has ever been there before. Don't worry about it." Then he gave me the list of people registered to go to the center, and said "you don't really have to check this, but theoretically you should, just to make sure everyone's here." I checked it. Everyone was here...plus me, the only one not on the list.

At that moment, I kind of felt God laughing at me a little. The reason Sister said I couldn't go was because more than 25 was too many for the leader to handle. And I was the leader. So I had to deal with the stress of keeping track of too-many-people. Plus, I was the only one with the list, which meant only I knew I never registered. Whoa.

I head-counted (27, Sister had let two extra people register, and there was only one no show) and we all hopped on the bus to Sealdah station. I head counted again and we all bought tickets. Then to the train. Counted as they went on the train. While on the train, I suddenly realized that I know Bangla. Okay, I really don't, but what little I know is extremely useful. People in the group asked me to talk with men on the train for them, to purchase fruit and figure out the location of our stop. It was craziness. While on the train, I talked with Jon, a guy from DC who is TEFL certified and taught English in Korea for awhile. Cool.

Forty minutes later, we arrived, head-counted, crossed the tracks, and walked to the Brothers' House. Brief intro. The center is a place for people who have had leprosy to live and work. The center seems fully self-run - there's a giant cloth factory, gardens, huge dorms, a school, etc. Even though leprosy is now fully treatable and curable, it's still a disease that, in India, completely outcasts people from society. The lepers / former lepers need a place to live, so Momma T started a center for them to work, make money, eat, sleep, etc.

Tour time. I quickly realized that I strongly dislike guided tours, and lagged way behind everyone the entire time. First tour place was the...gosh, what do you call a place where people make fabric? Loomery? I don't know. We walked in to the sound of "clickclackclickclackclickclack...". Women rolled thread onto spools, men wove thread into fabric on giant looms. I greeted most women - Nammashkar di. I stood in front of one weaving machine mabobber for awhile, trying to figure out how it worked. I asked the woman. She offered me a try. Absolutely. I sat down and spun and MAN it burned my fingers! I had to use my hand as a corner to brace the thread, and the thread spun super-fast, like a rope burn + paper cut. I yelped. The woman laughed. I asked to see her fingers. They were hard-core calloused exactly where mine were red. We Nammashkarred again, I thanked her, walked on. Took a picture of the giant loom, with permission from the men. They wanted to pose with Peter. They did. Hehe.

Walk walk walk...to a zillion other places. Dyeing room (fabric), nursery (babies!), gardens, prosthetics workshop, classroom (kids!), and a bunch of other rooms. I think I ignored every component of every presentation. I decided it would be better to talk with the people who live in the center. Yep. Definitely. During the fabric dyeing talk, there were four women sitting to the side, eating lunch. They greeted me first - Namaste. I said "kaemon achen," and we spoke for a few minutes. Omigosh, I know enough Bangla to have a conversation. Omigosh. I love Bangla.

Then to the kitchen...same deal. Some presentation, I talked with the people hanging around the kitchen. Then the nursery, and I talked with the women. Then the school..."namaste, chelemeye!" They sang a song. Shundor gan. Everyone was so excited that I spoke Bangla. It was amazing. I talked with approximately everyone I saw. Tours are lameskees. Communication is pandatastic. Granted, I know nearly nothing about the center, but that's okay.

At the end of the tour, we walked through the wards. I didn't talk with the men, 'cause they're men and it's weird for a woman to initiate conversation with men. I had been waiting the entire time for the women's ward, so I could talk with the women. I was jumpy. So excited. I walked into the GIANT ward - maybe 200 beds - and had no idea with whom I should sit. Actually, sitting with them wasn't even in the schedule. We were supposed to walk through and leave. The room was a giant dorm stretching to the right, so I looked to the left and gasped. I don't remember the last time I've gasped.

Barka was sitting on the bed two meters away from me.

I may or may not have shrieked "Barka?!" And she freaked out too. Not as much as me; she was tired. But I think we exchanged "Barka?!" "hya" (yes) about ten times. I sat down, asked her how she was, she showed me her scars from the operation. She had been transferred to here from Kalighat to have med work done. We talked for a few minutes, and I couldn't help gushing in English about how much I adore her. She gave me a "you're being a doofus, but it's nice to see you too" look. Llsdfjkaiosdfjalsdfjsdklafjklasdfjaiosjfklsdafjklsdajfl BARKA! ...and I totally broke the rules and took a picture. She said it was okay. She's raising an eyebrow at me in the photo.

And then I had to leave. I walked out completely dazed. Barka. Gosh it was good to see her. And she looked so much happier than in her last few days at Kalighat. The center is much more spacious. At Kalighat, residents have to stay in bed. Here, they're free to walk around the center, which is a bunch of rooms bordering an outdoor garden.

Wrap-up meeting at the Brothers' House, I gave a quick "here's how we're taking the train back and then the Metro blah blah blah" and then back to the train.

I now understand why having more than 25 people on the leprosy center trip is a terrible idea. Public trains in India are "fit as many as you can," standing. And they only stop for about ten seconds. So when the train came, we jammed everyone in the car. Not too crowded, but we left one Japanese girl at the station. Peter jumped off at the next stop and waited. After about twenty minutes on the crowded train, it got really crowded. Like, squished. Not even "I appear to be pressed in on all sides," but more than that. Like, close your eyes and think about what an orange through a juicer must feel like. Unfortunately, the train was mostly big sweaty men, and I am a woman. And yeah, I'm used to getting groped, 'cause it happens about every day, but that's usually little things, like a hand barely on my butt or a man's arm "accidentally" brushing my chest as he walks by. On the train (only once), I got full-on grabbed. If this had been two months ago, I would have felt violated, frozen up, but not done anything. This time, I punched him. ...not hard, because I'm not really capable of punching people. But he grabbed me, so I punched him, because it's MY body, not yours. Not okay. Rar.

For the rest of the train ride, I shielded the two Japanese girls who were next to me, so they wouldn't get groped. They were freaking out. I was fine, just extremely squished. And after grope number one I decided that no one else would grope me, so I elbowed everyone who inched closer to me. And they gave me looks of sheepish "I thought you wouldn't notice because you're a stupid American girl." GAH. And this guy next to me kept saying "next stop DumDum, move!" when it clearly was not possible to move. Jlsdfkja.

When we got to our stop, it was pushpushpush to leave the train. So I pushed. And four volunteers on the train didn't. Thus, we left two Italians and the two Japanese girls on the train. Fortunately, I had said in my briefing that you could either get off the train at DumDum and take the Metro to Sudder, or get off and Sealdah and take the bus to MotherHouse. There really wasn't anyway to follow them, and they were together, so we waited at the station for Peter and the other Japanese girl, who were on the next train. I felt awful. You know that camp counselor (or parent...) feeling when you lose a kid? Yeah. I had 26 kids. I lost four. They were together, and they're adults (I'm always the youngest one in every group - everyone is usually in their late twenties / thirties), so I figured they'd be fine. Sealdah's the last stop, and it's the station at which we started the day. So they knew where they were. But I still feel irresponsible and bad-mommyish for losing them.

Then we Metroed back to Sudder for lunch. And I napped. And now I'm awake and writing a lot.

I've been journalling a lot lately, trying to figure out exactly how I've changed in India. I've written on this blog before about little changes - working at Kalighat, for example. Before I came to India, and even during the first month here, I consistently said that I would never work at Kalighat. Ever. I said I just didn't have the ability to work with sick people, and especially not dying people. My mom's a nurse. I'm not. I can't do blood or wounds or IVs - aah!

But I've been at Kalighat for two months. And I love it. Not only do I love it, but not once have I thought "ew" or "I need to lie down now" or anything like that. And it's not that I haven't seen heavy stuff - my goodness, I have. There's Kamala, who I was with near constantly right before she died. Now I know what the "death wheeze" sounds like. There's Neda, who I saw dissolve in two weeks due to AIDS. There's this other woman, whose name I still don't know, whose husband poured boiling water over her head - so her entire scalp and chest are completely covered in burn wounds. And then there's Shanti, who Peter found on the street and brought in. She's the one who has wounds all over her body, to the bone. Yeah, that bothers me, just like all of this bothers me. But not in a "aslkfjasdoifj icky" way, rather in a "I hate that this is happening, now how can I help?" way.

My conclusion is this: since being here, I think I've started to learn the meaning of Philippians 4:13 - I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Strength has always been a sort of vague word in my mind. But after all that I've seen at Kailghat, I think I might get it. A little. I don't understand the strength that the men and women at Kalighat have - the sort of strength that causes a dying man to go "nope, don't feel like it today" and eat a ton, start walking, exercise, and leave healthy (true story). I don't understand that at all. Maybe it's something I would have to experience. I do, however, feel a little more in touch with the strength that God has granted me. In my life, strength is being able to do anything God asks of me, whether it's working at Kalighat, teaching a play in a language I don't know, or leading a group of 26 people who only partially speak English to a place I've never been. In India, I've been doing stuff I never thought I'd be able to do. I can't quite think of the word for what I've developed - resilience? No, I think strength is the right word. Yep. I can (apparently) do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And really it really is only through prayer and Bibling and faith and hope and recognizing God in everyone I see that I've developed the patience and endurance to do all this stuff.

Okay, dinnertime.

Oh, I forgot to mention - I talked with a lot of people at the center, which means I touched a lot of people - handshakes and such. Which means I've kind of achieved my goal upon coming to India, which was to hug lepers. Done. I can leave now.

...jk, I love my girls.

Going to the redlight district tomorrow night.

Faith, hope, and love,
Stephanie

P.S. Do I want this tattooed somewhere: আশা
It says "asha," which means "hope" in Bangla.
Hmmm.

OMIGOSH

I just found a picture of Kalighat online!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nirmal_Hriday.JPG

No way! That's the men's side. The women's side looks...mostly similar.

Super!

Love and jpegs,
Stephanie

Quick update.

Life is busy. I'm nearly done translating the Apne Aap show into Hindi. For the next few weeks, I'll be orally teaching it to the women, because they cannot read. This means that I need to learn to pronounce all the Hindi near-correctly. It's interesting - I purposefully chose to learn Bangla rather than Hindi because Bangla is much easier for me to speak. And now I need to speak a ton of Hindi. I'm excited.

Josefin leaves tonight.

I've seen a lot of bone this week at Kalighat. It looks like models of the earth's layers + meat hanging in the market. I don't do the medical stuff - I just massage squirming feet.

If you want anything specific from India, please let me know.
Thanks!

Have a super week!

Love and Hindi,
Stephanie

Phonemes, three-day weddings, and Stephanie Hates AIDS.

So...that last post was quite long. Sorry about that. I've decided to post on Sunday and Wednesday evenings, in an effort to prevent super-long and super-often posts.

I know that Paul says to do everything without complaining or arguing, but I feel the need to rant about a few things that currently bother me. Ready? Go.

Air conditioning. Don't get me wrong, I like air conditioning. It's freaking hot here. At the Apne Aap conference last week, a little air conditioning was nice...kind of. Nice in comparison to the 95 degrees outside. But there's this air conditioning smell...the one that says "don't believe me, it's actually quite hot outside." It's a little bitter. Metallic, maybe. Anyway, air conditioning bothers me because it makes me feel like I'm breathing fake air.

Toilet paper. Two quick points about toilet paper. Number one: is there any other kind of mess that we clean with dry paper? Oh look, I broke a flower pot on the floor, let's clean it with thin, dry, paper! No. That'd be dumb. You dump some water on it, then wipe it up. Or let's say, if I had a bunch of dirt on my hands. Would I clean them with paper? NO! I'd clean them with WATER! AAAAAAAAH! Number two: how many trees do we kill by using toilet paper? No really, think about it. We put so much effort into recycling paper and conserving paper and yada yada yada. Do we ever think about the amount of paper we use every year to wipe our butts? No! Actually, I'm going to Google search this...

"It takes 48 full grown trees to make roughly 500 rolls of toilet paper. So using that number it takes about 1/10th of an adult grown paper tree to produce 10 rolls of toilet paper. Every American in the United States, roughly 300+ million, uses at the very least 49 rolls of toilet paper a year. That is 5 trees a person."

There you go. Stop killing trees.

And lastly...

AIDS. Okay, yeah, this one's a little heavier. Remember Neda, the young woman at Kalighat? On Wednesday, I sat with her for a while. Her eyes were rolled up in her head, her jaw was locked, she was shaking violently about every three minutes. Her skin was clammy. Her face was gaunt. I tried to feed her, but I couldn't get her mouth to open. I put on some gloves and held her hand and stroked her hair and sang to her for awhile. She squeezed my hand. She knows me. I prayed for her while I sang, because I didn't know what else to do to take care of her. For something like AIDS, are you supposed to pray that they get better, or die quickly? I don't know. She looks awful. I hate AIDS. A week ago, she was gorgeous. Wednesday, she was dissolving. I hate AIDS. I hate AIDS. I hate AIDS. Aaslkdjfaioejsldkafjlakgjkasdfuyoiewjfldksf.

Okee, complaints done.
Moving along...

A few friends and I went to an Indian wedding. Well, the last day of the wedding. Indian weddings are three days long and utter ridiculousness. Ceremony after ceremony. Party party party. During the second-to-final ceremony, in the temple, the groom was text messaging and the bride was absent-mindedly playing with the material in her saree. She was covered in gold, henna, a giant headress. Both of them looked exhausted and bored. It was Day Three.

After the ceremony, there was a giant dancing-in-the-streets party with drums and a guy playing keyboard while sitting on a bicycle rickshaw. It was LOUD. And there were fireworks. For like, two hours. The party kept moving through the alleyways to the reception area. We got there around midnight, had dinner, and went back to Paragon to bed. Bhalo.

Teaching difficulties. I wrote on the white board "Secretly choose one person in the class. Write a description of them. Colours. Body. Clothes. Location (here there left right). Five sentences." This was because they know colours, body parts, clothing, and how to describe how to get places. And they know third person possessive grammar (Neesha's pants are blue, etc.). So I figured we could combine them all, right? No. The girls stared at the board and did nothing. So we read it out loud. Blank stares. Then we broke the directions into individuals words, and I re-explained what every word on the board meant. Nope. They didn't do anything. I asked them why they weren't writing, and they said they didn't understand what I was asking them to do. I don't know why. This hasn't happened before. I'll talk with them about it again tomorrow.

Also, I realized last week why one of my students is having so much difficulty reading. Shagufta has had trouble sounding out words since I started teaching her. She knows the alphabet. She can name all the letters. But she can't combine them into words. I've been writing the transliterated Bengali under the English words for her, but it hasn't helped. Then I figured it out - she can't read Bengali. Or Hindi. She's never learned a written language. She speaks Bengali fluently, but cannot read or write. English is the first language she's ever learned to read or write. I think I'm going to ask Sraboni to give me more time with her. And I might teach her Bengali, which is strange, because I don't speak Bengali. But she speaks it, and I can write and read it...so maybe that would be helpful. I think so. Yep, I'll do that. Thought it's entirely disconcerting that she lives in India, and the first written language she's tried to learn is English. Odd.

Apne Aap conference. Last Thursday and Friday, Apne Aap held a film festival in celebration of Women's Day. It was a giant educational mabobber, with films about trafficking and women's rights. Super. As part of the festival, my girls performed a skit. It was a short play about a king, some priests, and a kingdom in which everything costs one rupee. In Hindi. I thought it was strange that it wasn't about trafficking or something relavant...until I realized that the girls didn't know what the conference was about. They just knew they were representing Apne Aap. In addition...*drumroll*...I'm nearly certain that they don't know anything about sex trafficking. Nothing. They live in the slum, which means that they're at high risk of being trafficked and taken into the red-light district, but they haven't been swiped, so they don't know that it's a possibility. What the monkey. I'm going to talk with Sraboni about this tomorrow.

While my girls were getting ready for the show, we all started singing the Ring Ring Ringa song. A girl who isn't in my class asked how I knew it, I said that my class had taught me, and that it was in Slumdog Millionaire. Pammi said "no, Smalldog Millionaire," and I said "nope, it's Slumdog." And she said "what's a slum?"

How do you explain to a girl who lives in a slum what a slum is? And it wasn't a language barrier thing. My friend Rhiddi, who speaks Bangla, Hindi, and English, had been translating between us all. Rhiddi, a little shaken, said "they're huts," and Pammi seemed fine with that. Somehow, my 16-year-old girls who go to school at an anti-sex-trafficking agency don't know that they live in a slum, and don't know about sex trafficking. Weird.

Before my girls went on stage, the emcee read a sort of introduction about the girls. She said that they were the "children of Apne Aap," and that they "have lived in the Park Circus slum all of their lives." She said that they "nearly never leave the slum, so this outing is very exciting for them." ...and she spoke briefly about how Apne Aap educates the girls to prevent them from sex trafficking. But she said this all in ENGLISH. Because the entire audience was India's ELITE who spoke ENGLISH the entire conference. So my girls HAD NO IDEA WHAT SHE WAS SAYING. So my girls went onstage, nervous nervous, performed their Hindi play fantastically, and then lined up and introduced themselves at the end: "my name is Neesha Khatoon, etc." Mumtaz doesn't know her last name, so she just said Mumtaz. Then they went offstage, excited about their speedy, but near-flawless performance. Because they don't speak English, they had no chance of understanding anything else in the conference. They weren't invited to attend - only to perform and leave.

Why is it that a conference put on the educate the public is only presented in ENGLISH? Why was everyone who attended dressed so richly, speaking English with each other, eating expensive food at the cafe...what's the point of an awareness campaign if the only people who can understand any of it are too rich to associate with the girls who live in the slum or the women who sell their bodies in Khidderpur? I know I'm being cynical. I know that these people can vote, and pass legislation, and that by knowing these things, they'll be able to battle sex trafficking because they have money and thus political power. It was just...frustrating to see my girls up there like dancing monkeys, while the audience of English-speaking-well-dressed-Indians watched in pity, faces to their images of the slum - and my girls had no idea.

Later, at the after-conference dinner, a man said to me: "those were the girls from the slum? Wow. I expected them to be sad." What?! You expected them to be sad? I explained to him that they were girls like any other girls in India, and that they happened to live in a big cement building all together. They're wonderful girls. We henna each other, we have dance parties, we freak out about Nashima telling Mr. Computer Sir about Pammi's boyfriend (he might tell her mother) - and that's why I'm going to work my butt off teaching them as much English as they can possibly learn in the next month. Because I adore them, and I refuse to allow them to not understand.

This week, I'm going to Khipperpur (the red-light district) at night. With Sraboni, Josefin, and Daniel. Good good. I realized the other day that the first meeting I sat in on, the one with 40 women speaking Bengali...was a self-help meeting for prostitutes. So I've already met a bunch of the prostitutes in Khidderpur. Hmm.

One more thing, and then I'm done. Promise.

At dinner tonight, Peter goes "oh, the woman with AIDS died today." Oh. I wasn't at Kalighat today because I need to reregister - one of the sisters found out that I'm actually registered for Daya Dan. Hm. So, um, Neda died today. Her body is currently wrapped up in a bright blue sheet. Peter is often on morgue duty in the morning, so I'm going to try to go with him. If the sisters say no, I'll cry.

I hate AIDS.

Bedtime. Up early to go cremate Neda's 25-year-old AIDS-destroyed body.

I'm sorry. I just really hate AIDS. Stupid AIDS. She was fine a week ago. I hate gang-rape. I hate FGM. I hate AIDS. Lldsuf098aweurmwieurdowru9dwriasjradshf!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay. Goodnight.

Love,
Stephanie

Tiger kothay?, slum visit, street drama.

Okay.
So.
Gosh, this will take a long time and be super-sporadic.
Here goes!

In chronological order, from two weeks ago...

A day before I left for Sunderbans, at Apne Aap, my girls and I were like "psssshhhh we don't feel like learning anything today." So we ran upstairs to the little kids' classroom on the roof, turned on the radio, and had a dance party. It was fantastic. They were all "dance, di, dance!". For a brief moment, the thought "wait, I can't dance, I don't know how to dance" crossed my mind. And then I realized that my body has been crafted to dance to Indian music. Everything in Indian dance makes so much more sense to my muscles. The arm movements (kinda like you're spinning a balloon), the hips, the smoothness of it all - gosh. As opposed to the overt sexuality in Western dance, Indian dance is more subtle sensuality. It's beautiful rather than awkward and provocative. And all my girls were so excited about dancing with me, and we all sang, and then the Ring Ring Ringa song came on - the one they taught me a month ago, when I traded them for Sufjan Stevens. I firmly believe that part of my soul resides in the Ring Ring Ringa song. We danced in a circle, each girl had her chance to start a foot / arm pattern that we all copied, they stopped to teach me when I had difficulty picking something up. And though my mind was like "what?" my body was like "shut up mind, I know how to do this." ...then I French braided my hair to keep it back and my girls freaked out. Hair thrown at me from everywhere. I don't remember the Hindi word for "braid," but I heard it about a zillion times. So then our dance party turned into a hair braiding party. It was like a fifth grade sleepover.

New topic. Sorry for the jumpjumpjump, but there's a lot I want to write.

I prayed and thought a lot last week about this passage:
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." - Luke 6:41-42
First off, the image of a plank in my eye is funny. What would I look like walking around with a plank in my eye? And how ridiculous would it look if I tried to get a speck out of Josefin's eye with a plank in my eye? I'd probably jab her in the face. And there's no way I'd be able to see clearly.
I've been thinking about this from the perspective of giving advice. If you know me, you know that I don't really hesitate in advice-giving. I completely ignore the whole "don't give advice until you're asked" idea. But then again, I often am in no place to give advice. There are planks in my eyes. Last week, I made a list of my major planks, and I'm trying to figure out how to get them out of my eyes. To extend the ridiculously easy-to-extend metaphor, I've learned that removing planks involves a good mirror. Thankfully, going to Adoration as often as possible is helpful.

I should explain Adoration. Literally, it's a bunch of volunteers and sisters sitting in a room praying, with a consecrated wafer in a little golden stand on a table at the front of the room. If you walk in and don't know what's going on, it looks like a lot of people staring at a cookie. I purposefully started going to Adoration because it didn't make any sense to me. Cookie. Gold stand. Saying the Rosary, plus silent prayer halfway through the hour. What?

And when I got there, I realized why Adoration is super. This might sound strange, but the spiritual density in that room is absurd. It's ridiculous. It's overwhelming. It felt like walking into a room in which you know God is sitting. I almost fell over. Praying in that environment is mind-blowing. I don't know why. I can't explain it. And I really don't understand the whole God-in-a-wafer thing. But I do know that Adoration, for me, has become a for-sure way to make sure I'm in focused prayer for at least an hour a day. I've started going to Adoration at Kalighat, which is even more amazing. Five sisters, five/six volunteers...oh man. It's wonderful. I don't think I've ever had more focused prayer (scheduled prayer time? whoa.) in my life.

In response to questions, yeah, I pierced my nose. Safely. I sterilized the needle. It's completely healed. My girls think it's great. I like it. Mmmkay, that's all about that.

At Kalighat two weeks ago, there was a 20/30 maybe year old woman. Newly arrived. Stunningly beautiful. Big brown eyes. Could be a model. She doesn't speak. I spoke with her, but she didn't respond verbally. Every time I walked near her, she caught my gaze and followed me with her eyes. So I bent down, placed my hand in hers and asked "gan?" (song). She barely squeezed my hand. I sang Come Thou Fount. She looked a little happier, not that she ever seems to have any facial expression besides entranced. She's gorgeous. I asked another woman there what was wrong with her, and she shrugged. She said that the woman had just arrived a few days before, so the only thing they knew was that she had terrible FGM, enough that she needed a catheter. I don't want to talk about it. Look it up.

Sunderbans. Wow. Gorgeous. Jungle. We were only there for two days - we all took the weekend off from our Momma T assignments, which was good because I didn't have to miss Apne Aap at all. Our group was Matias (Chile), Jed (Colorado OMG he went to Brown and knows Talia Stein!), Josefin (Sweden), and Daniel (Cuba / Miami / Seattle). We woke up super-early, and took a train / auto / boat / auto / boat combination to get there.

I had a slightly heartbreaking experience at the train station. There were beggar kids all over the place, because there are a ton of beggars at train stations in India. This one girl, holding a baby, started "auntie, auntie, canna"ing me. Which means "auntie, auntie, food." There were two pieces of bread in my bag, so I shrugged and figured sure, why not? I didn't need those two pieces of bread. So I dug through my bag, found the bread, and handed one piece to her and one to the baby, who looked old enough to chew. And...the girl looked at the bread, looked up at me, looked down at the bread, looked up at me, and said "canna, canna?" And I said, "hai, eta tomar canna" - "yes, it's your food." And she just kept asking. All the while, the baby tore the bread into little pieces and dropped it on the floor. We walked away. A few minutes later, the girl found me again, and still asked me for food - still holding a torn up piece of bread, which crumbled on the floor as she asked for food.

I don't understand.

Anyway, train to Canning. Auto to shore. Giant ferry canoe to somewhere. Auto to somewhere. The auto had two rows of seats, facing each other - one backwards, one forwards. I was sitting in the seat facing forwards, on the right side. So, when we almost got hit by a giant bus, I was the one who saw it coming. By almost, I mean the auto driver nearly hit it head on, and then swerved to the left at the last moment. We two-wheeled it on the left side for about five seconds, all threw ourselves to the right, and then stopped to get Daniel's bag, which had fallen out. Daniel probably should have gotten badly injured - it would have made sense for him to get a foot caught up and tangled in the wheels. But nope. We were all shaken (not stirred) but fine. Super.

Then another boat, and we were in Gosaba, where we found a pink guest house with bucket showers and giant beds with mosquito nets, bartered the rooms down to 200 each, and set out adventuring. I. Adore. Gosaba. Nearly no one there speaks English. Fortunately, Jed speaks a lot of Bangla, so we were able to communicate. We drank sugarcane juice and ate street fruit. Jed and I walked over to the shore, where we discovered the grossest, most absolutely superb mud I've ever seen. Our feet sunk nearly to our knees every time we stepped. Naturally, I decided that meant we should roll up our pants and walk the thirty meters or so to shore. GROSS. But fantastic. And three kids joined us, and we all went "ew ew ew" and it was great. I have videos.

Then Jed and I walked to the village-y section of Gosaba. Where everyone on the tiny island lives. We wandered at random, walked past goats, chickens, cows, and green green green. Eventually, kids started following us, so we spoke Bangla with them. After some time, a woman stepped out of her house and called to us. We followed. She invited us in for chai, and pulled chairs out so we could sit on her porch. There ended up being about ten women, three men, and a half dozen children - and us. Speaking. In Bangla. We talked about everything we could communicate, joked about how Jed knew onek Bangla and I knew khub choto. Very little. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah wonderful.

In the morning - BOAT. Gorgeous. We went on a 500-rupee-a-person boat cruise around Sunderbans. We didn't see any tigers. But we saw monkeys and birds and a crocodile and deer and a funny-looking pig. Our tour guide was awesome. He didn't speak English, but that didn't matter 'cause we had Jed. He let me drive the boat. Jed had made aloo mattar and roti and brought it with him to Gosaba, so we had a picnic on the boat. Oh gosh it was wonderful.

Then four-hour bus ride back to Kolkata. Smelled like eggs.

On the way back down Sudder Street, I suddenly felt like saying hello to one of the beggar women - usually I don't greet them, because they'll follow me asking for money. I started to speak at the exact same time she did, and we simultaneously said "namaste, di" (me) and "how are you, sister" (her). For the record, "di" means "older sister." It was beautiful.

Fast forward. Kalighat the next day. The woman I mentioned earlier had been moved to a bed waaay at the end of the room, and had a namecard (Neda) and a sign posted next to her bed that said "please do not touch without gloves." And had what looked like sudden, massive scabies. Again, I asked another volunteer what was wrong with her. And she said, "oh, she just has HIV." Oooookay then. So I grabbed some gloves and sang to her for a long, long time. At one point, a sister walked past me, stopped, and I showed her my hands. She nodded and kept walking. Bhalo. Good.

Wow, this is taking a long panda time. And I'm not even close to caught up.

Last Wednesday, I left Apne Aap early (Muslim holiday, no girls) and went in search for my girls' slum. After an hour of wandering around Park Circus, I found it. Turns out 39 Tiljala road is nowhere near 36 or 41. Tik ache (it's okay). It was fun to find. I got to speak a LOT of Bangla. Their slum isn't a tarp-city like the one next to it - rather, it's a giant cement building in which they all live together. I didn't walk in, but it was nice to know where it is and what it looks like.

Thursday, Josefin and I went to the tarp-slum next to the Park Circus bridge. I could write for pages about this, and will, but not right now. We brought cookies, paper, crayons, a ball, and sweets, all hidden in Josefin's backpack, with the intent to find some kids (chelemeye kothay?) and play with them. We found a bunch of kids among the tarps, gathered them together, and I handed out cookies - ekta tumi, ekta biscuit (one you, one cookie). The kids were ecstatic. They started running away, bringing back other kids and pushing hands toward me. Only a few kids asked for more than one cookie. Maybe it was because I started saying "ekta tumi, ekta biscuit" early on. There was one kid who kept pushing his friends hands toward me, asking for cookies, and then only after all the other kids had cookies did he extend his own. And he was a little kid, not an older one who might feel obliged to take care of everyone else. Some mothers asked for biscuits for their children who were at school, so I said "ekhane ney, biscuit ney." Not here, no biscuit.

After hanging out with the kids for awhile, we moved on. Left the tarp slum, and wandered into the area of garbage-pickers next to the train tracks. There are hundreds of tarps set up next to the tracks, just like next to the bridge. I assumed it would be the same situation - nice kids, who just want to be kid-like. ...nope. Within minutes, kids latched on to me, a little too close to be comfortable. It was hot out. So I figured that ten kids or so was a good group to colour, and reached into Josefin's bag (which I was carrying) for paper. Within seconds, I was completely swarmed. Imagine a mosh pit of dirty children (and women) with me at the center. And this was before I even removed the paper and crayons. And it didn't matter how much I yelled "thamo (stop)" or "shanti (settle / peace)" or even "bas (enough)". They kept pushing in on me. Thank God I'm not claustrophobic. This went on for about twenty minutes. Nonstop. I couldn't get them off of me. And they were laughing, screaming, reaching, tearing the whole time - the children and the women. There was one man who tried to order everyone, but it didn't work. I thought maybe if I started passing out paper, they'd go away, so I pulled out one sheet - which got torn from my hands instantly. Twenty hands all grabbing at the same paper at the same time means no one gets it, not even counting the thirty or so who were too far back to reach. Another sheet. Same result. Another. Another. Finally, I gave up and tried to push them away. Fail. The kids / women ripped the entire pack from my hands. Oh well. We had more paper in the bag. The kids were all screaming for pens. I was still being pressed in on, squished, sugarcane through a juicer. I pulled out a few crayons. Hands. All crayons smashed. This would not work. I started pushing through, trying to get away. Thamo, thamo, thamo, and the kids yelled ney, ney, ney. Stop. No. There was one girl who kept grabbing my shoulders to pull me back. The others just ripped at my clothes. For once, I'm glad I bought such high-quality Indian clothing. It wouldn't tear. Pull pull pull pull...and I eventually broke free, only to be chased and resurrounded a few moments later. I yelled "just go" to Josefin over the crowd. She started walking away. If this sounds overly dramatic or chaotic - it was. If it doesn't, then I haven't described it well enough. We eventually ran back to the tarp-slum. The whole process took about a half hour. Josefin hadn't been as swarmed, thank God. I'm glad I had the bag.

We went back to the first group, regathered the kids, and gave them white paper and crayons. One each. They drew and were happy. I taught some older kids to write their names in Bangla and English. Happy happy. One woman yelled at us for not bringing them more food. The other women shrugged and smiled at us. The kids were gleeful.

Why the stark contrast? They're both groups of kids. Living in the same condition, in two slightly different places. Why does one group have kids who bring their friends over for one cookie each, and the other have kids who rip paper and form mosh pits? What's the difference between these two groups of children?

Also, I don't understand why I wasn't bothered by this experience. Josefin was deeply affected, and I...well, it didn't surprise me. The kids at Apne Aap mosh pit me all the time. Somehow, events like this don't bother me, but the girl in the train station who doesn't eat the bread I give her - that bothers me. The man on the street with the infected leg wound, who refuses treatment because the wound means he's a more effective beggar - that bothers me. Thirty kids flash mobbing me for coloured paper? Nah.

Gosh, I still have more to write.

The song Worlds Apart, by Jars of Clay, has pretty much been my theme lately. I swiped Peter's guitar and play it all the time.

I finished a journal a few days ago. Thanks to Domtar for the new one. :-)

I should mention the weather. Apparently it's been 90/95 degrees here every day. I checked the weather online for those numbers. It's been hot. I walk a lot. Strangely, at the end of the day, my clothing smells like sugar. I think it's because of all the chai I drink.

Apne Aap show. Ohhhhh man. When I started working for Apne Aap two months ago, Sraboni told me that she wanted me to teach a drama class on Friday afternoons. The women didn't show up for five weeks straight, so we started the class a few weeks ago. No one speaks English. 30/40-year-old-women, who live in the slums with a bunch of children. The first rehearsal, we played Pass the Clap and Boom Swish, to get them comfortable working together and being LOUD. The next rehearsal, I sat down with them and, through two layers of translation, asked them about their frustrations and hopes. One woman in the group can write Bengali, and Zareen can understand spoken Bengali. So we had a woman write down what everyone said, read it to Zareen, and Zareen translated it to me in English so I could write it down. That was tedious, but reeeeally awesome. Last Friday, at rehearsal, I tried to ask the women what they wanted the show to look like, the format, what they wanted to make sure was communicated, etc. And they told me NOTHING. Again and again, they said "Ani writes the show, we perform it" (in Bangla and Hindi). What?! I don't live their lives. I don't speak their language. But they trust me to be their voices? Okay. After pushing them for more information, emotion, ideas, anything, I talked with Sraboni, who said the same thing. Write the show.

So I wrote it.

I'm not going to post it on here. It's too long. They wanted it to be a half hour / hour long show. It has tabla, a Greek chorus, masks, a dance-fight. Oh, and it's in Hindi. I wrote it in simple English, and two Apne Aap teachers and I have been working on translating it every day. Saboushni speaks fluent Hindi, a little Bangla, and a little English, Mr. Computer Sir (my girls' name for him) speaks fluent Bangla, moderate English, and moderate Hindi, and I read and write English and speak a little Bangla. Together, we can slowly translate my English into transliterated Hindi. We don't need it written in Hindi characters, because the women can't read. They'll be memorizing the show aurally, which means that I need to learn to pronounce my entire show in Hindi.

We'll be performing it on the street at the beginning of April. I'll bring a camera. :-)

Okay, I think that's it.

No it's not! Jeff and I decided mine and Josefin's room needed a window, so we watercoloured one on the wall. It's pretty.

Time to go get chai and teach.

Love and many words,
Stephanie

Balance.

Edit: After this making this original post, I've decided that I need to figure out a balance of communication. Thus, I've decided to give up just instant internet and phone communication. I'll keep checking and responding to my email and Facebook and updating this blog, but not very often.

Original post: I've realized that my connections via email, phone, and Facebook have recently caused me to be less dependent on God and much less focused on my work here. I know that communicating less is a selfish thing to do, but I just haven't been devoting myself enough to the work I'm doing in Kolkata because my mind is split between two continents. Thus, I've decided to completely commit myself - mind, body, and spirit - to what I'm doing here. If you really need to contact me, send me an email with a subject line that lets me know. I'll be scanning through my subject lines in my email about once a week. I'm going to try to keep posting on this blog, but it won't be nearly as often.

Quick update - still loving Kalighat, still loving Apne Aap. I'm writing a show with the women of Apne Aap called Asha Kori, which means "I hope". It'll be performed March 8th. Please pray for quick memorization, communication through the language barrier, and good public reception. Pray above all that the women's voices are heard.

Thank you!

Love and Park Circus,
Stephanie

Sidenote.

Hooray!

I haven't posted in awhile, but I will! There's a draft saved that only I can see. I'm working on it. I decided that posting pictures was a good idea, so...go see Facebook! Here's a preview:











We went to Sunderbans for the weekend. :-)

Stories will be written.

Love and gogogo,
Stephanie

O...saya.

Note: my email account is temporarily disabled. MyIWU wouldn't let me log in. Interestingly, this happened a few days after I prayed about how I've been spending too much mental time in the USA.

I'm listening to the Slumdog soundtrack as I write, starting with O Saya - feel free to listen as you read. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHUQht1HRmY&fmt=18

Me in Darjeeling was not what I expected.
I learned that I don't like small, clean, relaxed towns.
I am, however, still completely in love with giant, dirty, busy Kolkata.

Those of you who have known me for awhile know that I usually fail at functioning in cities. I get lost, overwhelmed, disoriented - I have difficulty figuring out the flow of a city. ...not so in Kolkata. I mean, I trusted that God would take care of me wherever He sent me. But I love and feel like I fit with every aspect of this place. The dirt, the traffic, the language barrier, the lack of toilet paper, the absurd exchange rate, the music, the colours. I know I've talked about this before. But...I adore this city more every day.

I used to say I couldn't function in cities.
I used to say I wouldn't consider going to IWU.
I used to say I couldn't learn another language.
I used to refuse to let anyone see me in the morning until I've showered, never let anyone see me brush my teeth, and never wear anything more than once in a row.
I used to not be able to stand going to hospitals, freak out when I saw anything dead (animal, human...), and need to instantly call a friend whenever I encountered anything mentally or emotionally difficult.
I used to say I'd never be a Christian.

My friends here speak often about how Kolkata is changing them. That it's healing old wounds, making them new, opening their eyes to God's presence in their daily lives. It seems as if they spend their days in constant amazement. I've seen them grow a TON since I met them.

I don't feel that way. I know I've grown. I know little things have changed, but it's difficult for me to identify any major differences. I'm at a strange point where, after two months here, I can't remember who I was before Kolkata. I'm not sure that person was any different than the person I am now. I'm still immature, late for everything (expected and encouraged in India...hehehe), prideful, extremely stubborn.

Sidenote.

You know how our parents used to say "finish your food, there are starving kids in India"? Here, it's "don't finish your food, there are starving kids in India". A few hours ago, I walked out of breakfast with one cookie left, and definitely didn't need to eat that cookie. I walked down Sudder street looking for a kid to whom I could give my cookie. Sure enough, right outside Hotel Maria, a beggar woman holding a crying, dirty baby grabbed my wrist and said "Auntie, Auntie," asking me for whatever she could get. This woman is on Sudder street nearly every day, often with a different baby. When I was first here, she followed me for a long time, sticking her hands into my taxi window, crying, pinching her baby-that-isn't-hers to make him cry. Today, she was with a young girl, maybe eight years old. Cute. Dirty. Clearly learning to beg from the woman, mimicking her facial expressions. I gave the cookie to the girl, who looked at it for a moment, put it in her bag, looked at the woman, and asked me for money.

She put the cookie in her bag because everything goes back to the boss of the begging Mafia. Even one chocolate cookie. And today, I decided that wasn't okay, because darnit, that girl should eat a cookie.

So I said "no, tomar canna," which doesn't actually make any sense, because "tomar" is Bangla and "canna" is Hindi. In a round-a-bout way, it means "no, your food." She gave me a slightly quizzical look, and I pointed to her bag, and she took out the cookie. I mimed eating the cookie, the same movement beggars use to ask for food. One hand, thumb to fingers, to my mouth. The girl broke the cookie in half and ate part of it, in front of the woman and the baby. She kept her sad-kid facial expression.

I walked into Hotel Maria. Stood for a few seconds. And walked back out. The woman and baby had started to walk away, and the girl was trailing behind them. I caught her eye and waved. She beamed at me and held up the other half of the cookie. I have a cookie. See it. It's chocolate. It's mine. I've never seen a beggar kid smile triumphantly before. It was beautiful.

End sidenote.

Yesterday, during tea at Kalighat (p.s., they let me sew!!), I was reading a list of ways we should live our lives. From the back of a magazine. I kept feeling like I was missing something, that I wasn't registering what I was supposed to learn. Then I came across "give without expecting anything in return." It felt like a puzzle piece clicking. I left Kalighat with that echoing in my head.

At Adoration, I read Luke 6, which contains a bunch of great stuff.
"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you." - Luke 6:27-31

Give. Give. Give.

Bless those who curse you. Man, that's something I should have remembered for the past two months. I get cursed all the time, literally. In a taxi to Apne Aap, beggar woman, no I won't get you food, she curses me. Why don't I pray for her? I need to remember to do that.

In a place in which people beg on the streets and then have to give what they've received to their boss, giving is a little more complex. Or maybe it's not. Maybe I just need to find ways to give more creatively. Hmm...

Josefin thought of buying footballs, going into the slums, and playing with the kids for awhile. Why not?

Last night, I talked with Josefin about how I'm not feeling the massive self-change everyone else is noticing in themselves. She said that maybe I'm here to serve on a greater level than just in Kalighat and Apne Aap. She said the way God works in me inspires people to joyously live with greater faith, aware of the constant presence of God. Even though I struggle with pride and all sorts of other icky stuff and still feel pretty lost in this whole living-like-Jesus-thing, maybe I'm still supposed to give without expecting anything in return. Maybe I'm supposed to learn to serve through service, and let myself learn as I live. Jesus wanted the sick to follow Him, not the healthy. The disciples messed up and argued all the time. Isn't the point of being a disciple to learn?

Maybe I'm supposed to be learning that all my fulfillment is to come from God.
Momma T was here for a long time without feeling God's Spirit.
She felt the call, answered, felt God go *poof*, and served until she died anyway.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." - Matthew 5:3-10

Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Give without expecting anything in return.

Wow, this post is ginormous and tangenty. Sorry about that.
...thanks for reading.

:-)

Love and learning,
Stephanie

P.S. I learned today that "educate" comes from a Latin word that means "to bring out." Hooray! It's human rights-y and motivation-y and yay!

A monkey...

...crawled up my leg today.

Mountains.

Darjeeling is cold.
A good cold.

One of those colds that sinks in, permeates every aspect of existence - in an October-chill type of way. I feel as if I should be costumed and trick-or-treating given this weather.

The tea here is exceptional.
I'm on a mountain.

There's no schedule here. There's no rushing-to-get-to-Topsia-for-class. There's just air, and tea, and five incredible friends.

I love Josefin.
She's Swedish.

I feel so blessed to be here.
Also, I'm wearing eyeliner.

I'm sorry this is a slight mess of a post.

This morning, Josefin said something about "it's amazing how much language affects identity," and I felt the smile forming on my face before the joy registered in my brain. I don't know what it is about language, but I love it more than I can explain. Most of the locals here are speaking something I cannot understand.

My photo has almost finished loading.

This is the view outside my window:


I can breathe here.

Love and rejuvenation,
Stephanie

Tired pandas --> Darjeeling.

"While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean." Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" And immediately the leprosy left him. Then Jesus ordered him, "Don't tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them." Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed." - Luke 5:12-16

In the midst of service, even Jesus (often!) takes time to be alone and pray. I'm starting to think that a life of love requires constant recharging. I love it here, but I'm sick. All of us are sick. Thus, we're going to Darjeeling tomorrow. Tony, Jake, Jill, Josefin, Jeff and me. There's too much Kolkata in our lungs, so we're going to get some mountain air. I'm fairly certain that Jesus liked mountains a lot. And we'll take photos. And read our bibles. And pray. And drink tea. And inhale. And exhale.

:-)

Summary of the past few days:

Largest book fair in all of Asia.

Anoushka and Ravi Shankar concert.

Apne Aap - First drama rehearsal. Ten 40-ish-year old Bengali women, no English. Few can read and write a little Bangla and / or Hindi. I've been assigned to create a street drama with them by the middle of March. We have two hour rehearsals every Saturday. Rehearsal was good - played Pass the Clap and Boom Swish in order to get comfortable with working as a group and being loud. 'Twas good.

Kalighat is difficult, but wonderful.

Bedtime.

Love and sleeppanda,
Stephanie

[edit] I just realized that I'm currently at the EXACT halfway point of my time in Kolkata. Literally. Day 59. 58 days left. And today, I leave for Darjeeling for a week. Weird. Good timing. :-)

Drumroll....

Stephanie Nudelman - Volunteer
Mother House - Missionaries of Charity
54A AJC Bose Rd.,
Kolkata 700016 India

Please don't send any food, money, live animals, dead animals, people, or things that take up a lot of space.

I like letters much more than I like things.
And I'm in the process of getting rid of everything I brought with me.
So please don't send me stuff unless it's a really, really, really good idea.

Thank you. :-)

Love and stamps,
Stephanie

Posting.

Today is a strange day.

Lately, I've felt like life is moving much faster than I am. I only have 60-some more days here. My time in India is nearly halfway through. It's odd.

Apne Aap is amazing. My girls are fantastic. They're learning, like, actually learning. As I wrote previously, I haven't had a translator for about two weeks, and it's actually easier to teach without one. We're easily, definitely communicating - one third English, one third Bangla, one third gestures, expressions and intuition. When I come back to Sudder and speak English with my American friends, I feel lazy.

Recently, I taught my girls up, down, right left, go, stop, fast, slow, turn, backwards, forwards, which way, this way, that way. We played a game that involved walking in a circle and me giving directions. If they messed up, they crashed into each other. We laughed through the whole thing, but by the end, they definitely knew all of the words.

After class last Wednesday, my girls insisted on Henna-ing me. It took about two hours. While it dried, we sang and danced and talked as much as we could. One of my girls said "no teacher, no students. We are friends." And that's what it feels like. We're all the same age. It's more like a bunch of friends hanging out every day, and one of us happens to know English, so I teach them English.

Also, I found out that my girls aren't prostitutes. Praise God. They do, however, live in the worst slum of all of Kolkata. Under tarps and such. When one of them wrote "I live in a hut" for her homework, she wasn't mistranslating. I want to go visit their homes, but I'm not sure if that's crossing any student-teacher line, or if it would be disrespectful. I won't ask, obviously. But I kind of hope they invite me. I want to help them financially, but I know that I can't. Teaching them English is, in a roundabout way, financially helpful.

Kalighat is difficult. I'm finally realizing that people die there, all the time. Last week, during tea, I suddenly felt an extreme imbalance in the world. My breath went short, it felt like someone had mentally shoved me off a chair, and I had a sudden awareness that someone had died. I stopped mid-sentence in a conversation, walked downstairs, and the Sisters were covering a man (well, his body) with a sheet.

What does it mean to die? Why does it inherently bother us so much? My current thoughts are these: God's Spirit dwells in us. When someone dies, God's Spirit leaves the body, and that feels AWFUL to anyone who sees or senses it. You could take the standpoint that it's really just life leaving the body that's so terribly disconcerting. But what's "life" anyway, but a verbal placeholder for "God"?

My new friends are amazing. Seriously. There's nearly nothing else to say. I've been praying about God granting me the ability to exist nearly completely here, and I can see Him providing me all I need again and again. I feel so ridiculously blessed.

I know this is a short post, but I honestly don't know what to write.

I'm here.
I love it.

And I'm listening to Mother India for the first time in a long time.

Love and henna,
Stephanie

Slumdog Millionaire

Last night, my friend Jeff and I went to see Slumdog Millionaire at the local theatre.

Before I discuss the film, I think it's important to describe the context in which I watched it.

Jeff and I walked from the Metro to the theatre, around 8:30 at night. Past the vendors lining the streets, the men muttering "looks nice" and "hello" in my general direction, around the garbage and human waste cluttering the gutters, past the barter-at-will market that inevitably swallows me up and tosses me into some sort of directionless, infinite sensory overload every time I enter, and into the strangely air-conditioned building that houses a Domino's, KFC, Barista, and movie theatre. The seats are assigned, like an actual theatre, and there are four prices - 40, 60, 80, and 120 rupees, based on balcony location (there are two levels and the floor) and proximity to the screen. You can openly bring food into the theatre, rather than smuggle it under your coat like my mom taught me. You can talk throughout the movie. It's normal to clap and yell things at the screen. There's a seemingly randomly-placed intermission, during which men walk through the aisles, over feet and knees, selling plastic-packaged popcorn and styrofoam-cupped coffee. And, just like everywhere else in Kolkata, the women are mostly wearing sarees. Which, in juxtaposition with the Western-influenced movie theatre and GIANT screen, causes the idea that we're really just a bunch of Indians in America to somehow creep into my mind. We brought vegetable rolls (not like spring rolls - like the Indian version of a burrito) and garlic bread from Domino's (a splurge) into the movie. We got there two minutes late (...still early for me...), but still in time for the previews, which were for Western movies that are long gone to DVD in the States.

...and then Slumdog Millionaire began.

OH. MY. GOSH.

First of all, if you haven't seen this movie, go see it. Now. Ignore your schedule and take a trip to Blockbuster. Also, don't finish reading this post until you see the movie. Sorry. It's necessary.

If you have seen it, and have had any questions about what living in Kolkata looks like - it looks like that. Just like that. No changes. None. Yes, Kolkata is a different city than Mumbai, but seriously, this movie, especially the first scene, looked just as if I stepped out of Apne Aap or Kalighat or, uh, the back of my hostel. And what really blew my mind within the first ten minutes is this: two months ago, the setting of this movie would have looked like...a movie. I would have admired the cinematography and said "oooooh that looks fun." Probably would have laughed at the dogs, and seen the movie as a nicely-imagined not-reality. And now...it's just plain accurate. Interesting, but in a "oh hey, I live there" way. Not in a "wow, what's that?" way.

I'm living in a place that I would have seen as fictional two months ago.

But there really is that much garbage. There really are dogs everywhere. There really are adorable, dirty kids holding screaming babies who appear out of nowhere at your car windows and ask for money whenever traffic stops. Remember the scenes with the overhead shots of the traffic? With the funny little golf-cart looking things? Those are auto-rickshaws. And that's exactly what the traffic looks like. Always. And that little head-tilt that Jamal did throughout the movie, to mean yes and no and maybe? HEAD WOBBLE. And remember the garlands of yellow flowers on the photos in the police station? Those garlands hang on photos everywhere here. Same with the random slabs of meat hanging in shops. There's a street on the way to the Motherhouse that has approximately twenty butcher shops, all containing numerous huge slabs of dead animal hanging in the open, and occasionally a full skinned pig.

The only components that are inaccurate are the women's clothing (there is not even close to that much Western influence in Kolkata - but I haven't been to Mumbai), the accents (not prominent enough, but I'm sure that was a Western-film choice), the copious amounts of spoken English (most of the movie should have been in Hindi), the PDA (kissing at a train station = not okay) and the depiction of the kid as the god Rama, who was definitely dressed as Shiva. That was weird.

So...there's one part of the movie that...hm. Kept me awake all night. There's this one flashback where this guy swipes a bunch of kids and teaches them how to sing. At this point, I looked at Jeff wide-eyed and mouthed "no. no. no. no. no." There's an old, blind man who lives and begs on Sudder street. He has the most beautiful voice I've heard in a long time. He walks around with a younger man who guides him, and all the blind man does is walk and sing. And that's how he begs. And he's one of the only beggars to whom I'll give money, because he sings, rather than just asking for money and holding a crying baby. And honestly, every time I see him I realize that there are some beggars here who actually aren't lying, and somehow, in some strange way, that makes me feel awkwardly hopeful. But Jeff noticed a few weeks ago that he cries when he sings. He's not the only crying, blind, singing beggar. They're all over Kolkata. And it's odd, as Jeff recently noted, that there are so many blind people in Kolkata who are so good at singing. ...then we saw Slumdog Millionaire.

And now I can't help but picture all of these old, singing, blind men as kids, getting their eyes burned out with acid and being sent into the streets to beg for money.

I've tried to find out whether that really is exactly how these men all became blind and learned to sing, but Google searching has proven inconclusive. As awful as it is...the rest of the movie was so accurate, that I find it difficult to believe this part was manufactured. Especially when it's such a probable explanation for an over-abundance of blind, singing men.

And then...I wonder about the blind orphans at Daya Dan, and my stomach turns.

...

Okay, that's all.

Except...the random dancing and singing at the end of the movie? Pure Bollywood. Hooray!

Love,
Stephanie

P.S. I'm hennaed. I'll post pictures when I can.
P.P.S. I adore Apne Aap. Teaching is difficult, but coming up with creative ways to get my girls to learn is a lot of fun. My translators have been gone for about two weeks. I'm on my own, teaching for two and a half hours Monday through Friday. Prayer would be very much appreciated. Also, I still haven't figured out whether my gorgeous, 17-to-22-year-old friends/students are prostitutes. I might ask one of the directors soon.
P.P.P.S. There are five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten-year-old kids at Apne Aap who ask me for paper and pens the exact same way kids on the street ask for money - with a head wobble and a smile and an "Auntie, please, Auntie, please." I worry about what they do after school.
P.P.P.P.S. Despite the sadness in this place, I'm completely in love with India.

I've got some friends that you should meet. Part two.

Books. :-)


My two super roommates - Jake and Tony.


Clearly, they love each other.


And Jeff!


"Look cute. Like, baby turtle cute."


Also, I still exist.


Oh hey, goats in the street.

Bueno.

Off to Kalighat.

Love and html,
Stephanie