Cat in World

Watery victory in the Fjordlands

2010-04-21T17:00:00.000-07:00

No good adventure would be complete without Cat exclaiming "Frankki, we're losing power...." as we were hurrying toward Christchurch to pick up our 3rd partner in crime...luckily, running out of gas can be fixed by hitchhiking with the first German surfer in a van who stops to take you to a gas station.

On our drive from Christchurch to Queenstown (that same day) we stopped for a nice dinner before going into the world of freeze dried and pre-packaged meals. It turns out trouble makers #2 and #3 actually knew each other from the bay area way back in the day, which always adds to the feeling of fulfilling a prophesized quest for human greatness in the Fjordlands.

Here is us at Time = 0

about T = 3 hours...first (and only) fresh horse carcass. I am smiling here, but I admit that this image lingered with me through the afternoon...especially because the hoof was the only thing not fully decomposed....gross...

T = ~7 hours...already looking a little crazy, in my opinion.

T = 20 hours...we have no idea what is in store for us on this brutal day 2. My camera battery died, so I don't have documentation of the grim challenges that followed, let it suffice to say that at my low point I yelled into the forrest "I am not playing your water mind games and more!" and proceded to make my 30th river crossing by just walking through - without any hope of keeping my lower half dry

T = ...umm, sometime on the 3rd day...you'd never guess from these pictures that we just spent the last 40min climbing and slipping up a "trail" covered in ice/snow and flowing ice water. Wow, did it feel good to get to the top...so good.
Fly Frankki!

Fly Steve!

Fly Cat!

Total bliss in wine country

2010-04-21T16:44:00.000-07:00

Frankki and I designed to have 2 days of luxury and indulgence between camping trips, which turned out to be an amazingly good call.

We ate divinly fresh lunches at wineries bathed in sunlight paired with our favorite white wines from the tastings before lunch!

We biked like crazy kids between the wineries to visit as many wineries (and chocolatiers) as we could :)...I don't think this picture captures fully how exhausted and gross I am at this point in the day...it turns out Frankki is a much stronger biker than I am and I had to draft behind her to keep up:)...yay for drafting

...I can't believe we got to stay here for 2 nights...it was incredible down to every detail. I can't recommend it highly enough if you ever visit the Marlborough wine region

This is Jo, our BandB host, feeding her little pack of alpacas in the morning. The alpacas keep the grass in the olive orchard nice and short....did you know alpacas only go to the bathroom in a specific area?

Jo brought us breakfast of our choosing up into our separate B&B house every morning at the time of our choosing...you can't get much better taken care of than I felt here

Bring on Abel Tasman, New Zealand

2010-04-21T15:42:00.000-07:00

The first camping venture that Frankki and I did together was in Abel Tasman on the northwestern corner of the southern island. Abel Tasman is one of New Zealand's 7 designated "great walks" and we knocked out the 40km+ venture in 24 hours...not that we didn't want to enjoy the beautiful scenery...but because we are fit and crazy and we can :)

One of the aspects of the Abel Tasman hike that makes it so interesting is that there are multiple sections of the trail that can only be crossed within 2 hours of low tide. Here are Frankki and I on the morning of the second day crossing a long flat stretch that would be under several feet of water within hours.

Some parts of the crossing were already under water and we took off our boots and walked through the chilly morning water over a bed of small shells. This picture is of Frankki making her way in the early morning sunlight.

The ripples in the sand were beautiful

I am not really in a chronological kind of mood, so thank you for bearing with me. Here is dinner the first night. Upon inspection it appears to be some sort of pasta with alfredo sauce and tuna fish...and a bottle of wine. I can tell you we were less appreciative of the bottle of wine after walking 20+ miles of up/down terrain, but were determined not to carry it any further and shared it with some young french friends at our camp site who showed us a magical glow worm cave just off the beach. We went into this cave and were under a mini starry sky and then emerged into the universe and were under a much larger starry sky.

Here is a picture of Frankki standing in the ocean waiting for the ferry taxi that will pick us up on this beach in another 20min. The cold water felt good on our joints.

I am very fond of this picture...I feel all smily inside

The man I get to marry

2010-04-19T14:43:00.000-07:00

WARNING: This blog contains shameless celebration of my fiance and may not represent the views of a neutral observer.

Nate is a hybrid of Leonardo DaVinci and Iron Man
Like Leo, Nate is also an engineer and an inventor, winning MIT's biggest prize for student inventors. This past January, distant Singapore University invited him to speak about creativity and entrepreneurship to their students. He was also a host for a children's engineering reality TV show for 3 seasons and won a Peabody award in 2007. Here is Nate with another guy who does stuff on TV.

For a listing of Nate's accolades, I was shocked to find out I can look him up on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Ball

However, the real reason I like him is that ~~he is a model~~ he has filled his life with activities and people he loves and that give him energy. He is guided by his values as strongly as anyone I know, and finds inspiration all around him. He brings his best to everything he does with a thankfulness for each opportunity.

When he is in the gym, people stare and try desperately to comprehend how it is possible to do pull ups with 60 extra lbs and then do push ups with his hands balancing on pointy-spikes, one foot on a rubber ball and the other foot on nothing.

Nate's dedication to pushing his own physical limits has become art in itself. See Nate in a tux on the pole vault run way at last years MIT Prom Vault , Nate running up the tree (!?what!!?) before flipping off backward and Nate doing a "flagpole" in Boston.

He also loves nature and what more natural way to celebrate it than ice climbing at sunset.

In the evenings, Nate tries to make time for his music and plays piano in a jazz trio and practices his beat boxing. If you are interested in beat boxing, or don't know what it is, you can find him on YouTube, and be the1,417,798th viewer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfE93AFk8l4

You would think that "DaVinci" Nate would feel pretty good at this point, but it turns out he also has a full time job! He co-founded Atlas Devices 5 years ago with friends who he respects and cherishes. The company creates rescue equipment for the military, and -naturally -Nate has to test their products out of moving helicopters.

If you would like to watch any of Nate's Danger Club videos (the ones with the flipping) or Design Squad (the ones with the children with power tools) episodes...you can find links on his website:

http://web.mit.edu/nball/www/

So, how did I unwittingly land the love of my life?

Nate and I met for the first time weight lifting during preseason by the indoor track at MIT in 2001. We lived in the same dorm that year and I remember helping him with his German homework. Over the next 3 years we trained together 2-3 hours a day for 8 months a year. My respect for and trust in Nate grew every day as he showed up early to practice, helped support the pole vault women at meets, helped me organize pole vaulter dim sum outings, and would offer to spot me while lifting. As time passed, our shared history grew along with our commitment to the pole vault team. Spending time together became so natural that we often ate dinner, played table tennis, and watched movies after practice.

After finshing undergrad, we continued to go to dim sum and see the occasional movie or art exhibit. When I defended my PhD in Nov 2007, the pole vault team showed up to support me and after I answered the last panel question, they took off their shirts to reveal: "Dr. Cat!" written on their chests... I couldn't have been more surprised or thrilled at this climax to my academic adventure.

After my PhD, I moved to Philly for work. Nate and I spoke on the phone every month or two sharing the new challenges and goals we were taking on in our lives. I always got off the phone feeling inspired and energized, wanting to run like mad through a park and jump around.

In November of 2009, Nate and I were simultaneously single for the first time since we met in 2001. In the past 8 years, we have seen each other at our best and worst in our respective relationships, and are incredibly thankful for all the experiences we have had individually. Although we had never discussed being in a relationship before, we knew that our trust and respect for each other guaranteed that our friendship would only be deepened through being vulnerable and open with each other.

We cleared our schedules for Dec 9 and 10 and although we were frightened, spent two days imagining what it would be like to spend our lives together. Although we understood that we weren't making any commitments, I left with the feeling - "where can I sign up for this?". Nate must have felt the same way since he flew to Tahoe for 2 days before New Years so we could see each other before I left for my four months of traveling.

On Jan 21, I met Nate at the airport in Siem Reap, Cambodia. At sunset on Jan 22 we sat on top of some ruins and agreed that although our minds couldn't rationalize it, we both knew that we wanted to get engaged here. We had dinner reservations watching traditional Cambodian dances and at 8:30pm we decided we'd try to find a ring. We found a jewelry store open for another 20min and I had the lady take out about 20 sparkling and brightly colored rings: light blue, gree, red - most of them set with lots of little stones around them...we wanted something simpler. The woman offered us a ring with a large white sapphire ("cambodian diamond") for $160. We bargained her down to a bitterly low $100, which she agreed to if we paid in cash, at which point Nate turned to me.Once we were back in the hotel, Nate confirmed on-line that white sapphires actually exist.

The next morning at breakfast we we were amused at how nervous we were despite us literally being the only ones in the world to know that we were going to attempt an engagement that day: "I don't know how this is supposed to work...I haven't gotten engaged before"...."Should I get down on one knee?" / "I think that would be nice - not too long though" / "Good, that was what I was thinking too"....and so we wandered around Ankor Wat until around 9am we found a spot in the inner courtyard that was quiet and shady and Nate got down on one knee and asked: "Catherine Anne Tweedie, will you marry me?" "Nathan Barker Ball, I will."

After the sliding on of the ring, we spent the rest of the day climbing over carved ruins, periodically forgetting and then enthusiastically remembering. For the next two months I wrote Nate letters in my journal by beaches, on cliffs, in jungles and would email him images of the letters when I came to a computer. Although I shared the news over skype with my parents and sister, we waited to announce our engagement until we could do it together in April.

I returned to Nate in Cambridge on March 31, 2010. Within 10 days we had announced our engagement and found our dream home to share for the next few years. We will move into our sunny, industrial loft, two blocks from Davis Square on May 22nd and look forward to inviting everyone to our housewarming / engagement party the weekend of June 4th.

So, there you have it. I am tumbling in love.

And finally with a huge grin....I am engaged

2010-04-08T09:01:00.000-07:00

more details to come

Hail beautiful Kiwi Land. Add one Frankki.

2010-04-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

I am back in the US now, but I spent so much of my time in NZ hiking that these pictures are about 3 weeks old - but I assure you they were worth the wait. Above is the view from the Pinnacles hike in Coromandel park about 2 hours from Aukland.

After finishing the 20km pinnacles hike by 3pm, I decided to drive 5 hours south so I could start the 24km Tongariro crossing the next morning. This was some of the most beautiful driving I have ever enjoyed. No cars. Just me, the car, the road and beautiful landscapes.

I arrived in the town that I planned to stay in to find that all the reception desks seemed to be closed for the night. In the spirit of independence and ruggedness I decided to put on all the clothes I had (Frankki had not yet arrived with my camping gear) and spend the night in the car....lets just say that I had to run the car every 90min throughout the night to bring my body temperature up....BUT, the reception desk opened in the morning and the hot breakfast above was incredible!

After the breakfast I was blessed with clearing skies and some of the most beautiful weather for the Tongariro crossing that could possibly be hoped for.

I don't know..it was just so beautiful

After the second day hike I drove back north to pick up Frankki from Aukland and we traveled north to the Bay of Islands and then all the way to the tip of the northern island where the Maori spirits are believed to depart the human world.

On the way back, we took a bus along the 90 mile beach and stopped for some tobogganing on giant sand dunes.

weeeeeee!

Ahhh....seeing this after being home for over a week melts my heart

I heart Sydney...it reminds me of San Francisco

2010-03-11T11:36:00.000-08:00

Sydney from the sky.

The harbor and the Sydney opera house from the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

Ferry ride out to Manly.

Outdoor pool - I nearly melted when I saw this...I can't imagine anything much more luxurious than this water-side lap pool, restaurant and yoga center.

I did handstands all over the Botanical and Royal gardens...it harder than I anticipated to take a good picture of yourself doing a handstand. Several people got a good show or failed attempts.

I must say - I am pleased with this one. At the time, I thought I would go around for the rest of the day taking pictures of myself imitating shapes, but that idea pooped out.

I took a tour of the iconic Sydney Opera House.

Here is the symphony hall. I couldn't take a picture of the opera hall because the stage set was copyrighted.

It was a dreamy evening since the tour magically reduced the opera tickets by $100 so I got a ticket to Tosca for $50!...I think I was the only one at the opera in shorts and a dirty under armour shirt - but I was thrilled to be there. Above is the view of the Harbor Bridge at night from the balcony outside the opera house at intermission.

Surfing in Byron Bay

2010-03-11T11:24:00.000-08:00

During my brief stay in Australia, I decided not to rush around and try to see everything (I will have to come back for another trip) and decided to stay in Byron Bay for 5 days. Byron Bay is in Queensland and reminded me of a small Santa Barbara with cute boutique shops, trendy restaurants but with a down-to-earth surfer mentality where many people walk around with nothing but swim shorts and a surf board.

During my stay I did lots of yoga (some in classes and some by myself by the beach), took surfing lessons, cooked in the hostel, and watched films from the Byron Bay International Film Festival that happily coincided with my visit.

There was often a good breeze at the beach. I had been stretching in the grass and started taking pictures of seagulls.

Here is a picture of me with bloodshot / tired eyes after three days of surfing and getting sunburnt in places on my face that teh sun doesn't usually hit: lips, upper and lower eyelids. During my 3 4-hour surfing lessons I started to see the potential for the incredible highs possible from surfing but left with a healthy respect for how tiring it can be. I was able to stand up on the board my first attempt and by the end of the second day could catch and ride in most "white-waves" (broken waves). On the third day I paddled out behind where the waves were breaking to start choosing some larger green waves to get on. I found I was pretty pooped just getting out to where I could sit on the board at wait for waves...with the feeling of being tumbled by a few waves still fresh in my memory...

There were a few films that I saw that energized me. There was a short film, in particular, that was so stunning I can't get the images out of my mind. It is called SALT and is made up of footage taken in the salt flats in the middle of Australia....so beautiful.

You can watch the trailer here: http://www.saltdoco.com/movie-info/synopsis.htm
Another highlight of the film festival for me was a session on creativity: there was a short documentary on "Unleashing creativity" and another called "Automorphosis" - which is all about the people who turn their cars into works of art - incredible people...I loved "The Spoon Man"

There were so so many young kids hitting the waves with boogie boards - it was great to see a whole culture dedicated to enjoying the ocean in a respectful way.

One day there was a competition for the Ocean Surf Rescue Club. This little girl wrapped in the orange towel already competed.

Cool Brisbane and Modern Art

2010-03-03T04:02:00.000-08:00

I arrived in Brisbane, Australia 2 days about and it was so quiet compared to Bangkok that it seemed like the city had been abandoned leaving me and the cool pattering of the rain that continued for the next 24 hours. I was happy for the cooler weather and spent the entire next day walking around seeing the city in the rain.

Not to mention that I am very excited to be using the extra gear that I had my mother bring from the US for my time in Australia and New Zealand (rain coat, long underwear, hat, dental floss..).

Brisbane is set around a winding river and yesterday I walked through the downtown area, the botanical gardens, went to the bathroom in a university student center and walked along the river front.

I found some lovely mushrooms that were enjoying the rainy weather as well

....as well as a Monet-esque Lilly-pad pond complete with flowers and rain drops

I was delighted to find that that modern art museum focused on large art installations (my fav!), many of which were commissioned for the large and architecturally interesting spaces

Who could not love this abstract piece made entirely of stainless steel tongs? Let me know if anyone sees a great sale of those on-line - I may be in the market.

This colorful, nearly-kitchy room was created by a pair of Indian artists. There was a lot going on but themes included the idolization of famous or successful indians and the hope that is placed in the children that are sent off to do great things, combined with their commentary on the Indian middle-class utopia (painting on the wall)

The detail on this painting was lovely...I miss India

Then there were the Japanese...man they are good. This large piece is a taxidermied elk covered entirely in crystal and glass balls.

This piece is all about surfaces and perception

On the second floor was a room filled with 100,000 white strings of different lengths that you could wander through if you took your shoes off and promised to move slowly and not hurt other walkers

Here is a picture from when I was walking through...very cool

Anybody want to do this with me next year?

Mom*Cat in Bangkok

2010-03-03T03:50:00.000-08:00

Look at that sweet mommy with cool glasses and her loving daughter in a FILTHY shirt standing together just before sunset on one of Bangkok's ferry piers.

I put my mother up in a charming youth hostel and in the mornings we had yogurt, mango, muesli and honey with a side of tea and toast...delightful! with the breeze blowing in from the concrete alley and the wooden sheep/magazine holder keeping us company.

We visited a 46 meter long reclining Buddha. Unbelievable! I have some pictures of the giant soles of his feet inlaid with mother of pearl.

We also went to the Grand Palace, which was the former residence of the royal family (although still used occasionally for major ceremonies). It was hilarious that the guide book said to look out for people saying that teh grand palace was closed and trying to detour you somewhere else to help you spend your money - and indeed - they were there!

As you can see - lots of gold and colored mirrors cover the outsides of all the buildings in this complex. Small detailed work gleamed down on us in the 95 degree mid-day heat. My mother and I made like the asian tourist and carried a sun parasol. It was fun having my mother on my arm while we were safely in the shade of the umbrella.

Many of the walls inside the buildings and on the interior side of the walls were covered in detailed paintings relating stories from long distant legend and more recent history. Here is a blow-up of a giant monkey-god that laid down over a river so that aThai army could cross over his back.

My mother and I walked about miles in the midday sun through the side streets of Bangkok so I could get fitted for a suit that I ordered last time I was in Bangkok (nearly 2 months before!). For nearly 30minutes we passed nothing but stores selling goods for buddhist offerings and ceremonies. Giant, plastic golden buddhas shrink wrapped and ready for purchase!

Not to mention: take home a waxy, life-size imitation of your favorite enlightened monk.

As we passed out of the old city and into "new" Bangkok we passed the National Stadium and came to a giant complex of several interconnected shopping malls in the Siam district.

The Siam Paragon is clearly the jewel of the malls and its 4-story atrium is picture-worthy with plants, water-works and a lovely picture of the king. On the fifth floor Cinema I saw The Hurt Locker with my mommy - and was stunned with how good it was. (I came back the evening I was to fly out of Bangkok to watch Avatar in 3D IMAX ...It was amazing! The whole time I was thinking, these blue people have it exactly right - I want to be a blue girl - link me up to the big nature network, get me a flying Ichran and link me to some shimmering ancestral trees!

As you travel downward through the mall from the entertainment floor you pass though a home living floor and a fashion floor and eventually down in the basement you get to the largest aquarium in southeast asia. I happened to have 850 Bhat to blow before I left the country and was delighted with my walk-about.

Look! Nemos with their anemone home in captivity!

This picture turned out surprisingly well. I think the fish tank wall may have contributed a bit of curviness.

So..these are Moray eels. I saw several of these while I was scuba diving and thought I recognized them - they are Flotsam and Jetsam from the Little Mermaid!

I got some very close up pictures of this shark with all his teeth and staring eyeballs...there is something about standing so close to a giant shark that makes one a bit giddy.

Resting up in Ko Samui

2010-03-02T01:41:00.000-08:00

Before heading back to Bangkok, mom and I made a 2 day pitstop on a quiet part of Ko Samui. We stayed at Oasis Health resort where most of the guests were there to lose weight and get tan. The pool was gorgeous and right by the ocean. The beach was nearly empty and mom and I went on several walks admiring all the plants and flowers.

These blossoms are everywhere and were often floating flower-side-up in the pool - which was almost unbearably picturesque and romantic.

Since I was there and am a girl of adventure I figured I would try a Colon Cleansing...good god!...It was one of the most mentally and physically challenging things I have done on my trip. You stick a sterile straw up your butt and then have to let 12 Liters of water alternately run into your colon (while you massage your stomach from left to right) and then out of your colon (while you massage your stomach from right to left). In this way you rinse your colon. It took about 45minutes and afterward I had a headache and my stomach felt a little funny. I am sure the miraculous benefits of this adventure are paying dividends as I type.

Cat in pool :)

...next to little concrete elephant

Ko Tao with Mommy

2010-03-02T01:34:00.000-08:00

Mommy arrived the day after Valentine's Day and we stayed one night together at Chewang beach. The area is so popular that lounge chairs for sunbathing vistors are lined up nearly into the ocean.

Here is the bungalow we stayed in for 5 nights on Ko Tao. Most people reached it by water taxi ride - although mom and I took the narrow and steep trail to get to the closest villages.

The resort we were staying at was called Sai Thong. Every morning and every evening we ate at the little outdoor restaurant. Here is the view complete with ocean and granite boulders.

On the first full day in Ko Tao, mom and I took a snorkeling trip with 5 stops around the island. The picture above is a small island off the northwest corner of Ko Tao where I had some of the best snorkeling of my trip in the "japanese garden"

Mom and I hiked to the top of a nearby peak to get the picture I took from above. We split a mango without having a knife which was a delicious but messy operation.

Here is a ferry boat carrying passengers on a similar around-the-island snorkeling tour.

It turns out, that we didn't need to pay money to go see wildlife, since the wildlife would come directly into our bungalow and visit us. This orange and black from would crawl out of the drainage pipe in our outdoor sink every night and hang out, which made tooth-brushing a rather awkward affair.

Why are you such a puffy frog?
The next day I was speaking with my bungalow neighbor from my balcony to her balcony while we both sat in our respective hammocks. She told me how they were coming home after dark through the jungle with flashlights and saw a 2 meter python sitting in the trail and had to scare it off by rolling a coconut at it.
The next day, one of girls who works at the resort tripped over a 3 meter python and we could hear her screeming after the shock....the next day I went to the internet cafe and looked up poisenous wildlife in south east asia. I was calmed to see that there were no poison dart frogs in southeast asia but disturbed to realize that I had been within several feet of some of the most poisenous fish in the world while scuba diving.
Meet the Stonefish (I saw 3 of them in Ko Lanta and at the time didn't understand why other divers were so excited about these unattractive bottom-dwellers):

This is what the website said: Maybe Stonefish would never win a beauty contest, but it would definitely win the top prize for being “The World's Most Venomous Fish”. Its venom causes such a severe pain that the victims of its sting want the affected limb to be amputated. It is described as the worst pain known to man. It is accompanied with possible shock, paralysis, and tissue death. If not given medical attention within a couple of hours It can be fatal to humans.
Stonefish stores its toxins in gruesome-looking spines that are designed to hurt would-be predators.
Stonefish mostly live above the tropic of Capricorn, often found in the shallow tropical marine waters of the Pacific and Indian oceans, ranging from the Red Sea to the Queensland Great Barrier Reef.

But there are also lots of pretty things that won't kill me and those were lovely to see as well

My mommy's here and I've learned to windsurf

2010-02-17T02:31:00.000-08:00

In preparation for my mother's arrival, I decided to book a little house by the beach and stock it with plenty of snacks and fresh fruit.

That night we had a mixture of Indian and Thai food for dinner on our front porch. For dessert we had dragonfruit - which is the coolest looking fruit I have ever seen - hot pink on the outside with bright green detailing and white with black spots on the inside.

As I was walking along Chewang beach before my mother arrived I noticed a sign for windsurfing lessons. I have always wanted to pick up windsurfing, so this looked like a great place to learn. I signed up for 2 1-hour lessons and by the end of the first hour I could pull the sail out of the water while standing on the board and sail straight until I was about to hit something and then fall over.

By the end of my second session, I could curve (to not hit swimmers and boats - which is useful) and turn.I summarized what I learned in my journal so that I could remember next time I rented a board to practice.

Afterward, my mother and I got hour long oil massages on the beach before heading off to dinner.

The next day mom and I took a ferry to Ko Tao, a much smaller and quieter island. We hiked for 40minutes on a steap dirt path to get to Sai Thong Resort - a little collection of bungalows that can only be reached by hiking or by wooden boat. Despite being drenched in sweat when we arrived after carrying my bag and my mom's suitcase to the resort, I immediately felt at home on this island and was so proud of my mom for being in such great shape.

Here is my mother sitting on a granite rock in the resort's secluded cove. The only sounds are the waves lapping against the rocks and the birds chirping in the palm trees.

Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year - On the beach

2010-02-17T02:16:00.000-08:00

For Valentine's Day dinner I had mixed vegitables in oyster sauce on rice and a mojito with an Irish traveling companion at Chewang Beach, Ko Samui. Chewang Beach sort of reminded me of a Thai Las Vegas. After dinner we got some pancakes with coconut and chocolate inside them and then fried. We took our dessert and walked on the beach to see what all the resorts were up to.

We found explicit lesbian sex captured in sand sculpture

We found dragon dancing and live traditional Chinese music

And of course lots of creatively engineered valentine's day decorations - each uniquly endearing

Rock climbing at Railay Beach

2010-02-16T01:46:00.000-08:00

Here are Railay East (far bay) and Railay West (near shore) taken from one of the nearby cliffs that I scrambled up on. Rockclimbers from all over the world bring their heavy ropes and gear to climb the vertical limstone faces and funky rock formations that rise directly out of crystal clear turquoise water.

Here is the view of the beach as I was arriving by longtail boat - which I hopped onto from the larger ferry bound for another island.

Railay West has trememdous tides that expose the rock face at the right called "One Two Three" wall and is popular with climbers of all experience levels. At low tide they bring tourists in from the boats with a tractor and trailer.

In the middle of the small peninsula is a deep lagoon with sheer walls rising up 50meters on all sides. At low tide, the lagoon is drained leaving a ring of caves that can be explored (and a huge mud-pit!)

My hike to the lagoon turned out to be so vertical that many people turned back once they saw the bouldering required, something not revealed by the little dotted line on my free map.

On my way up I also had a monkey experience I had never had before. There was a group of about 20 monkeys on the small (steep) clay path. To move up the path I had to move very close to them. For a while I took some pictures - the one above came right up to the camera and gave me this dramatic pose. When I had all the monkey pictures I needed I intended to continue on, however one of the larger monkeys I had to pass grabbed me by the wrist. I stopped and he climbed up on to my shoulders and sat behind my head. After getting him off I laughed at literally having a monkey on my back....hehe

Here is the climbing map of 1-2-3 wall, that I climbed a number of routes on. The climbing was tremendously fun with such a varied set of rock formations to explore on one face. Of course, hanging out with all the resting climbers at the base of the wall was lovely too and I am very much looking forward to some more climbing later in my trip. Here are a couple pictures from the climbs...

There were a number of climbers that were a joy to watch. I can't even tell what this guy is resting his feet on.

Muay Thai Boxing

2010-02-14T00:55:00.000-08:00

When I first arrived on Ko Lanta I met a a large, muscular guy named Jonny who had been living on the island in a bamboo bungalow since October. He originally came to Thailand for a 3 week vacation and has stayed for 1.5 years. In the US, he worked for a large engineering corporation, now he is a master dive instructor and a Muay Thai boxer.

It turns out that Jonny and I were in the same room in 1999. He graduated from a high school 3 miles away from where I went to school and was also a wrestler. He saw me in 1999 when I won my first wrestling match against a guy on his team. I was relieved to hear that although the guy got a lot of shit, he still continued wrestling :)

Jonny inspired me so much that I decided to stay on Ko Lanta and live in his world for a week. I signed up to get my scuba certification and take private Thai Boxing lessons early in the morning.

Welcome to the Muay Thai boxing gym on Ko Lanta on the west coast of southern Thailand.

Here is Cat with teh braids I put in my hair practicing the kicks I had just learned after the session with the instructor. During the session, you basically push and kick the trainer who is covered in pads - it is very motivating and very tiring.

I don't think this picture does justice to the pain I was feeling in my feet and shins after 2 days of Muay Thai kicking. I had lost skin in some places and my skin ached...not to mention my muscles -especially my lower obliques.

Here is a guy from Britain who has been training for several years and is having his private session. In the background is his wife who is a yoga instructor. They are training every day during their holiday.

Meet Lindsay and James - they are from Kansas and Colorodo and are spending the year teaching English in Beijing. They are both incredibly atheletic and good people and I got to play with them while I was on Ko Lanta, which worked out wonderfully.

Lindsay, James, Jonny and I went to the Ko Lanta Muay Thai stadium for a set of 8 matches. (Jonny had wom the final match of the night the previous week! - go Jonny!) I was extatic to go to the event and feel like I had a community. My trainer was taking the tickets at the door, his brother was doing some of the announcing, a frech guy I had met on the beach was selling drinks, and I got to wave to a half-dozen other people I had met at the gym during the matches.

The first round is typically more ceremonial, where boxers will dance around each other feeling each other out and pacing themselves for the massively long 5 x 3min sets. The first 4 matches of the night are typically boys between the ages of 12 and 16. There are usually no knock-outs during these matches and I saw varying levels of activity.

However, in the 5th match, the guys did not pace themselves at all. They were doing flying attacks from the first round. My the second round one guy hit the ground completely limp after a solid hit to the head. Unbelievably, he got back up and kicked the other guy's butt for another 2 rounds before hitting the ground in the 5th round (picture below). He walked away safely but even in the 4th round both fighters were having trouble standing upright ...some of the fighters sitting near us said it was the best fight they had ever seen...

The final match was a swedish guy (primarily a boxer) and a Thai guy (primarily a kicker) - here you can see them doing their warm-up ceremony during which the boxers often move to each corner of the ring and do a short prayer and then do whatever other dance they would like in the middle of the ring.

Here's me on the beach after scuba Day 2.

And another amazing sunset

I am a certified scuba diver to 60 ft!

2010-02-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

After getting settled in Ko Lanta and found I wanted to stay and enjoy the island rhythm for a while before moving on and decided to get my scuba certification and take up Thai boxing (Muay Thai) for the week. It has been a beautiful week where I have been outside 15 hours a day and doing at least 3 hours of exercise, which has left me feeling healthy, happy and balanced.

My scuba training took 3 days and was done entirely in the ocean. The first day was in very shalow ocean where I learned a bunch of the skills after doing bookwork, watching videos and taking tests in the morning.

On day 2 we went out to Ko Ha Lagoon which was about a 2 hour boat ride from Ko Lanta. On this day I did 2 dives to 12 meters

I got to meet most of the cast from finding Nemo which was exciting. You may recognize the fish being pointed to in the picture which is a Moorish Idol, not to be confused with the nearly identical Banner Fish that has a much longer white thingy on top.

It is Nemo and the anemone! I admit that it was embarrassing how many times during my dive I had the thought..."this is so much like the movie"...especially when schools of hundreds of fish make turns al in unison like they are actually one creature.

The rocks that we visited near Ko Phi Phi, that were apparently covered with water thousands or milions of years ago, are good looking above water but a mindblowingly stunning underwater. On day 3 I was diving to 18meters (60ft) and was comfortable enough with my boyancy to be doing nearly continuous barrel rolls as I toured around under water.
The closest thing I can compare to looking up along 60 feet of nearly vertical coral reef covered in life toward the light coming from above is a futuristic alien city where millions of aliens are going about their business moving in and out of their colorful and undulating homes and stores.

I saw a lot of strange underwater life but I would like to highlight a couple:
Blue sea star - these were everywhere and has arms that were sometimes over a foot long draped over rocks and coral
Christmas Tree Worm - makes very bright (blue, orange, purple) multi-tiered parasols that stick out of the coral and retract very quickly when you come close

I think I like bright schools of fish the best of all...watching thousands of fish moving all around you as if you aren't even there is incredible...especially while doing barrel rolls...

My days for the past week have gone something like this on scuba diving days...

6am-7:30 meditate and collect shells on beach, watch the sun rise

7:30am - get picked up by diving company and am on the boat by 8am

8:30am - Amazing breakfast (omelets, fruit, weat bread, vegitables, jam, yogurt) is shared on the 3 level diving boat

9am - Discuss the days dives with my instructor (I am her only client for these 3 days!) over tea

10am-11:30am - Preparation and first dive

11:30-12:30 - Excellent lunch of vegitables and curries with rice

1-2:30 - Prep and second dive

4pm - Go to favorite beach hang out caled "Thai Cat" and drink/eat a fresh coconut while reading my book (see coconut below)

5pm - Go for swim in the ocean

6pm - Watch the sunset and read book

7pm - Meet friends for dinner and talk

Cat returns to paradise

2010-02-05T07:02:00.000-08:00

I boarded a bus in Bangkok at 6pm. Eight hours later, at a rest stop I decided to go to a small island called Ko Lanta (that I had never heard of before) instead of first stopping in the island tourist hub, Phuket, as originally planned. I was pleased about this journey for two reasons:
A. I was was able to manage my thoughts to stay very happy and relaxed throughout the 18 hour bus/minibus/ferry journey, while many people around me were starting to suffer because of negative thoughts they were having about things like our bus breaking down after 10 hours in a not-so-reclining bus seat.
B. I was able to listen to what I wanted (going directly to the more remote, quiet island) and simply do what I needed to without clinging to the original plan.

Along the way, I exchanged contact information with wonderful people: an israeli girl who just spent a year in India doing yoga, was a practicing Japanese Buddhism and was going to romantically rejoin a french backpacker she met several days ago; a hippie from the mountains North Carolina; a mixed martial artist who has been training in Chiang Mai but is originally from London and sells project management software; and an American couple who were both college athletes (baseball and javelin) and are spending a year after college teaching English in Beijing.

This is the sunset I was greeted by the first evening.

This is a "short cut" I took while walking around the island that 10 minutes later earned me some sliced up toes that I am treating with bacitracin and lots of salt water and sand.

...and here is my bamboo bungalow with my open air bathroom...

...open air bathrooms are the best!

Here is Sasha (London mixed martial artist) and me before we parted ways on different ferries. Tomorrow morning at 7:30 am I am going to walk 2km to the Thai boxing club on the island and try to get a private lesson. Who knows, maybe I will want to train there for a few days?

Phnom Penh - lively but relaxed - I enjoyed my stay

2010-02-05T07:01:00.000-08:00

I was ushered into this small temple by an older caretaker (I assume) who proceeded to do the good luck chants (usually done by monks) and shower holy water onto my head and then begin smoking. I couldn't resist this picture!

wooshing mopeds near the Russian market area

Tiny! novice monk

view from my guest house balcony

really nice hotel I visited for the day. You can swim in their pool and lounge about if you order food in their outdoor cafe...tough life

It looks like the elephant is smiling. I smiled a lot too as I traveled around the city. Biking in rush hour was hilarious (very much like a racing video game) and I loved riding side-saddle on the moto-scooters (while practicing being very relaxed like all the Cambodian girls who whirl through traffic without holding on and often texting)

Cambodia, 1974 to1979

2010-02-03T01:09:00.000-08:00

Cambodia has had some very rough history in the not distant past. In the 4 years after the Khmer Rouge took over the government in 1974, over 2 million Cambodians were killed; this represents between one fourth to one third of the population. Intellectuals were especially targeted and identified by characteristics such as higher education, softer hands, lighter complexion, and ability to speak another language. The goal of the Khmer Rouge was to create a completely equal society - practically this translated into mobilizing the whole population into agriculture (often rice farming) and killing anyone who resisted. Before the Khmer Rouge took over there was tremendous corruption in the government and so the revolution was originally hailed by a very frustrated population as the change that they had been waiting for.

Below is a picture of the middle and high school buildings that were converted into a detention center and a place for forcing confessions through extensive torture. Over the 4 years it processed 20,000 people. Extensive records were kept and I saw a lot of photographs that I never thought I would see.

The detainees were kept in either group or individual holding cells

The rules shown below included not crying while "getting lashes or electrification"

After the appropriate confessions had been obtained from the detainees (sometimes confessions were written thousands of times), they were transported by truck 15km to the killing fields. At the entrance to the killing fields there is a big structure out of glass and wood that houses the skulls of 9000 people that were recovered from the surrounding fields.

I think one of the most amazing things I saw was the interview with the truck driver who drove all the people between the detention center and the killing fields. He was smiling during most of the interview as he pointed out the details of the killing fields. He is one of the few people that remain to testify in the war crimes tribunal that will begin in a few years. This topic deserves more commentary and hopefully I will get back to it...

I don't even know what to say about a sign like this.

As we walked around there were pieces of clothing stuck in the ground everywhere. These are clothes from the people in the mass graves that are still surfacing after each rainy season. I was uncomfortable walking around the killing fields since everywhere I stepped I noticed fragments of bone or clothing from the thousands of people who were thrown into mass graves here only 30 years ago.

There were many pictures that I could not bring myself to take while I was walking around these facilities, but this picture spoke pretty strongly to me about what it was like to live life during these years.

On a lighter note, here is Cat and Kev making a biking pit-stop at a bakery. My apetite was still at about 15% of normal after being sick but I found a very healthy little muffin friend to nibble on.

Boat ride to Battambang

2010-02-03T00:27:00.000-08:00

The morning after Nate departed. I hopped a boat ride to Battambang that was supposed to be the most beautiful in Cambodia and estimated in the guide book to take between 5 and 9 hours. Southeast asia is currently in the dry season and the boat ride was safely at the 9 hour mark with our heavy load of passengers and rice for small towns along the way. It was pretty amusing that the boat had to stop every few minutes to "ask" (honk) fishermen to move their nets or wait for one of the crew to use large sticks to get us un-stuck from the bank where branches often sideswiped dozing passengers.

At the beginning of the ride we passed through Tonle Sap lake - which is Cambodia's largest freshwater lake producing a significant amount of fish for the country all year round. This lake is attributed to be a primary source of sustenance for the great Angkor empire.

The river is lined with floating fishing villages. The houses move significant distances every year as the rivers swell and ebb in size. They float on bundles of bamboo sticks that need to be removed and dried every 3-5 years to stay "floaty"

These giant-insect like cantilevered fishing nets were present all along the river and were often constructed as a floating house / giant fishing net combos. Definitely makes for a short commute to work...I think I would miss getting to ride my bike though.

I really liked how well organized all these floating houses were. Every kitchen area I could see into had a spot on the wall for each pan. I suppose when you have a family with several children and grandparents living in a tiny space where you often can't stand up, it is helpful if it is tidy.

While we were passing through a bird sanctuary I came to the front of the boat and sat with my feet on the edge, being careful not to get in the captain's line of sight as I had seen him use the horn on several passengers already. I saw a whole bunch of white herons, some large black birds, but the strangest birds are the ones I would see in a few days as I biked along the Mekong.

My main boat-companion, Kev (who I would meet up with 2 days later in Phnom Penh), filled a good part of our 9 hour trip with his tales of his 3 months of cycling and hitchhiking adventures through China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand.
Below, Kev is preparing for the next day and tutoring me on the finer points of hitchhiking logistics and philosophy. The logistics were amusing and may be useful someday but the philosophy is what I found really interesting because it relates to the reading I have been doing on honest and empathetic communication (Nonviolent Communication by M. Rosenberg...thanks for the recommendation, Chris!!!)

The idea is that when you hitchhike you are showing your vulnerability and others are able to give you a pure gift of a generous act. This makes them feel good because they have been generous and it makes you feel good because you have shared your vulnerability with another human being as asked for help. As a bonus, you often get going in the direction you were hoping to go and sometimes get to share a meal or a place to sleep.

No worries, parents, I am not planning to switch to a new primary mode of travel - since I do think there is another dimension added for single female travelers. However, the principle of the entirely generous exchange on both sides is very appealing to me.

Ankor Wat and Siem Reap

2010-02-02T20:51:00.000-08:00

In the pre-dawn coolness, Nate and I joined the processional of dark figures and bobbing flashlights on the bridge crossing the moat of Angkor Wat. The moat is wider than a football fiel and in the darkness we imagined what the Angkor temples would look like as we passed through the outer gate. In front of the main complex are two large pool filled with lotus flowers - we waited there as the sky grew lighter and revealed the shape of the Angkor towers mimicing the shape of the closed lotus blossom.

We exited the Angkor complex later that morning and emerged to the scene of bridemaids resting in the shade of the outer walls while impeccably adorned Thai brides were photographed with parasols by the outer moat.

For a more extensive set of pictures and descriptions of all the beautiful temples we visited please see the lovely photo journal that Nate put together:
http://picasaweb.google.com/nateball/Cambodia?authkey=Gv1sRgCLSji_jyu53xSw#

I have been dreaming about visiting Angkor Wat in Cambodia for several years - especially since hiking 5 days to see Machu Picchu in Peru. I also celebrated the realization that I have now been to 5 of the 7 voted wonders of the world The Taj (India), Pyramids (Egypt), Macchu (Peru), Petra (Jordon) and now Angkor (Cambodia) - and greatly look forward to my trip to China for the great wall :)

The temples that I liked best were ones that were being both destroyed and held together by the massive roots of Spung trees. The most massive and elegant example of this is Ta Prohm. Below is the main entrance with the hugs smiling face characteristic of the major works created under Khmer King Jayavarman VII in the late 12th century.

Nate pushed up into a handstand to the delight of some passing tourists.

Cat in backbend during walk about in Angkor Wat.

One of the smaller and more ruined temples we visited

Here is a massive pool built for a Khmer King kept full by an underground spring. Incredible.

Stay tuned in the near future for the rest of the Cambodia blogs, before I head down to Southern Thailand to begin my month-long exploration of the islands :)

I heart bicycles

2010-02-02T06:04:00.000-08:00

I spent 2 full days biking on dirt roads / paths along the Mekong River. In my 28 years of life I have not yet developed a very strong directional sense, so my strategy was to keep the 10th largest river in the world always within view on my right. (Sometimes I would lose sight of it and have to cut through farm fields to catch a reassuring glimpse.) This is what it looked like:

On my first day of biking, when I left the small town of Kratie at 7am with all my belongings bungee corded to the back of my mountain bike, I felt a surge of joy and had a huge smile on my face - I couldn't help it - this act felt freeing and distinctly like what I wanted to be doing. Here is my bike with my bag looking especially small from this angle. It weighs about 8kg now.

Following the river, there were many bridges of pretty good quality passing over tributaries to the river (which is now at its low point in the dry season)

This little cutie came over when I took my first break on the first day to have some mini-biscuits and water. I gave her a biscuit and she thanked me and then continued to watch me. Her little brother was too shy to come claim his biscuit in person so she accepted it on his behalf

Within the first 30minutes of biking through small riverfront villages I saw details of rural agriculture life in Cambodia that I can't imagine seeing otherwise. Also, it was refreshing to have everyone genuinely excited to see me, since I seeing a (pale and female) foreigner biking through their village was such a novelty. Everywhere I biked children screemed Helloooo! and mother's called their children to watch me pass. In fact, any time I stopped small groups started forming and would mostly just watch me... this was fun except for when I really needed to pee. I had to sneak off from this group of guys pretending I was taking pictures around the corner.

At the end of the first day's ride I was in Chlong which gets about a paragraph in the lonely planet guide and was the only place with official guest houses for many miles. The first place I inquired was run by a friendly woman who excitedly ushered me up the stairs and then flew about opening sets of shutters to reveal a rather magnificent 2 bedroom house, made almost entirely out of teak and other hard woods. With a one-night fee of $7 to enjoy the space for the rest of the day, I was sold.

Here is me at the end of day 1.

I washed up and spent the afternoon laying on the wrap-around balcony and reading while enjoying the river. This was my private view:)

On day 2 I saw a LOT of carts - there seem to be several main designs for ox-carts and they all seem to be made for 2 oxen. I wonder why no one tries to pull stuff with one ox?

The second day was a 75km ride that took from 5:59am to about 3pm. What was cool about biking during this whole time was getting to see the daily activities averaged over thausands of families. For the first few hours I provided a bit of entertainment to hundreds of families eating sunday breakfast on raised and shaded platforms (that double as sales stands for produce later in the day). I said hello to hundreds of children (possibly thousands) on day 2.

I ran out of water and small bills by about 1pm and had 30minutes of biking that were mentally and physically less fun. However, I met a farming family that had change for a 10USD bill and multiple drinks I could buy and I hung out with them for a while. The man I was speaking to was 28 and here is his 1 year old daughter that he would like to send to university.

Arriving in Kampung Cham felt a little miraculous. I checked into a room by the river. I changed colors in the shower. I ate a huge bowl of Fish Amok and rice (traditional Cambodian dish that resembled a fish custard with onion).

Biking down the Mekong starts tomorrow

2010-01-29T06:52:00.000-08:00

I have been in Cambodia for 10 days now...here is the route I have followed (with modes of transportation drawn in as close to scale as possible)

Here is the brief version of what has happened (with a blog on each step to follow in the coming days)

On the boat ride between Siem Reap and Battambang, I met a wonderful British school teacher who inspired me to do some bike riding. Kevin and I met up 2 days later in Phnom Penh where I rented a good mountain bike. He told me where in Cambodia he'd had some of the most beautiful riding of his past 3 months and Kevin even parted with part of his precious Cambodian map (actually quite difficult to come by in Cambodia...), only taking a small bit to the south of Phnom Penh where he is ending his journey by donating his bike to an orphanage. Excellent chap!

This morning, I miraculously boarded a 7am bus to Kratie and got my montain bike on for an extra 3 USD. This afternoon I spent in Kratie, resting up for tomorrow, watching the sunset accross the magestic Mekong river and buying snacks for the ride around all 4 blocks of town!

I was a bit nervous yesterday since I am recovering from some vomitting / nausea / fever 2 days ago but today I feel almost strong like horse and am looking forward to being out on the bike. My goal is to ride along the unpaved road that follows the river, listen to my body and be safe :)

Here is a cartoon from 2 days ago

There are absolutely incredible pictures that I can';t wait to share from earlier in the Cambodia venture, but those will have to wait until after this 2-3day bike trip (unless internet cafe's have made it to the fishing villages that aren't connected by paved roads...which is possible...).

With so much love. Your Cat-Biking-down-the-Mekong-river-Tomorrow

Practice clearly. Mindfully. Try your best. - Dr. Narong

2010-01-19T17:56:00.000-08:00

Living and meditating at Wat Umong in a forest outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand has left a big impression on me.

Over the last 9 days I have essentially not spoken, written or read anything. For the 14hours of meditation practice every day, there was 5-10minutes of instruction from Dr. Narong. I now understand that retraining the mind takes a tremendous amount of focused repetition.

I can say the following with confidence: We meditate to train the mind to see the true nature of reality so that we may live happily; acting and speaking in ways that reduce suffering for ourselves and those around us.

This statement has both profound and practical implications for me that I did not comprehend 10 days ago. For now, meditation is an active work in progress. I woke up this morning and practiced for 2 hours on my balcony as the sun rose.

Here are a few more images from my stay at the temple

And finally, here are the guidelines for the meditation retreat and also the chant that we said together before every meal (I became very fond of this one).

Pictures from the temple life

2010-01-13T22:39:00.000-08:00

There is a tremendous amount to say about the last 3.5 days. All wonderful. However, I only left the temple to make sure I could get to Cambodia on Jan 20th. Before I head back to temple-life here are some pictures I wanted to share with you.

This is our teacher, Dr. Nagau

Here is where I go during our relaxation times

This is the hot chocolate I drink in the afternoon because we don;t have any food after 12pm

This is where I practice

And this is one of my favorite temple dogs

And finally, this is my new room. It is about 4'6" by 5'10", and I am very fond of it.

Practicing being Gentle and Kind: Lesson 1

2010-01-10T03:47:00.000-08:00

These are the brilliant flowers over my room at "Smile House" in Chiang Mai". For the last 2 days I have biked 2 hours a day stopping at Wats and buying snacks, going to yoga class, swimming in a small outdoor pool and speaking with people in outdoor cafes and juice houses.

Yesterday morning I was worried because my plan was to go to Laos and travel down the Mekong river to get to Cambodia by Jan 20th seemed like a lot of work and travel. There were so many things I wanted to do and it would require me to keep moving almost every day. Not only was I worrying about what to do but I was judging myself critically for worrying about it, and then doubly-judging because I wasn't being Gentle and Kind.

So...I asked myself what would be most Gentle and Kind? and the answer was very happily to stay in Chiang Mai. Oh, it was so easy! :)

To celebrate I rented a bicycle and visited some lager temple complexes a few km outside Chiang Mai. One was Suan Dok which was quite brilliant in the afternoon sun.

I also found another little Wat nearby that had a little jungle-scene behind my Golden Friendly that I really liked

I biked on toward Wat Umon and even as I peddled up the hill on my one-speed cruiser (complete with basket) I could already feel I was entering a much quieter area. I parked my bike in a pile of leaves and was greeted with a sign in english: "If you would like to help tie orange ribbons on the trees, please come see the Meditation Center Office"...and I thought: Oooh, I would really like to do that!

I walked along the concrete pathway flanked with ribboned trees...

and came to the main office where I took off my shoes and spoke with the monk. I asked him if I could stay here and meditate and he said " Yes, when would you like to come?" and I said "maybe tomorrow?...I will walk around and decide". He gave me a photocopied diagram of the complex and cirlced the places I should visit including the fish feeding pond:

One of the terraces for worship including a large and heavily ribboned tree

and the pagoda (the picture here is actually down the stairs from the pagoda but you can see how lovely the forest is in the afternoon light)

...So, I stopped back and said I would come in 2 days at 7:15am and bring my things and stay for at least 3 days. He said: I will see you on Monday before breakfast.

He gave me a pamphlet and I gave him my info and signed a sheet saying I would comply by all the rules on the Temple.

This is what the next few days will look like starting tomorrow morning:

4am Wake up

5-7am Meditation practice

7-7:20 Cleaning

7:30-8 Breakfast

8-9am Relaxation

9-11am Meditation practice

11:30-12 Lunch

12-1:30 Relaxation

1:30-3 Meditation practice

3-3:15 tea break

3:15-4:30 Meditation

4:30-6 Breaking Time

6-9pm Meditation practice

9pm Bedtime

...I think there is about 13 hours of meditation...and only 2 meals... a day. I am not going to comment at this point on the daily schedule except to say that I am excited to see what unfolds and I can't imagine a more perfect place for me right now, than this forrested temple complex filled with stone sculptures, monks and trees with ribbons.

Last night I went to the night market and got my required outfit. here is me giving it a whirl after I showered. I am so happy to be going on this adventure and it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't given myself space from my original plan. I am learning that being Gentle and Kind means not clinging to what I thought the answer should be and being willing to step back and trust my intuition.

Chiang Mai: I dub thee City of Golden Friendlies

2010-01-08T07:25:00.000-08:00

Welcome aboard the train to Chiang Mai from Bangkok. Please, come in, come in. You have sprung for first class and will be sleeping in this glorious cabin as you are whisked away during the night to northern Thailand.

For your traveling pleasure, we have put you in an adjoining cabin to a charming British- Ukrainian family. The husband is a restaurateur in London and the wife a teacher and they will shower you with stories of Russian and British aristocracy (and cocktail offers).

You arrive at 9:30am and you decide to walk the mile into town from the train station since it is cooler in Chiang Mai and you are looking forward to stretching your legs. You are also a bit proud to walk past the frey of tuk-tuk drivers as if you actually have a destination and know how to get there...You take a picture of some flowers because you like flowers and the color orange...but you know, and the flowers know, there is a lot of gold in this town...

So without further ado...here are some of the Golden Friendlies of Chiang Mai (queue music sanctioned my the King of Thailand, who is now 83 but was very handsome in his youth)

On the second day, after a wonderful morning or yoga, meditation, peaceful eating and slow wandering you hop in a red truck and head up the winding 15km road to a Wat at the top of a steep hill called Doi Suthep. Your driver's name is Chia and he is 75. During the Vietnam war, when he was 24, his job was to halp the American soldiers relax and have a good time spending their money in Thailand. He said he was trained in how to administer medication in the case of too much drinking.

After you arrive, there are some magnificent stairs you get to climb (and are pleased about how in shape you are compared to the gasping Japanese school children).

You arrive at the top and the view of Chiang Mai is lovely and you look exactly like Cat with short hair and that is a bit weird but the monks near you don't seem to mind.

And so you wander around this hill-top Wat and find many more golden buddhas
You even decide to sit down for a while in a courtyard and read because it is so pleasant and a little cat comes up behind you and walks across your bag and into your lap and you pet it quietly while you continue to read. Then you think it would be nice to have a picture with more than just your head (because your arms are not abnormally long) and so you ask some japanese women who do a very professional job and you thank them. You also go speak to one of the monks about living here for a few days and meditating and find out that there are only 10 rooms and they are booked at the moment but may be free in 1-2weeks and you think about coming back.
Finally, as you are entering the center of the city with Chia again, he offers you a fruit you have never seen before. He says he grew them in his garden and starts handing you a whole bunch of them. You thank him profusely and say your goodbyes. You sit by the river and try one.

The shell is like a smoother,more delicate and larger peanut shell and inside you have strings (like in an orange) surrounding a fruit that tastes like a candied date around several very hard seeds. You like them!

I am here

2010-01-06T01:55:00.000-08:00

When I left San Francisco, I hadn't cracked the cover of my guidebook. Here is a picture of my parents and me before I left. Unfortunately, you can tell from the picture how my parents felt about this course of non-action by their weirdo daughter. (The backpack I am wearing in the picture has everything I have with me - I love having just a few things!)

Despite explicit concern from my parents, I felt pretty good about the natural unfolding of my trip, and so with only a little guilt, I watched 4 movies on the 12 hour flight to Korea instead of reading about Thailand, since I had in fact booked my first night's hotel.

With plenty of time to spare on the flight between Korea and Bangkok I looked at the map of Bangkok and figured out how much a taxi should cost in Bhat. It all worked out perfectly and in my travel delerium at 1am local time I practiced the pronunciation of street names with my first friend and taxi driver in Thailand.

So here I am on my second morning, practicing listening to myself and evolving my trip accordingly. What feels gentle and kind now? This morning I woke up without an alarm at 5:30am and did yoga and meditated in my room until 6:30am and then went to breakfast where I lingered over eggs, a chinese steemed cabbage and carrot dish with rice and watermelon and papaya. I then went to the pool and read until I felt like swimming. I swam laps for 45min and then cleaned up and went out to lunch.

At lunch I met my new friend Shantanu, a massage therapist / IT specialist / vegitarian cook / amateur asrologist from Delhi. We had a lovely conversation that sparked the following sketch in my journal. The chilli peppers in the picture were not from the conversation - those are a reminder that when the waitress says "one? two Chillies?" she is not asking you about the American scale of hotness (e.g. mild / medium) she is asking about the number of whole chilli peppers I would like diced into my papaya salad. I can confirm that I am not man enough for 2 - it was rough...

The area around my hotel is called Banglamphu and is in many endearing ways aptly termed a "tourist ghetto". At night, it is equally lively and yesterday evening I parked myself at a colorful little table where I could watch people go by and these lovely lanterns blowing in the breeze.

So much food everywhere at all times of day

Yesterday I made friends with a tuk tuk driver (like the Indian autorickshaws) and we spent most of the day together. We made a deal that benefitted both of us.

I loved this school bus! Also, my tuk tuk friend and I went to a Wat and saw this giant standing buddha.

Love you all very much. Thank you for checking in. I am doing wonderfully and can't wait to wake up in Chiang Mai tomorrow and see what is in store for me there.

Discovering "Gentle and Kind"

2010-01-03T07:16:00.000-08:00

I am still very amused by acupuncture and like visiting my mother's favorite Tai Chi teacher in San Francisco who has an acupucture office on Ocean St. At the end of our session I asked: "I am going to have a lot of time on my hands for the next 3 months, is there anything else you would recommend I do?"

He sat for a few moments in quiet reflection and then he lit up and said "Yes! There is something you can do - if you are open to it..." **My brain: Yes! give me something I can work really hard on during my trip and get better at**..."You should practice being gentle and kind to yourself" **Oh, what a load of crap. That is not helpful** "you probably already realize this is something you really need in your life" **..uh oh...**"and if you practice this it will allow some big shifts in your life and allow you to make some difficult decisions" I suppose its fitting that a wise Chinese acupucturist would give me a mission for my journey.

In the car on the way home: **What does that mean?. What does being Gentle and Kind to myself actually look like? I'm a nice person, but I don't want to be lazy and sit on the couch all the time and eat cookies...that would make me feel like crap. I suppose that makes sitting on the couch eating cookies NOT Gentle and Kind.

Hm. It seems like figuring this out could be a big deal...So I started asking myself the same question all the time.

Is this a Gentle and Kind way to be out in the cold? To put on snowshoes? To walk up a mountain? To drive the car home? To eat dinner? To breathe?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But sometimes the answer is really No. And when it is No, can I bring myself to stop what I am doing at that moment? And should I? And how big of a change would that have on my life if I always did stop?

Is this a Gentle and Kind way to look out over Donner Lake? To help grandma through the snow for our family picture?

Is this a Gentle and Kind way to love my friends?

So, here I am, the morning I leave for Bangkok with a bonus mission of practicing Gentle Kindness.

The first act of kindness to myself and strangers I will be sharing public transportation with is to pack as lightly as possible. All te belongings I am taking on this 3 month voyage are the orange bag pictured at my socked feet. My bag weighed in at 17lbs and is ready to get in the ring.

With so much love to everyone!

Here I go.

Cat

Unprecedented openness

2009-12-15T17:37:00.000-08:00

The day after the yoga retreat in Tulum, Mexico ended I was so overwhelmingly happy that nearly anything could make me want to laugh or cry for joy. I found that as I walked anywhere, people's faces lit up as we saw each other and shared a smile. I went to a bookstore / coffee shop in Boston and found myself in several touching conversations with strangers. All in all, I was amazed at how differently people react to you when you are overjoyed at being exactly where you are at that moment. (I knew this in principle and in isolated moments but never for extended periods of time. Naturally, the question arises: how long could this way of being last? For the next 4 months of my travels? ...for the rest of my life? (grin)

Todd in lotus position near the Mayan ruins

The yoga retreat was led by my teacher of 7 years, David Vendetti, and included a group of 15 participants with anywhere from 2-25 years of yoga experience. Every day we meditated for an hour, had one to two 2h yoga practices, played in the ocean, had a class session (on pranayama, partnered massage, acroyoga), and shared all our vegitarian meals together.
David introduced a theme for each day.Be forwarned, these are powerful themes, and I can guarantee my descriptions will not do them justice.
Day 1 Freedom first: This means always seeing that you have the freedom to choose the way you want to be in the world. Putting anything else first will cause suffering to yourself and others. If you put money first you may sacrifice innate passions, family time, and health. If you put family first you may not take care of your own needs and desires. Choosing freedom does not mean independence, but ensures that in each relationship you always have a choice about how you want that relationship to be.
Day 2 Take responsibility for everything that has happened to you in your life: This means that you are fully empowered and that there is nothing in your life of which you are a victim. This DOES NOT mean that you are to blame, but simply that you acknowledge everything that has happened in your life and decide what you want to do about it.
Day 3 Act fearlessly and courageously, avoiding nothing: This one is currently my favorite theme and speaks for itself. Find what you are avoiding and practice addressing it gracefully. There will always be things that we are afraid of, but our ability to identify them and address them in a powerful and compassionate way will get stronger.
Day 4 Law of impersonality: Nothing happens to "you", things "happen in the universe" and you get to decide how you want to respond to it. All of us have caught ourselves thinking that the person ahead of us "cut us off" and that might encourage anger toward that person. But the truth is that cars cut off one another for many reasons all the time all over the world and that is another glorious truth of what it means to get to be a driver among other human drivers.

Day 5 Make these changes for the good of all beings: The idea of living by the first four themes often brings up defensiveness and anger, driven by fear. If you cannot make these changes in your life for yourself, make the changes for your family, for your friends, and for the benefit of all beings.

Every morning I woke up with the first hints of light and walked on the beach as the sun rose above the ocean. Then I would come back to where we were staying and follow the elevated, wooden-plank walkways of our tree house hotel into the yoga studio

The man who runs Jade (our tree-house hotel) was also a short film maker and has already posted a video of the yoga sessions The open air studio had high-vaulted, thatched ceilings and the classes that included locals from Tulum were magical.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFwiJz3Iy1s

Dorian, Todd, and Beth doing poses near the Mayan ruins we visited. Beth (in the splits) was a total inspiration to me. She is 64 and had one of the most beautiful and evolved practices of those of us at the retreat. She didn't start yoga until she was in her mid-forties. Any excuses about our bodies not being able to do things after a certain age are mostly not true...she was boogie boarding with me in huge waves for 90minutes!

Prelude

2009-11-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

Gorgeous Goa (These posts in 2007 are from the time in India)

2007-09-15T14:05:00.001-07:00

Guy painting flag pole on ridiculously long ladder in Panaji (Goa's capitol)

Panaji is a romatic Portuguese city in India.
Large church - with eclectic interior
Look - beach cows!
Excitingly wild coastline in Vagator, Goa
From the top of a hill with a big, ruined fort on it

This is what happens to toilet paper on a windy day on the top of a hill on the coast from the wall of a ruined fort
Ah...the buses...how we love you.
Cat and Jessica on the beach before eating dinner at a beach-front restaurant (the site of huge beach-raves during high-season)
Back in Panaji

India knows how to do colors
beach dogs like fish
Men pulling in nets
I swam to the island in the distance...it took about an hour against the current - I was very tired when I clambered onto the first, slimmery, sharp rock I came to.

Stay tuned....BONUS PICTURES coming next weekend from Jessica's camera (since mine had no battery for much of the trip)

Settled in Boston...pictures from Kerala

2007-09-03T08:47:00.001-07:00

Fort Kochin, Kerala - hanging out and touring the backwaters

Artsy, little cafe (with the highest concentration of European tourists found over the summer). Here Jessica is modlingg a walnut-something cake and sparlking lime juice.
Private yoga class for Catherine. For $8 I got a 90 minute yoga class with this guy. He was cool and showed off for me a little bit - which was fun. In this position he lowered his knee down until it touched the ground and then lifted himself back up again.
Ah...the backwaters tour in Kerala on a wooden houseboat...it doesn't get much better than this. Picture-perfect weather, scenary...
Hard to beat this level of relaxation. Here are my knees with my tea balanced on the side-rail of the houseboat.
And then there was the jungly canoe-ride and the eating of the freshly picked coconut...oh yes and the drinking of the quickly fermenting coconut flower tonic (drink it fast, while it is only the alcoholic level of beer!)

Snake Boat Races at Alleppey (sp?), Kerala

Costumed dancing with drummers and people with huge heads before the races
Very striking young woman dancer
Part of the 150 person boat including rowers, cheerleaders, water bailers and those guys at the end doing some combination of steering and ceremonial paddle raising during the race.
When boats sink...
Boat racing after party on a boat amongst the traffic jam of ferries leaving the spectator islands.

Pictures from Goa to follow!

Happy 60th Independence Day, Dearest India!

2007-08-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

Today I did yoga on the beach in the morning, had mixed fruit, yogurt and tea for breakfast, rented a scooter and drove to two nearby beach villages (don't worry mom, we only had one small, mini-accident, even though I have never driven a scooter before and didn't even know which knob was the accellerator). I had a vegitable curry with rice for lunch and then passed out in my room for an hour nap. Then we went to the beach and I swam to an island against the current which took a really long time and I was very tired and when I got to the island it was surrounded by shallow, poity and slimy rocks and I just hung on to the closest one for a while until I could come up with the best plan for getting back to the beach. Then I got back to my blanket and read from my book of short stories until the sun went down and then Jessica and I retuned the scooter for the daily rental fee of $5. Dinner included fresh mint tea, freshly caught prawns pan fried in generous amounts of butter, salad and topped off with a brownie covered in what tasted like brownie batter..yes! Now to return to the room with Jessica and see if there are any more 007 movies on our little TV. Need to get up early for a few more hours of beach time before check-out. I will miss you very much India. Thank you for an amazing summer.

Arrival in Paradise

2007-08-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

The rice paddies of Karnataka as enjoyed from the open door of a moving train are fantastic. The strong wind adds a little excitement as I hold the outside rails tightly and watch two women in brightly colored, windblown sarees walk in a zig-zagged path accross the brilliant green fields. Old men wearning a single white cloth fish in small lilly pond lakes with bambooo poles. In northern Kernataka the train passes through a mountain tunnel and the emrald landscape is replaced with blackness. I notice teh smell of the nearby bananna fritter salesman (thank goodness it is not the smell of the latrine again!), and enjoy the warm metal window frame beneath my forearm. At 2pm we arrived in beautiful Palolem. Large, clean beaches, surrounded by dense palm tree groves and small green mountains in the distance. I swam and body boarded, built a sand castle and walked along the beach. Tomorrow we will rent a scooter and visit the more secluded nearby beaches... smile.

Cashew liquor and coconut flower wine

2007-08-13T04:47:00.000-07:00

My comments on these two drinks: Fenni - the cashew liquor smalls bad and tastes worse Kallu - coconut flower tonic (wine) - this drink tastes a little funky but grows on you. During our 7 hour backwaters tour Jessica and I split a litre of Kallu immediately after it was collected from the coconut flowers. Here is a little blurb stolen from another site: “Palm sap begins fermenting immediately after collection due to natural yeasts in the air. Within two hours, fermentation yields an aromatic wine of up to 4% alcohol content, mildly intoxicating and sweet. The wine may be allowed to ferment longer, up to a day, to yield a stronger, more sour and acidic taste, which some people prefer. Longer fermentation produces vinegar instead of stronger wine.” What hs happened since the last blog? I'm so glad you asked... August 12th: after our leisurely breakfast and lunch we rented bicycles for about $0.10 an hour and biked around the perimeter of part of the island. This was the perfect way to get around the beach village island and see the interior village life - and of course buy lots more mini-bananas (we like them very much..they are just so darn cute). From 5-6:30 I had an awesome 90 min Hatha yoga class with a guy who has been practicing since 1970 - his english was pretty good and showed me lots of new yoga positions to work on...yay. Then, from 7-8pm (since it had been such a hard day) - I got a 60 min ayurvedic massage. August 13th: motored and punted around the backwaters all day and got to see the main local industries: fisherman (collecting fish, muscles, scallops...and sand, actually), muscle shell processors (making the powder for everything from calcium tablets to white paint), rope mking (from the husk of the coconut), and of course coconut harvesting (for food and oils...). Now for an early dinner followed by another overnight train ride adventure! Singing off, Yours, The Cat

Kerala: Allepey's Nehru Snake Boat Races

2007-08-11T22:57:00.000-07:00

At 8am Jessica and I caught the "super fast" bus to Allepey from Ernakulem (just a ferry ride away from where we are staying in Kochin). Like most of India's transportation: it consistently gets the job done but is somewhat of a joke: since at about ~0.7km/min we aren't exactly flying down the coast. This is understandable though given the foot-deep potholes and frequent puddle-lakes. Nevertheless I manage to stand and read for a while and only fly into the man in front of me twice because of the violet braking (no doubt due to a stray cow or swerving scooter rider). Once I get a seat I even manage a bit of a nap. On arrival to Allepey we are greated by traditional Keralan drumming and custumed dancing that launch the day's festivities. We watched the young female dancers with elaborate costumes and makeup as well as teh oversized dancing heads and peacocks that praced around to the beat of the drums. We took a ferry (which we barely arrived on time for) over to the spectator's island near the finish line. Then began the 3 hour waiting period while the boats warmed up and we waited for the appropraite local government dignitaries to arrive. Luckily for us we ended up sitting adjacent to poart of the Allepey home-crowd: specifically about 40, very happy (read intoxicated) men between 20 and 50 singing, eating, yelling and dancing...and it was all too clear that the abundant police presence wouldn't attempt to exert much control over this boisterous bunch. These men continually handed us food and entertained brief conversations in English explainging which teams were favored, which teams had new boats and how much they cost and how the rowers were chosen for each team. The pictures for this day are great and I wil post them as soon as I can. Just imagine a crew team on a 135 foot wooden boat with a crew of 105 men. Most of them rowing, but several positions are reserved for cheerleaders and at least one for bailing water out of the boat during the race. However, perhaps more bailers could have been used on several boats because at least 3 times yesterday we witnessed a long line of heads above the water..they certainly take "going down with the ship" literally - somehow they would manage to maneuver the sunken boats to the river's edge while staying in their original spots. We met some medical and dental students from the UK at the race and had a lovely dinner with them before heading back to the bus station. Lovely, but long day. Today we plan to take it easy...slept in, breakfast at the Kashi art cafe (a little piece of european, starbucks in the Keralan backwaters) and will head over for an Ayurvedic massage after this stint in the internet cafe...and then we'l find a little garden restaurant for lunch :)

South India

2007-08-08T22:48:00.000-07:00

I want to stay on the green cliff above the Arabian Sea with the strong sea- breeze encircling me. The vegitation in Goa during monsoon season is so dense that the small roads and nestled houses struggle to stay exposed. 6 August: Around 1pm our war-weary public service group pulled itself together for one last combined effort and gave a presentation to the Chairman of the Rai Fountation. He apparently had met with MIT's Dean Daniel Hastings the day before about strengthening MITs collaborations in India..cool.I stayed up all night with Jessica to finish the report, so the 6th led right into thr 7th...As we were leaving for the airport I had intense "feeling like I am forgetting something"...but it must have just been the sleep that I had forgotten. 7 August: Delhi by airplane to Goa at 11am- (because of Yamilee's flight schedule Jessica and I got to the airport about 5 hours early so we got in an early breakfast and a solid nap ). Upon arrival we took a taxi to Panaji (Goa's Portuguese inspired capital). We went on an extremely slow walking tour of the gorgeous european town with Indian detailing. We had dinner at an outdoor restaurant adn I had the local specialty of prawn curry rice. We stayed in a family run Park Lane Lodge with two twin beds, fan and shared, outdoor restrooms/shower stalls. The gate is locked 10pm - but getting to bed early suited us just great. 8 August: Met up with german girls our age at 8am whom we met the might before and went sightseeing and shopping (although we tried really hard not to) at several beach villages. Panaji by bus to Mapusa for 8Rs ($0.20). Mapusa to Anuja by bus. Taxi to Vegator where we stayed for the night. 9 August: Morning treck through desolate Vegator looking for breakfast and internet. Found both: toast, eggs, (indian) hash browns, and banana porridge :) Train down to Kerala this evening.

Delhi Good-byes

2007-08-06T06:06:00.000-07:00

Well Delhi, despite the dust and the heat...we will miss you.

This picture is dedicated to my friend Deepak. I am so happy we met.
On my father's tennis buddy's recommendation we headed out for one last dinner as a group to the Bhukara restaurant in the Sheraton hotel, New Delhi. This is the biggest piece of Naan I have ever seen...however, we chose not to buy the $30 piece of gaint naan.
Yamilee and I "cheers" our bronze cups.
I know this picture doesn't do a good job of selling the dish, but let me tell you, this was the tastiest stuffed bell-pepper I have ever had - it had a spicy, vegitable curry including cashews and raisins in it.
Here we are in our Indian garb...aren't we cute...and SOOOOO tired...not to mention paranoid that these saris tied at a below-amateur-level were going to fail us at any moment.

Well, our car comes to take us to the air port in 4 hours and I have have not finished packing, so...yeah. See everyone in Goa!

Good night

Code Orange: Time moving VERY quickly

2007-08-04T04:40:00.000-07:00

This morning involved some very efficient re-gearing - but everything came together just in time :)

We hosted the second big meeting today - here was the Adgenda

**********************************************************************************

4 August 2007

PURPOSE: Meeting to ensure sustainability of sanitation pilot project in B-Block of Bhoomiheen camp through the interaction of all the stakeholders to :
* Finalize a payment system for the community agreeable to all stakeholders
* Discuss suggested responsibilities for each stakeholder
Set a regular meeting schedule for future stakeholder meetings

ATTENDING
Mr. Mohammad Gulzar Community Committee
Ms. Krishna Community Committee

Mr. Rama Community Committee
Mr. Saurabh Issar Municipal Counselor’s Office

Mr. Thakur Prasad MCD Local Inspector (NO SHOW)
Mr. Deepchand MCD Local Manager (NO SHOW)
Ms. Snelata YWCA Community Mobilizer
Ms.Usha YWCA Community Mobilizer
Ms. Madhu YWCA Community Mobilizer
Ms. Vardi Devi YWCA Community Mobilizer
Ms. Shanti Devi YWCA Local Director

TIME: Begin time: 1pm, End time: 2pm-2:30pm
VENUE: Bhumin Vikas Mandal

ADGENDA:
*Project Update (5 min)
Successes
i. Bins installed
ii. Overwhelming use of bins and very little trash in waterways
iii. Requests for bins from all neighboring areas
Current Challenges
i. Regularity of trash worker schedule
ii. Unresolved payment plan
iii. Regularity of emptying the large MCD bin
* Payment System (20 min)
* Group comments on suggested stakeholder responsibilities (15 min)
* Set up time/dates for future stakeholder meetings (10 min)
* Suggestion for natural expansion of the project (5 min).
* Thank you for your dedication to and support for this project. (5 min)

**********************************************************************

I don't think the meeting really followed the agenda partially because of Indian Standard Time causing the meeting to start at 1:30pm instead of 1pm and because the MCD officials never showed up...apparently it was meant to be though because the Monicipal Counselor's Office gave permission for the community to hire a private worker and the 3 community leaders and the 5 YWCA community mobilizers were ready to take on all the responsibilities.

After the meeting finshed around 3pm, the community committee members and the YWCA headed out directly to start collectingg money from the community to get the community-run sanitation program running.

All the neighgboring lanes want the program in their area and are 1. willing negotiate bin placement themselves and 2. pay the small monthly fee. We are going to try to set up a garbage bin fund so that these lanes can join the pilot project in the future...I couldn't be more proud of us and the community!

And here comes my reward...Jessica and I leave at 5am on Tuesday for 10 days of nothing but sleeping in beach huts, eating south indian food and hanging out on the beach reading, playing, swimming...everything but planning :)

Best day of my trip to India

2007-08-03T20:28:00.000-07:00

Well, I just can't believe last night...it was like a fairy tale in a formerly dirtier slum community.

At 7:30pm last night we presented our parting gift to the community: a slide show / movie of the community members over the past three weeks, so that the community could see through our eyes the love and unity possible in the community. The pictures were often of children, or older community members with children and it was magical...the whole market area in front of the temple filled up with over 200 community members and families perched on balconies and roofs to get a good view. However, the whole day was pretty amazing, so let me back up to the beginning.

After a morning of writing up documents in English and Hindi to make sure all the project stakeholders agree on their respective responsibilities, Musheer and I headed over to YWCA to confirm their attendance at the second big sustainability meeting on Saturday and get their feeback and advice on current challenges. On the right is Vardi Devi (the leader of the community mobilizers for this YWCA branch) and Shanti Devi (office director). I am so impressed with both of these women - they are sharp, strong, connected, and they know what they are capable of. Any community problem we explain to them, they are able to see through all the fog and tell everything as it is - bluntly. They don't speak english but I greatly enjoy every meeting with them.

After the meeting, Musheer, Dharnani and I had a few hours to hang around the community before the others came at 6pm to set up for the show. Here are some local girls we know.

Later on, I decided I would start drawing animals to see if the kids could identify them. Seven animals, two insects and ten minutes later I was being pressed on all sides by small bodies pointing and yelling out names in Bengali, Hindi, and English (from two of the older girls).

I was sitting near the temple writing in my project notebook when this little guy pulled up a stool and sat down right next to me.
At 6:30pm - an hour before the show the crowd has already begun to form. We learned the lesson about crowd control already...

Yamilee and Dharani make sure the sound and projector are working before the show. We have learned that this process must be begun at least an hour in advance because every time we set things up with a new set of borrowed speakers and amp there are always some cables that are missing or wires that are crossed. The community is pretty awesome though and usually an electrician comes out of the woodworks to help out if we appear to be struggling.

Children were told to sit down in front, mostly because they are less likely to run under the rope and knock over the projector this way.

Mansi entertains the nearby crowd as we try to rally as many community members as possible for the show.

Jessica and I accompany Dharani on rounds through our residential pilot project area to make sure everyone is attending...it is good news to see that most of the houses are empty of people :)

The show starts and the people are captivated. Big cheers erupt from the crowd for images of the most popular neighborhood children, well-known shop keepers and friendly community leaders appear on the screen....I nearly cried...but I have also been short on sleep for three weeks now.

As we were packing up, the children's ecitement could no longer be controlled. We protected the equiptment, but Julie who was attempting to take a picture with some children was knocked to the growd by the mob of excited half-pints. Never in my life have I felt like as much of a celebrity - little children popped up all over with their hands stretched out waiting to shake mine and as we walked to the main road and waited for an auto, our 1 m tall entourage was all around us. As the auto pulled away last minute handshakes were exchanged and everyone waved and said good bye.

We were all glowing.

The MIT team decided to treat the RF team to dinner so we went to Le Chef in Sector 37 and had a tasty feast. Despite the exhaustion (several team members hadn't slept at all the night before) - we laughed all through dinner at our inside jokes and impersonations of particularly eccentric (or difficult) people we have met (or people who will surely get fired when their government contract is over...).

All hands in the middle...1,2,3..."INDIA!"

Compromise for sustainability

2007-08-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

Last night it rained all night and all through the morning. View outside our rooms.
Monitoring the bin system: the local MCD manager is still having trouble sending a worker for 30 min 2x a day to take away the garbage. Last night we hit a semi-crisis point as several bins had filled up by 4:30pm and the local manager told us that he would not send an afternoon worker. We went for a meeting at the municipal councilor's office (read furniture store and nearby pharmacy) and had a blunt conversation about how government workers will only perform our community's work if there is a monetary incentive system put in place so that this area of work will be prioritized for the understaffed MCD office.

For yesterday evening, the Municipal Councilors nephew took on the local MCD manager's responibilities and personally arranged and paid for two workers on short notice - 150 Rs (~$4) for two guys to haul 10 trash bins to the big dumpster.
I was pretty tired by the end of the rounds in the community and was sitting under the overhang near the temple (where we will be giving our final show for the community tonight) and as usual children hung about watching me write and asking me to take their picture through hand gestures.

What a great day!

2007-08-01T06:52:00.000-07:00

The community has bins! and we are monitoring the rate that trash bins fill up in two hour shifts 10 hours a day...great times.

Here is a glamour shot of one of the bins locked into position next to a bunch of caged chickens on the back of a bicycle. Here you can buy your live chickens for slaughter directly in front of your home...yay!

Below, some young men read the poster on how to use the bin, with handy catch phrases like "put your garbage in the trash bin" and "open and close the lid".
In this picture, from right to left, we have an MCD trash remover, Musheer, Gulzar (one of the community committee members), and a second MCD trash remover. Both of these trash removers ran away before they gogt a chance to move any trash. These workers are proving very difficult to get a hold of and retain.

That is a good looking open sewage line if I've ever seen one...no garbage...it is unbelievable!
Here is Dharani - our trash bin warrior - diligently measuring trash heights every 30 min, while training us to do the same.

On the job...it started raining heavily during my monitoring shift and so Meenu and I sat under an overhang near the temple and she did mehindi (henna) on one of my hands. For most of the time we had a crowd of about a dozen boys, girls and women watching Meenu draw lovely designs.
Cool.
...and you think I am kidding about gathering all these stray cows and becoming an urban cow-herder.

Highs and Lows

2007-07-31T05:09:00.000-07:00

High: 95 F

Low: 75 F

Humitity: 1000000000% (this is a high that actually equals a low)

High: Buying the trash bins, painting them with our slogan and other information, and making them more theft-proof achieved in one night.

Low: Having the local MCD (trash removal) manager all of a sudden be "on leave" after promising us days ago that we would have workers on launch day.

Low: Not being able to install the bins on Monday after trying all of our contacts.

High: making new partners for the sustainability network of the project - they are very sharp and experienced community mobilizers for the local NGO YWCA, who have lived and worked for the area we serve for 15 years. They are on board to take ownership of the project when we leave.

Low: Entire group working on many nights of less than 6 hours of sleep and no days off for the past 2 weeks

High: Organizing a meeting for all the stakeholders in the project to ensure the sustainability of the project the day before the meeting and having nearly everyone (10 out of 12 people show up). Here was the attendance list - the community, the NGO, the trash company, and the government got together and talked about how they could make this work...amazing.

Low: One of our community committee members is a ~60 year old female shop owner who came late to the meeting with a huge wad of chewing tobacco in her mouth and then blamed the MCD manager for how dirty the community is...uh, yeah...not helping the team there....

High and then low: eating all the left over samosas, gulab jamuns, and drinking mountain dew after the meeting was over and we were able to talk again...

We are two days late for implementation and we can tell the community really wants the trash bins to come...so that is good at least. Today, if the MCD local manager doesn't find a worker (despite assuring us for the past week that he would)...we'll have to do something...but I don't know what...

Good luck today team!

PS: bought ailine ticket to Goa from the 7th to the 16th of Aug. - I am going to the Southern beaches!

Last day of community education...Launch of Implementation Phase tomorrow!

2007-07-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

Enjoying delivered pizza since the group worked together all day until late at night. Tasty, although a bit hurried....remember the breathing!
Meenu with community children before the last community education street play.
Children crowding to see the street play in the Bengali Market.
After the play, there were children surrounding us on every side. Apparently I am smooshing a small boy with my hand here. If we do another event like this, crowd control is going to be a primary concern.
Team wearing the team shirts on the stairs leading up to the field where I run. It has been unseasonably dry recently - leaving the weather persistently hot and humid.

Way past tired now...good night.

Newspapers and television...lets inspire some slum communities!

2007-07-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

Street play in the Bengali Camp if the Bhoomiheen slum community, Delhi tomorrow at 11am to excite the already enthusiastic pilot project community members about the launch of the new garbage bin system on Monday morning. Everyone is invited!!!! ...Especially if you have a press-badge....or even just an oversized video camera.

“Saaf-Safai Sehat Lai.” Children could be heard enthusiastically chanting this slogan in the narrow alleyways of the Bhoomihin Camp in the Kalkaji district of Delhi.

PRESS RELEASE:

MIT-Rai students empower Delhi slum towards cleanliness

Can slum inhabitants clean up their own communities? A team from USA’s premier engineering school and India’s Rai Foundation believes just that. Through coordination with community leaders, government, and a local NGO, this team of college students is trying to reverse 20 years of filth and neglect in three weeks.
This Sunday at 11am in the Bengali Market in Bhoomiheen camp this team will perform a street play for the final day of community education. The aim is to further excite the already enthusiastic community members for the launch of the new garbage bin system on Monday morning. Other news channels have committed to covering this hope-filled and inspirational event and we would very much appreciate your help make this project a success.
For this effort, 4 students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, U.S.A.) have joined 6 students from the Rai Foundation (RF, India) to plan and implement a community project that will install local trash bins to remove waste from the waterways and other public areas. In the past, garbage has clogged the open sewage channels that run in front of each house and caused flooding of the alleyways and homes - especially during monsoon season. If this pilot project is successful, it will provide an inspirational blueprint for improved sanitation in all of Delhi’s slum communities.
A project to place local trash bins to improve cleanliness for 175 families seems simple, but as this team has discovered, it requires every effort from all the stakeholders. The community must believe that only they can change their living environment and a system must be put in place to support their efforts. The worker will be monitored by the MCD and a community committee of non-partisan community leaders. In addition, the local NGO Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) has agreed to take on a supportive supervision role to ensure the project’s sustainability.

MIT (USA) and Rai Foundation students answer questions about the new garbage bin system with the local manager of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.

Rai Foundation student introduces proud, community committee for slum sanitation project developed and implemented by MIT (USA) and Indian students.

Where does trash go? - In the trash bin!

2007-07-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

Here is an article we wrote for the newspapers:

“Saf Safai Sehath Lai.” Children could be heard enthusiastically chanting this slogan in the narrow alleyways of the Buhmin Camp in the Kalkaji district of Delhi. Their eager faces crowded around the Indian and American university students during an animated skit about the benefits of sanitation.
A project to install local trash bins for 175 families to improve cleanliness seems simple, but it will take every effort from the students, the community, as well as local non-governmental organizations and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to change the cleanliness habits of a community in just 3 weeks. For this effort, 5 students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, U.S.A.) have joined 6 students from the Rai Foundation (RF, India) to plan and implement a community project, that will install trash bins to increase local sanitation and health. The multidisciplinary team members have backgrounds ranging from biological and mechanical engineering to physiotherapy, but each student had joined the team with the same goal: to implement a sustainable project that solves a significant need in the community.
During the first phase of the project the team spoke directly with slum inhabitants to hear what they believed were the most substantial problems for their community in the areas of health, education, and disability. Overwhelmingly, members said that garbage and drainage problems were their greatest concerns. Garbage regularly clogs the open sewage channels that run in front of every house and causes flooding of the alleyways and homes, especially during monsoon season. Everyone agreed that increasing the cleanliness would have a dramatically positive impact within the community, but how could this be done quickly, cheaply, and sustainably? The RF-MIT team decided that a community-supervised project in which local trash bins are placed throughout the community (with the consent of each family) was the most promising option for removing garbage from the ground and open sewage channels. These bins would be emptied on a daily basis and the trash transported to the large MCD trash bin by a community-paid sanitation worker.
The second phase of the project, ongoing this week, focuses on creating a community dialogue about the local garbage bin project. Every day the team uses various communication tools including humorous skits, colorful posters, and informational pamphlets to impart information about the benefits and proper use of the local garbage bins. More importantly, however, the team searches for feedback from the community on how they think the project will best succeed. Through the ambition of the students and desire for change of the inhabitants, this project hopes to produce a cleaner and healthier community. If there is less garbage in the sewage channels, the waterways will not clog and provide breeding grounds for mosquitoes: it is the team’s hope that this project will drastically reduce illnesses in the community.
During the final phase of the project next week, the team will install the local trash bins and refine the system of accountability between the community, a local non-governmental organization, and the MCD. If the pilot project is successful, it would provide an inspirational blueprint for improved sanitation in all of Delhi’s slum communities.

Children get a piece of candy if they can answer this question correctly - "Where does the wrapper to this piece of candy go?"
Somehow we convinced Dharani to be the personified trash bin/narrator - he did a great job.
Crowd in Bengali market.There were probably around 100-150 community members gathered.

There was also some mis-coordination within the municipal garbage company which caused them to clear the drains but put all the nastyness in piles on the walkways and then say we asked them to do it....this of course was horrible press for us...but we recovered and scored a bunch of points by getting bags and shovels from the community members and clearning the piles from the square ourselves...I will try to put in a picture of my moving drain-waste as soon as I get it from my team members.

Workin' the alleyways

2007-07-25T10:07:00.000-07:00

Today, Dr. Miraj joined us in the community to talk to the community committee that our team has assembled from the community (one member shown in picture below, Dr. Miraj on the left, and other interested community member on right) and talk to the community itself. He was a big asset today because he speaks Bengali - the primary language in this slum, even though most people in Delhi speak Hindi.

Here is our supervisor working the crows in our project area with a sample garbage can to dicuss the plan and its benefits more concretely with the community members.

Daily picture of garbage - this is sewage garbage fished out by the municipal garbage worker and then left on the sidewalk for evntual pick-up...yeah, that is nice for the toddelers, especially because many of the kids use these waterways as latrines.

After a full morning in the community we head over to the Department of Social Work at Jamia Mia Islamia to talk to students and professors about our project and get their feedback on the problems we are facing what recommendations they have for potential solutions. I had a plate of rice and beans and a pepsi for lunch at the school canteen and then we recovered from the morning in a quadrangle before our meeting with the social workers.

From left to right: Yamilee, Mansi, Sammy, Priya, Jessica, Meenu and Julie.
From left to right: Dharani, Musheer and Catherine (that's ME!)Big day...feels good...feels tired...time for bed.

Workload increases increasingly quickly...

2007-07-24T04:02:00.000-07:00

Our timeline converges a week of work into every day. Our ten group members scatter to eight different tasks that all need to be coordinated, requiring detailed strategy planning every night before bed. A bad day could mean the death of our community project, and so we are getting the Indian girls to move from their homes into our rooms for the last two weeks. This means that the Indian girls will live away from home in the first time in their lives and also that we will be sharing beds :)

I couldn't be more proud of how our group is evolving and rolling with the punches...in my opinion we are pretty much community project rockstars.

...Anyway, yesterday morning there was a lot of traffic, so our auto (as well as many other vehicles) opted for a dirt path on the side of the road.

Here I am meeting with the local men of power. In the back row is the regional President, Secretary and Vice Pres. of the Congress Party (the party in power) and I am sitting next to the regional Municipal Councilor, who manages the waste management company as part of his resposibilities.

I wanted to mention that this office is in the back of a fancy furniture store and this meeting is much what I would imagine it would be like if I were meeting with the godfather. I was impressed with how much seemed to get done all at once.
Here is one of our community committee members - we are showing her one of the posters we made to count down the days until the trash bins come (also displaying our 'logo' and slogan (in Hindi))

Here is my local garbage drain picture for the day.

Here is Musheer having a conversation with a very aggressive community woman after one of our community education skit performances.
This was an extremely rough day for most of the group, it was long and many details were not planned well enough or did not go as we expected. We needed to reinspire the group...Yamilee and I came up with the idea of a short morning dance party where we would learn dance moves to go along with our slogan and just take a little time in the morning to relax as a group and eat cookies and drink juice....what a great team!

I am energized and inspired by what I spend my day doing

2007-07-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

It feels great to be able to say that whole heartedly...I am sad there are only 2 weeks left of the project.

Today was unbelievable - there were some critical meetings both within the community and with an NGO and the municipal garbage comany and all the pieces are falling into place. Our team is a power house: we break up into groups and

* mobilize community members to take ownership of the project

* hire people to move trash and create a community run system to pay the worker and create transparency and accountability in the payment system

* develop a tight network of oversight and support between community leaders, a local NGO, local political leaders, and the municipal garbage corporation

Tomorrow morning we are meeting with the President and Vice Pres. of the regional political party in power (Congress party) to get them to back this project.

...But, I have been thinking of work most of my waking hours - this is my time to relax and talk to my friends and family :)

On Sunday we met with this social work Professor to go over our pilot project plan and I saw a college cricket team playing a match...looked pretty serene...they certainly didn't have to worry about noise from a crowd.

The Rai Foundation University is making a film documentary of our project meaning that for many of the days they will be following us around with a camera during our planning meetings and our community work. Here are the "director", camera man, and van driver. The big perk for us is that we get to ride in a van to the community and don't have to catch autorickshaws at the border :)

Tonight, Jessica and I went out to dinner with our friends Zarin and Deepak to celebrate Deepak's completion of exams for his MBA program. We went to a Chinese restaurant in Faridabad and I got some chocolate chip, chocolate ice cream afterward that was excellent! Both Jessica and I wore suits (salwar kamis)- it was fun - my scarf has little silver bells at the end so they jingle when I walk.

Yes, I can chuck wood.

2007-07-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

We were outside a mall in Lagput Nagar and this guy with a microphone came up to me and asked me what my name was and where I was from....I told him. (Note the protective purse-grabbing as I was still establishing who this guy was who had suddenly popped up in front of me).

Then he asked me if I could do the toungue twister "How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" ...quickly, ten times in a row. I gave one pleading look over to the girls who by now had heard my voice on the microphone and had turned around to watch, and then commenced.
I think there was a lot of blushing going on, but upon completion scattered applause very satisfying.

I got a free coca cola polo shirt...cool beans!

Our community champion

2007-07-21T03:27:00.001-07:00

Much of the garbage in this community gets dumped into the little waterways that run in front of the doorstep of every home. Today:

* we mapped out the area that we will work in,

* estimated the number of families that live in our project area (173, or ~850 people)

* took the dimensions of the waterways for possible filters to keep the garbage from "upstream" communities from flowing down into the project area

* looked for enthusiastic and influential community members to help support our project within the community...

...in Katish Malik we found our woman. She is a force of nature! Sort of like a community mother, she looks like she could shape up about 100 people in about 5 minutes flat. She moved with us through the area telling everybody that we are doing something good for their community so that everyone should be helping us.
She has a big smile, a big voice, and a demanding presence.
Dozens of people crowded around to look at my map. We did some good prepatory work today and most people were very enthusiastic, but there are still a number of big challenges that need solutions before the project will work. I don't know how they will get solved, but I think we can do it.

Meanwhile, Julie and Jessica went with Dr. Miraj to check out trash bins and get supplies for the community education on how to use the new gagrbage systems. PLUS - we all got T-shirts (they were about $1.25 each and are bright orange - Julie and Jessica had to tear the pockets off the front of each since the pockets had random gods on them and we are planning to print "RF-MIT India Project" on them). Good pictures to come, I'm sure!

Picking the pilot project community

2007-07-20T20:24:00.001-07:00

NEEDED:
* one dirty slum community (300 families or ~1500 people)
* dirtyness needs to be due to garbage in thrown by community members in the public areas (including ground, and waterways)
* the community members need to be incredibly frustrated with all the garbage
* but the community should not have already tried to deal with the problem themselves
* there need to be community members that will actively support our project

FOUND:
One frustrated, dirty, (relatively educated), slum community (including a residential area and a residential area converted to little shops)

Here is one of the government water takers. When it shows up the children start yelling and running after it and everyone comes rushing with their hoses and buckets and the daily water-rush begins.
Alleyway, as we were wondering through the slum communities looking for one with the right problems, geometry and character.
Ooooh! this one has got lots of garbage problems!
This community has drainage problems because it has garbage clogging the drains. Interestingly this community claimed that the government will not help them because they voted for the opposition party and that the political party in power will only help those communities that voted for them. My American brain says that there is something wrong with that political policy.
We went to the Faridabad mall for dinner last night ( coming home scandelously late time of 10:50pm after our curfew of 8:30pm). The Indian/Chinese restaurant let Yamilee and Julie order Pizza Hut to this restaurant, which worked out well for our group since Jessica, Sony and I wanted Chinese.

Hugs to everyone! I can't believe there are only two weeks of work left!!!

Gearing up (big time)

2007-07-19T09:13:00.000-07:00

Well, the time has come that will weed out the boys and girls from the men and women...the time where the cow poop hits the fan...and the runners turn the bend toward the home stretch...where all the preparation will be put to the test....yada yada yada....we'll be back in the US.

So what is going to happen during the yada yada yada phase?....that my friends is an excellent question and after about 8 hours of structured team brain storming and debate ...WE HAVE A PLAN!

Here we are in the thick of things...Yamilee and Musheer present project ideas related to the disabled within the community.

Given that there are 10 strong-willed people in our group, and that we were given the opportunity to choose a project that reflected a strong need in the community in the areas of health, education, or disability (kind of a big range of topics, all of which have multiple serious problems within them), it is really amazing we were able to settle on one and outline a pilot project that will improve the community within 2 weeks! One thing that is clear after today, is that an unbelievable ammount will get done in the next two weeks, that there will be innumerable setbacks and surprises, and that it is going to be one of the most exciting things I have ever worked on in my life.

In short we are going to reform the community garbage system for part of a slum (about 200 families, or 1000 people) so that they are no longer surrounded my garbage and overflowing sewage water. The project will be a collaboration between our team, an NGO, and MCD (the municipal garbage company)...although they don't know this yet!

Our goal is to get the media to track what we (4 engineering girls from America all of different skin tones partnered with 6 indian college students) can change for a slum community in 2 weeks and use the media as leverage to get the garbage company to start picking up trash from this area (which before only happened "at their convenience").

In celebration of a long day of leadership :) ...I made one of the most complete "home-cooked" meals of my trip so far...check it out! Nothing fried or soaked in syrup - it must be Christmas for Catherine in India! For dessert I combined two components of dinner and had a banana sandwich - it was very tasty!

The cows are coming, and they want your garbage!

2007-07-18T06:09:00.000-07:00

We continued our community survey in part of Govenpuri, Kalkaji in cluding Buhmin camp today interviewing both community members and local NGO staff. Here is the inside gate of one of the NGO run schools/vocational schools/disabled child classes. This school looked amazing - certainly better looking (on the inside) than my elementary school.
The whole school is covered in beautiful murals and paintings and the architectural design has the feel of an open village where all the class rooms have big glass windows and the hallways feel open and spacious.
In the nearby community...these two guys aren't old enough to school but they give their mother and grandmother good company at home during the day.
NOTE: it seems to be an Indian tradition that when children learn to walk they get squeeky shoes so you can always tell when little kids running around because they go: "squeek, squeek,squeek,squeek,..."
This young man followed us around for a while and seemed to be of a curious but melencholy disposition.
I don't think I should include a cow eating trash in every day's blog...but I could.

Love,

Catherine

Ladders, cows, and nearby people

2007-07-17T05:43:00.000-07:00

Of all the awkward, oversized objects that I wish I could bring back to the US from India, I think the Bamboo ladder is certainly in my top 5. I see these ladder shops fairly frequently and look longingly at both the tan and reddish varieties of mid-length ladders. (To my dismay I learned today that I would actually have a hard time buying a ladder here, because these are all ladder rental stores...and they make much more money renting them out that they would selling them...apparently)
I can't believe I haven't written on the topic of stray cows before! They are everywhere. For a work-capable (not to mention holy) animal, you would think the owners of these cows would try to keep them from getting lost...but apparently lost cows is the norm in Delhi - they are everywhere! On the sidewalk, on the median (one of their favorite places), near shopping centers, on piles of garbage (as shown below). I mostly see the cows eating trash but occasionally I see one eating grass - they come in all sorts of colors but most often they are a greyish color with black shading, especially around the eyes, which makes some of them quite handsome. They look different from American cows, although I see so many of these here I am forgetting what US cows look like. Anyway, I cam considering collecting these cows and becoming an urban cow-herder.
Near this cow is Buhmin camp. We visited this community today because it is supposedly served by 6 nearby NGOs. The camp was in pretty good shape in terms of child in school enrollment, and general health - but sanitation, access to health information, and services for the disabled were severely lacking. Almost none of these children had ever heard of the nearby NGOs and the few that knew about them often complained of their worthlessness and corruption. I am not sure why these children looked quite so confused and startled when I took this picture, since they had been following us around for about 30 min.
This guy is selling vegitables in the open space in front of his door. The flies don't show up in this picture.
I wanted to show how the water drainage flows next to the houses on either side of the alleyway walking path, usually with rock bridges between the doorway and the path. At complicated intersections, the water takes up more space and there are larger (more dangerous looking) bridges...the pizza here is not as good as in Venice.
It was a good Tuesday in India. (Hot again)

Team health update:
1 heat stroke/fever/stomach issues
1 stomach issues
3 OK

Vanquishing stomach demons

2007-07-16T19:20:00.000-07:00

Dear blog-readers,

I apologize for the hiatus in blogging, but I have been battling indian stomach demons, which can be very tiring. I have learned this lesson tough:

when things aint' right, take the ciprofloxacin

I had been worried about using my only regimen of perscription anti-bacterial drugs, but that was silly, because as we learned at a Bombay pharmacy, you can get all sort of drugs in India (including more malaria medicine) without a prescription for about one tenth the US cost.

So what do I have to show from my blogging break....

Saturday:

*discovered a hidden treasure: a 2 min walk from my bed room there is a woman who hangs out in a room on campus who will do one hour, full-body massagegs for $7.5...I usually try not to compare directly to US prices, but it would be a crime not to get a couple of these

*successfully watched the new Harry Potter movie (in English!) at an Indian cinema house

Sunday:

* slept in

* went to Old Delhi: saw Red Fort (two pictures below)

Red fort was okay, but to be honest, we have seen much better forts on our trip already. They had some nice carvings though...carving is always nice. ...But you know what is not nice? - hidden barbed wire. I tripped over barbed wire and cut my leg (thank you tetnis shot) and had to feel sorry for myself for at least 5 min before the cut felt better.

Monday:

*we decided to kick Monday off with a bunch of long, meandering team meetings...

*then we headed out to a new slum area to speak with several NGOs working there, but first we dicided to sit in the worse traffic jam I have seen so far in Delhi for about an hour

* we took pictures of each other in the autorickshaws, while our driver was off visiting other autorickshaw driver friends

YWCA has a branch office in Govenpuri, Kalkaji (New Delhi). Here we are coming out of the one-story pink building where we were observing vocational training programs and interviewing the director of the center. Behind the YWCA are a number of apartment building flats - this neighborhood, is much better off than other nearby slum communities where the garbage is OUT OF CONTROL! and the usual fish market leaves a pretty horrible stench even when it is not active.

All in all, a few pretty successful days...oh, and I would like to announce that canned tuna fish wins this week's food award, for being the tastiest food that doesn't make me sick and is not primarily oil or sugar.

Evening trip to Faridabad

2007-07-13T22:43:00.000-07:00

We live on the Faridabad side of the New Delhi-Faridabad border, so whenever we want to go anywhere in Delhi we walk 5-10min to the actual border to pick up a Delhi autorickshaw. (The system is like Boston and Cambridge taxi cabs: The Delhi taxi cabs can't pick up on the Faridabad side but the Faridabad cars can't take us into Delhi).

On Wednesday we were invited to one of our supervisor's house in Faridabad. Dr. Sunaina is young, unmarried, and as is standard with Indian families, still lives with her parents. Her mother made us some tasty treats and we had lychee juice. The autorickshaws in Faridabad are a little larger than those in Delhi but can magically fit 3x as many people - here we are with 12 people in one autorickshaw: From left to right Dr. Sunaina, Sony, and Yamilee.

The girls outside Dr. Sunaina's house.

Almost by Design...

2007-07-11T07:24:00.001-07:00

There is something special about the fever, upset stomach, and power outage tripple-threat ...

2007-07-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

In the suburbs of Mumbai (about 1 hour out) there is a national park in which there is a rocky, mossy hill that rises above the surrounding jungle-type vegitation. On this hill there are ~109 caves carved by buddhist monks in about 1000BC, called the Kanheri caves. The monks had no metal tools, so all the caves were build wih rock tools. They reminded me a bit of Petra (the 2000 year old city carved out of sandstone) in Jordan - one of the new 7 wonders of the world!
Water runs down through the middle of the community as you look up the hill. There was a bathroom/ washing area and other places where water was diverted using holes through or ruts carved into the stone.
Here is me with one of the cave statues...he has a few inches on me...
Past the realy tall statue is this inner temple..one can walk behind the pillars and one can see where all the oil lamps were usually placed.
lots of little wall carvings..it doesn't get much better than well-preserved, 3000 year old caves!We visited a second Jain temple near the national park. In this sect of Jainism, the priests are not allowed to wear any clothes at all!

Me at the Mumbai coast.
We dressed scandelously (spaghetti strap tank tops!), and headed out to a bar/dance club on Sunday night. When we arrived, we thought the club was closed because there was no one around, but it turns out we were just the only ones there. We had a good time on our own, getting to request anything we wanted form the DJ. After 1-2 hours, the bar was comfortably full. I am glad my team-mates are all so flexible and fun :)

2007-07-10T05:00:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, the four of us set out on a full-day tour of Mumbai with a private car and driver and a tour guide. Here I am with a bunch of funny-shaped concrete wave-breakers.
Apparently the Indian coast used to be inhabited primarily by fishing communities. Most of these villages have been displaced, but we got to visit the only fisherman village remaining in Mumbai. The boats were mostly on land because it isn't safe to fish in deep waters during monsoon season.

Here is a women chopping fish. I was impressed with how clean this village was and how little it smelled like fish - much cleaner than the Delhi slums!

Using mythology to promote transportation safety - I can get behind that :)

One of our stops was this gaint market (Crawford market) offering everything from fruits/vegitables, spices,
to a big meat warehouse and a section for pets...most of these pets did not look very happy, although I did see one of the cutest golden retriever puppies I have ever seen...and a guinea pig that someone had died bright pink (conspicuously mixed in with a group of non-dyed guinea pigs).
One of the stops that I thought was pretty cool was Dhobi Ghat, where all of Mumbai's laundry is washed. When you look down into this area, it is hard to tell where it ends...so much laundry! Many of the day-to-day functional differences that I see in India compared to the US are related to the price of labor here. There are so many people willing to work for so little money that it doesn't make sense for many businesses and homes to by washing machines. In that vein, I don't think I have seen a single crane in India - but I have seen a lot of huge marble blocks being pulled up several stories with rope and pulley systems!
We visited a Jain temple in the most expensive residential area of Mumbai. This place was very intense. The priests for this branch of Jainism can only wear one piece of white cloth wrapped around their bodies and a white cloth covering their nose and mouth that is meant to prevent accidently killing any bugs by inhaling them. The 2-story temple (partially under construction) was like an insence hot-box with an obstacle course of dozens of religious activity options. There were lots of small rooms surrounding an open quadrangle in the middle where all sorts of praying, making and destroying rice pictures, bell ringing, and decorating idols was taking place. This Jain temple was very colorful with bright paintings decorating all the walls and ceilings.
We also got to visit the house in Mumbai where Ghandi lived for 17 years, which has been turned into a museum commemorating his life. He had a lot of books.

We like Bombay.

Train, Pain, and a return to Decadence

2007-07-10T04:46:00.000-07:00

After a 1 hour taxi ride to the train station we rushed to our platform and tried to find out where we should go to get into Boogie (car) number B7. We asked three people whose answers ranged from both extremes of the long platform so we decided to hang out in the middle (it was a little hot!). When the train arrived the plot thickened...there was no car nunber B7. The train person tried to explain that this is the NEW train and therefore there was no B7 car. We caught hold of a another distressed B7 passenger who thought the extra car may have been tacked on to the end of the train so we raced to the end and got into a car with a paper sign on the outside that appeared to read 'B1'. When we got on, there were eight people who claimed that they were supposed to sit in 6 seats and so things were tight until the conductor came through 2 hours later and cleared things up.Here is Jessica about 14 hours later, eating breakfast on the top bunk. I was in a nearby-top bunk and slept pretty well, despite the severe cold that had me caughing and spitting up phlem periodically...wooo!
Julie's family in Bombay (technically Mumbai), generously sent their personal driver to pick us up from the train station (where our train arrived 2 hours late). We got settled in our fancy hotel (4 girls in one suite for $25/each/night) which was right near the Gate of India and the Taj Mahal Hotel and went to find food. We found "Food Inn" where I ordered tandoori chicken, roti, and a bananna lassi....possibly some of the best ckicken I have ever had! I guess I was missing meat. Here is the Taj Mahal Hotel...there are a lot of buildings in Bombay designed by european architects during British rule...however, this hotel was built by a rich Indian who was turned away from a fancy British hotel, so he decided to make a super-expensive hotel that anyone (with money) could stay at. Later that night, Julie's extended family (about 15 of them) met up for dinner and invited us. We feasted on indian, chinese, and thai dishes at a long banquet table and ended the meal with one of the best desserts I have had in a while: brownie with ice cream, covered with sizzling chocolate sauce.
We slept very soundly this night.

BONUS PICTURES! This weekend only!!! (courtesy of Jessica)

2007-07-05T21:42:00.000-07:00

Cat and Jessica at the poorly named but extremely tasty "Chicken Inn" in New Delhi.

Cute group picture at Agra Fort.

Out for Jessica's 21st birthday - we went to a bar/restaurant/place to watch cricket where I had a tasty mojito for about $2 and then learned a valuable life lesson: don't order italian food in India and think it will taste anything like what you were expecting.

I feel like I spend a lot of time digging through my backpack ...

Another Lodi Gardens shot, a.k.a. the spot for young Indian couples on Sundays.

Shmancy shot of sunset and bogenvilla near our exercise field.

Cat visiting favorite part of campus.

Hopefully the train won't shut down again...

2007-07-05T10:04:00.000-07:00

Our group will turn in our second big report to the NGO we have been working with tomorrow and then Julie, Jessica, Yamilee and I get on an Indian sleeper train for the 16 hour ride to Bombay (Mumbai). Above is a picture of our destination within the last week...I am still struggling to find a kayak that will fit in my backpack. Anyhow, Julie's aunt and uncle have planned a picnic and a day at the beach for us on Saturday...it is unclear how these plans align with te thousands of people being evacuated from areas near bodies of water...but I'm sure it will be delightful. No laptop for the weekend, so you'll have to wait until Tuesday for more of the good stuff.

Happy Independence Day United States of America!

2007-07-04T09:11:00.000-07:00

A day in the life of a Cat in India:

* 6am: feel really tired..think I am getting a sore throat...hope it is raining so I don't have yoga...shoot! it is bright and sunny again.

* 6:20am: leave for yoga at 6:20am

* 7:15am: return to room, eat oatmeal and check email, fight urge to take nap, and work on data analysis from recent community surveys

*9am: meet with team to get organized for the day (usually have tea: black tea made with hot, very sweet milk)

*10am: 10 minute walk to the Delhi border where we can get an autorickshaw that will take us to the NGO

*~10:20am: inevitable breakdown of autorickshaw....today was the flat-tire variety....mmm, the side of the road is covered in human poop...

*10:45am: arrive at Deepalaya school - confirm with Principal which classes we can visit. Conduct a "quiz game" with three classes of students (which is a sneaky way to get more data for our suvey in exchange for chocolate)...with the 8th class actually being the weaker than the 6th and 7th, since all the best students tend to leave the NGO-run school over time

*1pm: collect the three classes in the lobby for our health/education related play. I make some small talk with one of the 7th grade boys

*2pm: We thank all the Deepalaya staff for a great four weeks and talk to the Principal a bit longer and tell her we will have our final report for her by Friday

*2:15: so starving!!!!! To Nathu's Sweets for one of my favorite lunches: North Indian Thali (shared with Jessica) and a Sweet Lassi drink. The thali is a collection of dishes: this one has a chick-pea curry (back/left), a paneer in masala sauce, and a section of lentils(back/right). The dishes come with rice (in the same tray section as the curd- the white stuff with bits of carrot) and roti (like naan only smaller and lets buttery) and some carrots and onions. The best part of the lunch is the sweet lassi which is really sweet, thick yogurt; the green things are pistachio shavings.

*3pm - autorickshaw ride back to the college

*3:30pm- meet with team members and learn from second supervisor that our primary supervisor has chicken pox...plans for next week are in the air (a condition we are getting increasingly tolerant of :)

*4pm - try to do some editing of report...and end up watching some Indian music videos on TV in Julie and Jessica's room

*6:30pm - round up most of the crew for a run on the field around sunset - one of the best parts of the day

*7:30pm - shoot the basketball around until it is dangerously dark on the slippery/sandy/broken concrete basketball court - go into the gym...smile as I do every day when I see the treadmills - they don't make them like this any more! You can build one at home - all you need is some 2x4s, a bakers dozen rolling pins, and a wide strap :) - no electricity needed.*8:15pm - shower up and head over to the canteen (cafeteria) for dinner to hang out with our Indian girl friends. They are on scholarship and are mostly from farming families in Ladakh. Ladakhis look Chinese and are primarily Buddhist. In this freshman class there are several sets of sisters of differing ages.

*9:30pm- excuse ourselves from dinner since we are all pooped (and chances are 2 out of 5 of us are having some sort of stomach issue...good times).

*10pm- post blog for you lovely people.

Love, Catherine

French toast never tasted so good!

2007-07-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

Julie, Yamilee, and Jessica in Lodi Garden in Delhi.
Catherine exploring the outside wall of Sikander Lodi's tomb (which indudes a walled in garden and a mosoleum in the middle) in Lodi Garden. It is amusing to note that Lodi Garden appears to be an make-out spot for Indian couples. The four of us were in complete shock finding a couple under every tree and large bush after observing almost no public displays of affection between men and women in the month we have been here.
A lovely mosoleum that is quite distinguished despite the punishments of time. Remnants of light and dark blue tile still decorate the outside .
A view from Safdarjang's tomb (similar layout to the Taj Mahal) also in Delhi, near Lodi Garden.
When I consulted Lonely Planet guidebook for nearby restaurants guess what we found! an All-American Diner - complete with red pleather seats, Heinz ketchup, waffles, smoothies....oh...it was so good. I would never have guessed I would feel nastalgic about syrup :)

How do you improve self-reliance and healthy living practices in slum communities?

2007-07-02T03:56:00.000-07:00

Today our group team from MIT and the Rai Foundation split up to gather data for our study on information tranfer within slum communities: two students went to IKV camp and J.J. camp and three of us went to an NGO school serving children from these communities. Last week and this week we have been studying patterns of information transer within the local slum communities as a function of gender and school-age vs. adult. Initial results show that 25% of the adults in the slums cannot read, but many are able to keep up with current events and entertainment through television. In the poorest slums, there is only limited access to public toilets and most families can only afford 2 meals a day and nevertheless most homes have televisions. About 80% of respondants proclaim TV as their preferred source of information. However, in the very poorest slums the women are so consumed by the hardships of daily life that they have no knowledge of current events / entertainment / politics - for example, one 32 year old women had never gone to school, could not read, owned neither a TV or a radio, and claimed she did not speak to anyone in her community or family about news or other new pieces of knowledge...the question we are trying to answer is how can we tailor information transfer about health and education to individual slumcommunities and specific demographics within these communities to improve their chances for self-reliance and healthy living?

Here are pictures from the NGO-run school located near several slums. These children's families have to pay for the uniforms and books themselves, which are expensive compared to the government schools (although there is still a large gap between the education at these schools and the education at private schools). Many of the girls are on partial scholarship so their families, who make about 4000 Rs-/month (or $1200/year), pay 50 Rs-/ a month (or ~$1.25) instead of about $5/month for boys. There are two reasons Deepalaya (the NGO) favors girls: 1.girls are the ones who will stay in the home and spread knowledge throughout the community (and hopefully send their children to school) and 2. girl-children are often denied the opportunity for education since the parents prefer to use their limited resources to educate their boy-children. Above is a picture of Julie and I from this morning with several boys from the 10th standard (~15 years old) and below three girls from the 9th standard (~14 years old) - in each class there are a number of young men and women who speak English very well. They were all incredibly friendly, curteous, and curious.

Hallelujah!

2007-06-30T09:24:00.000-07:00

I did it. I fixed my broken LCD screen…well, actually the nice Indian man fixed it in 30 min for 6800 Rs (~$175)…not too shabby. The resolution is not as high as the old screen, but a full screen sure beats being restricted to the upper-left quadrant. For any of you people interested in computers, Nehru place is some sort of computer mecca. It is a bee hive labyrinth of thousands of tiny computer stores and electronics parts vendors – it was pretty unbelievable. Today we are off to do more sight-seeing in Delhi. (pictures to follow) I have been up since 6am (yes, because I’m a crazy person) but also because 6:30am is when my friend Deepak and I do Pranayama (yoga breathing exersizes)…after 7am the sun is too hot to be sitting outside on the field comfortably.

To the market!

2007-06-29T20:57:00.000-07:00

Safety is not really a concern when it comes to Delhi's roads. It is not that people don't get hurt, it is that no one seems interested in taking further safety precautions. On the way to the market we saw a sign that read "Accident prone area - be careful"...I can only assume they were referring to all of Delhi...while the city is at it, they should make a sign saying: "Watch out for infants being held by mothers sitting side-sattle on the back of motorcycles". There are many surprising sights on the roads but the one below was a classic - the cell phone stuck in the helmet. (Of course, I can't really talk because I was only able to take this picture while on the road because we had 5 girls in one autorickshaw - comfortable for about 2-3 passengers, and I was sharing the drivers seat).

Once at the market, the unusually cloudy and "cool" weather transformed into a dounpour and all the shoppers ran to the nearest market stall, while all the stall workers tried to prevents their tarp awnings from collpsing by keeping the water from collecting by poking with long sticks. Amusing for us was that there were several victims of the sudden unloading of these tarps - the funniest of which resulted in a teenage girl with a white curti (shirt) getting completely dreched and the resulting fury of the mother at the very apologetic shopkeeper (while all the on-looking shopkeepers were giggling).

However, one hour later, everything had dried up and the shopkeepers who had packed-up for rain-mode spread out again. Here is one one of these very temporary stores created on this stone archway.

Also, one of the NGO elementary schools that serves local slums had a new saying of the day posted...I agree.

Ohhh, and exciting news in blog-land. I have just called a lap top repair place in Delhi (apparenly located in Asia's largest electronics market...), where the store owner said (in English!) that replacing the Dell laptop screen could be replaced in 1 hour! I know it is not fixed yet and I don't know if I am supposed to bargain over the price...but I can't help "We Are The Champions" from playing in my head. Good luck, me! (as my grandfather Roy might say :)

A block and Nehru camp

2007-06-29T05:58:00.000-07:00

After completing the first 2-week research study on mother-child health care resources in 5 New Delhi slums, we have begun the second 2-week research project studying information pathways in the slums among different demographic groups. This second project will hopefully enable our host NGO (Deepalaya) to maximize health awareness propagation through targeted publicity. Both of these projects are in preparation to create a community project proposal for HCRA (Handicapped Children Rehalitation Association) that will demand knowledge of slum health issues, education methods, and child disability.

Since we are getting more comfortable working in the slums, we de visited two communities in one day. The first was A block. Here were three women (mother, aunt, and daughter)who were in one of the nicer homes we saw in A block. Men and women in A block tended to be pretty receptive, especially when we managed to draw a large crowd of child and young men followers.

These young men indulged us with our questions. Below a 20 year old young man who finished through the 5th grade answers our questions with a smile as he washes cups and bowls from the soapy water on the surface of his cart. He was scrubbing relaly hard, but it is hard to be entirely convinced when the decorative flies reappear

after washing.

The two pictures below are of children in Nehru camp. Nehru camp is in bad shape with swarms of flies everywhere and human waste throughout this labyrinth of narrow alleyways, in beautiful shades of green in blue. Time to go out for night out on Faridabad for Jessica's birthday ...will let you know how that goes... :)

the mysterious laundry system

2007-06-26T09:13:00.000-07:00

So far, the laundry system at our residence is quite mysterious. As far as I can tell the system is this: We have a laundry basket in our room (with Winnie the Pooh on it) and if you place it prominently in your room with dirty clothes in it, it will dissapear while you are work and reappear 1-3 days later. When the clothes return there is no information about charges and when you ask, the residence workers tell you they will tell you tomorrow, which they don't. The biggest surprise is that all the clothes come back with your room number written in pen or marker somewhere on them. So, now all the tags of all my shirts and random places on my underwear read '113'...interesting bonus feature to the laundry. The latest twist, is that rumor has it, the laundry person will no longer wash women's underwear, this is unfortuneate because after 25 years I've grown quite accostomed to properly washed underwear... Ah yes...and what of my Indian girl friends from the singing circle? At dinner this evening they were all eager to practice their English (as they are all studying Air Ticketing which apparently will prepare them for careers as stewardesses and airline ticket sellers) and have requested that I come eat dinner with them every night with them. In addition, they explained that they are very bored in the evening time and asked what I do before dinner. I told them that I go running and story short...it looks like there are 8 Indian girls who want to come work out with me at 6:30pm tomorrow....I have no idea what I am in for...should be fun though!

2007-06-25T20:38:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of classes for the Indian students on campus and I am already enamored with the student body. Get this: after eating dinner together in the cafeteria from around 8-9pm, they come out to the lawn and sit in little circles of either all girls or all boys ranging from 5 to 15 people. (Although I did see one suspected couple walking and talking…). In these circles, the girls often take turns singing songs in both Hindi and English ranging from quiet, traditional folk songs to dance songs such as “Let’s Party!” In addition to singing songs together in groups while sitting in the grass after both lunch and dinner, they also play little games such as spin the bottle – the games usually involve singing as well. Jessica and I were invited to join one group of 6 girls, which within a few minutes had grown to about 15. After it was my turn to sing a song (I sang part of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly me to the Moon”), they transitioned to a game which is basically the equivalent of duck-duck goose, except you don’t tap people on the head – instead the girls going around the outside has a little towel that she hides as she prances around and then drops behind someone and if the girl running around the circle makes it around the circle before the girl with the towel behind her notices, then the girl who didn’t notice has to go in the middle of the group and perform. I don’t know what all the options were but we saw two singing performances and Jessica gave a little dance performance – she was a big hit with some of her bangra moves! When the groups of girls get together they are the most bubbly, sweet, cute little groups you can imagine. I am very much looking forward to participating in more group singing and game-playing in the cool (~85-90F) of the night.

Incidentally, as more students arrive on campus it seems increasingly clear that boys and girls pretty much do not interact (other than having mixed classes). They live, eat, and apparently hang out separately. This concerns me slightly, because here I am working out at the same time as the business school guys two times a day: yoga at 6:30am and running and lifting at 6:30pm. Nevertheless, I think I will continue my current workout pattern, since it doesn't seem to bother anyone and I am having fun.

Oh also, today I finally saw the three peacocks that make such a racket in the tall grasses near the field where we run. (I may or may not have had to climb up onto a brick wall and then the roof of an abandoned building and then walk along the top of the brink wall to see them).

A birthday

2007-06-24T20:24:00.001-07:00

Sunday was Julie's birthday which we celebrated by getting a chocolate cake in the afternoon, going out for dinner, watching a movie, and spending about 8 hours trying to finish our reports. For dinner we we went to Haldiram's - a clean, popular semi-Indian fast food where you can get order anything from South Indian, North Indian, Tandoori, Chinese, Continental (including rench friees and cheese pizza) and a whole array of desserts and drinks. I chose a yogurt dish called "Special Dahi Bhalla" (shown below), which turned out to be two raisin bread balls doused in yoghurt, followed by dashes of tamarind sauce and a little chutney sauce and topped off with more yoghurt and spicy, cruchy balls.

Here is a picture of the girls (plus Musheer) outside Haldiram's restaurant.

Hello...Taj.

2007-06-23T21:12:00.000-07:00

Julie, Jessica, Yamilee, Christina (visiting MIT photographer), Dhirani, Musheer, and I rented a 'minivan' taxi and driver for the day to go to Agra. The drive from Delhi to Agra took about 4 hours starting at 5:30am. The first site we visited was a "magnificent fortifed ghost city" that was the Mughal emporer's (Akbar) capitol for all of 1571 to 1585. This emporer died and the city was abandoned because of water shortages. Akbar had 3 wives: one Chritian, one Muslim and one Hindu, and each wife had her own mini-palace. He also had about 800 concubines. The palaces are all decorated with intricate wall-carvings in red sandstone and the layout includes many couryards that leave the area feeling open and spacious. This short-lived capitol was built adjacent to the town Fatehpur Sikri, which is about 40km away from Agra. This site was especially enjoyable because there were so few visitors.
Jama Masjid is a large mosque with Hindu and Persian design elements. There are no minarets (tall towers), but these mini-domes (from which lanterns are hung) line the top of the entire mosque wall. This is a picture of 54 m high Buland Darwaza (Visctory Gate) that celebrates one of Akbar's military vistories.

After lunch at Fatehpur Sikri we headed back to Agra to visit Agra Fort, a fort and palace complex begun by Akbar in 1595 and extensively added to by his grandson Shah Jahan, whose favorite material was white marble (and who also built the Taj Mahal). When Shah Jahan's son seized power in 1658, Agra Fort became Shah Jahan's prison for 8 years...could have been much worse though...I think he still at least 350 concubines. Here we see the entrance to one of teh first palaces we looked at. Intricate carvings and stone lattices all over the place!

After an already long day it was time to head to the Taj! Securty to pretty tight. As you walk toward the Taj Mahal you go through a large, dark gate, and similar to the treasury in Petra, Jordan, a view of the Taj Mahal reveals itself in full splendor. There were a lot more people here, than at the other two sites, as expected, but I am still suprised at how few foreigners I see. During the work week we see no foreigners and even at India's biggest tourist attraction, I only noticed about 30 obvious non-Indians. On the west side of the Taj, there is a red sandstone mosk and on the East side of the Taj is a mirror-image of the mosque (for symmetry :) Both the inside and outside of the Taj Mahal is adorned with beautiful patterns of semi-precious stone inlay and teh inside is also decorated with semi-translucent white marble with carved flowers ( a lot of irises). The Taj mahal was built for the wife of Shah Jahan after she died givign birth to their 14th child.

Here I am with the obligatory me-and-Taj picture...

The Taj Mahal was built on the bank of the Yamuna river, which was looking very beautiful as the sun dipped lower in the sky.

All in all, a really fabulous day even including the Indian policeman who asked for a really big bribe because our driver's license plate was the wrong color and he saw a bunch of foreigners in the car...first hand experience of police force corruption!...what a big day...it is 11am and I think the rest of the group is just starting to stir. Love, Catherine

Could have been worse...

2007-06-22T10:28:00.000-07:00

Well, I just broke my laptop but it could have been much worse. The data appears to be in tact and I still have about 25% of the screen. I have the upper-left quadrant, which if I got to choose, would definitely have been in my top two choices for favorite screen quadrants. Since I am successfully posting a blog it looks like I may continue using the laptop for email and blogging (even though looking at the screen so soon after the accident makes me a sad.) I have attached the following picture for those who have never seen a broken laptop screen before:

In other news I visited another community today and say children getting water from a gaint water pipe with leaks. Here is a picture.

Also, I am heading to Agra tomorrow to see the Taj Mahal and two other sites - it should be another hot day with a high around 100-1110F. I can't see what I am typing so I think I will wrap up here.

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts

2007-06-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

"Down at an english fair one evening I was there

When I heard a showman shouting underneath the flair

I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts

There they are all standing in a row

Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head

Give them a twist a flick of the wrist

That’s what the showman said"

- from a well know novelty song in the 1940s referring to an English carnaval game, more recently referenced in Disney's The Lion King.

...okay...so its possible I don' have too many pictures from yesterday or today because my group has been writing up the community research we have conducted the past two weeks. But in the spirit of coconuts, here is a picture of me drinking coconut milk from a coconut. The guy at a food court we visted yesterday chopped the top off with a machete after I ordered (which even with a huge knife did not look easy), so I am glad they don't ask customers to knaw them open. The dish was called lemon rice and was served with a small bowl of lentil soup, some pickled vegitables, and curd (South Indian cuisine).

Also, I have been running every day at 6:30pm (around sunset) with one or two of the other girls and have made friends with a group of Indian business school students who seem to be the only students on campus during this holiday month. Sometimes I ask them if I can participate in their exersize schedule (including jogging, some sprints, stretching, sometimes meditation and yoga and then about an hour of lifting in the gym). This evening I found out that they also meet every morning at 6:30am for yoga breathing exercises...I asked if I could join in and they said that was fine. Group yoga in the morning out in the meadow with peakocks making sounds in the taller grasses with the sun just barely up....can't wait! I'll see if I can sneak in a picture without acting like a complete tourist:)

2007-06-19T05:55:00.001-07:00

After spending the rainy day yesterday working in our groups at home (and playing ping pong), today we headed back to Deepalaya and out into a fourth community called B-block. The gods were favoring us today because cool winds blew in while we were outside, but the rain held off. The people of B-block were cooperative and we gathered our usual mob of small children followers (and a few curious young mothers). Often I exchange a friendly smile with a girl my age...Although, last week I met a 25 year old grandmother, and I still can't wrap my brain around that one...In any case, here is a lovely little family from B-block in front of their home.

When we came out of the alleyway I saw this cart containing some shiny god-statues and some platic green parrots. This is my favorite picture from today.

Also, I learned that there are 'ice cream trucks' near these communities that sell sandy colored ice cream on sticks that seem to be made in the cart and sold for 1 Rp each ($ 1/40)...complete with bell! Yay, for the children!

On the way back to the school we stopped at a local temple. There was a small main building with a painted statue inside and several statues decorating the outside walls and the small surrounding courtyard.

Has anyone seen my exercise?

2007-06-18T20:18:00.000-07:00

When we first arrived, the 115 F weather made not-dying more of a priority than exersizing. Then there were further challnges: * 'My stomach feels funny' * I have no idea where the gym is * and there are 50 guards all over campus who I am hesitant to wear shorts in front of (because I haven't seen any Indian woman's legs above the ankle yet) and one of my trip goals is not to be mistaken for a prostitute. Nevertheless, Jessica and I headed out to the 'meadow' (I wearing my yoga pants under my shorts - lookin' good...). The meadow, as we have dubbed it, is a piece of open area right next to the train tracks with a concerete stage and a small patch of nice grass surrounded by a lot of tall weeds. By the looks of this area it might have been a graduation site 5 years ago. The small patch of nice grass seems to be expanding from one day to the next with the addition of small piles of pulled up weeds, suggesting that this huge field is being tended by hand. This is only slightly surprising given how overstaffed India seems to be. For example: a small, one-room grocery store has ~8 young male employees: 2 security, 2 to calcuulate the bill and 4 people to bag your 3 boxes of crackers...perfect! Anyhow, around 6:30pm we go out to the field and run for a while. The sun is setting so it is cooler and tranquil. At 7pm the nearby gym is opened by one of the guards and we and the Indian MBA students on campus go into the messy little gym and lift weights. Yesterday I took on the organiation of all the free weights, which were scattered all over the gym and is not only dangerous but makes collecting matching pairs a pain. There are several (100 - 130lb lb?) young men who watched me lift for a while and then asked me if I could teach them what to do. I think I have found a suitable workout schedule for them and will maybe start giving lifting lessons 2 times a week until their form doesn't make me cringe :) Off to work! More pictures tonight or tomorrow.

Out and About in Central Delhi

2007-06-17T02:20:00.001-07:00

On Saturday all five of us girls set out to explore on our own. We took the public bus from Badapur Border (where we also pick up autorickshaws) to a neighborhood in Delhi near Lajpat Nagar, a big market known for being good for deals on clothing. On the way I saw a 'heavily' loaded cart transporting hay and I stood in the open bus doorway to take this picture:
As we were walking through a residential area we came upon this lovely Ganesh temple:
Once at the market, we (I mean Sony) bargained for Kurti's (just the tops that can be worn over jeans and suits (salvar kamis), which is a top and a bottom. We also looked at skirts and I checked out some cheap tupperware :)

We took shelter in the air conditioned sari shop and were impressed by all the colorful and sparkly fabrics that the helpers threw out one after another:
After going to the market we headed over to India Gate where in the now cooler weather, there is a 4th of July atomosphere: children playing in the fountains, families BBQing on the grass, lots of vendors selling snack food and noise-makers. Here I am in front of India Gate (a memorial to fallen Indian soldiers). Around 7:30pm it was dusk and my Lonely Planet guide showed one restaurant in the near vicinity - I led everyone through a not promising looking area as it began to get dark and my mid was filling with doubt but then a nice lady asked us if we were looking for anything and it was only

...In other words: "I sail!" (see What About Bob?)

Monsoon season is here!

2007-06-17T00:07:00.000-07:00

The rains started in June 15th. One of the members in our group went out and stood in the rain with their mouth open. Once they returned, our Indian counterparts remarked that the rain was most like acid rain since the first rain absorbs the air pollution...oops

The first day it rained 55 mm and it rained that might and the next morning our campus was flooded with water 8" deep in some areas. Surprisingly the sun came out and the water went away and Saturday was a lovely day. My impression is that monsoon season consists of very heavy rains lasting 1-3 hours 1-3 times a day. Here is a picture of the street from the entrance of our favorite lunch spot near the NGO.

On Friday the teachers at the NGO run school we are based out of asked us if we would help judge a poster/presentation competition between 5 groups of students doing vocational training on various themes ranging from infanticide to why cheating is bad. Here I am lighting one of the ceremonial candles on stage...our unexpected participation in this event was bewildering but fun.

On the way home, our autorickshaw (containing 3 girls) was followed by these two young men on a motorcycle who apparently wanted to come to our house.
NOTE: the record for most people seen on a motocycle stil stands at 5!

In

Weather and power outages

2007-06-14T04:10:00.000-07:00

The weather has cooled off to about 40C during the day, but with an increase in humidity to 80% because the monsoon rains have started in the east. In this morning's Hindu Times there was a picture of the flooding in Calcutta where a rickshaw driver was pulling passengers through 2-3 feet of water. Unfortuneately, we are not even in 'pre-monsoon' season yet...I don't really know what that means, but I think it will stay hot for a little while yet. Because of the heat, Delhi is continuously breaking its own record for the most power ever used per day in the city (according to the newspapers), which is resulting in planned power outages in every community. The power goes out more than a dozen times in a day, but many places have generators that kick in after a minute or so. Typically, everyone goes about their business as usual through the frequent outages.

Today we visited a second slum community called JJ Camp. (JJ stands for a Hindi word that means thatched roof houses, even though most of the houses have tin roofs). JJ camp is not as well off as A-block (yesterday) and pretty much smells like human waste everywhere you go. About a quarter of the children have severe skin rashes either due to infections or 'medicines' administered by the mothers. (One child we saw yesterday had balding patches after the mother tried using something on his skin). In addition, most of them probably have lice because they were itching their skin and scalps like crazy. Here is most of a family with a mother and her six children. The room that they live in (right) is so small that some of the family members have to sleep outside the door.

The smaller boy in the black T-shirt has dark black makeup around his eyes (I have seen this on many young children and babies) because the community believes that it will improve the child's eyesight.

Lovely

2007-06-13T04:51:00.000-07:00

The first day in the slums was about as successful and fun as we could hope for: our team (Jessica, Dhirani, Musheer, and I) accompanied the Deepalaya community health mobilizer, Kavita, on her daily round through one of the local slums, A-block. Jessica and I can only introduce ourselves in Hindi and say a few phrases so all the interviewing was done by Dhirani and Musheer. However, I think we were helpful in that we were able to draw quiet a rambunctious and enthusiatic crowd of children and potential interviewees. In 1.5 hours we obtained the family history and the options on health care through the local NGOs and government from 12 families.
Kavita, Catherine, Julie and Musheer at the Deepalaya health clinic.

Crowd of excited children from A-block. The dogs name was Julie as well.
The girl to the right of the mother in the yellow sari wanted to learn English and Dharani convinced me to sing Happy Birthday for the crowd and everyone joined in:)

After work we went to see this impressive Baha'i temple shaped like a lotus flower (Lotus Temple) - the four girls negotiated a fare back home by ourselves for the first time. This was a little challenging but we ended up paying only 10Rp. more than we should have (80Rp.) - therefore I deem our negotiating skills a huge success!

BAD MANGO

2007-06-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

This morning I ate a mango. It was the firt piece of fresh food I have eaten since coming to India because I have been letting my system adjust. I threw up the mango half an hour later. Blast! My fruit eating has been foiled! I will try to do a better post when I get back from work: talking to people in the slums about their family health and satisfaction with NGO health services.

IST (Indian Standard Time)

2007-06-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

IST = for all sorts of unforseeable reasons, most meetings start about an hour after they are planned to

Here is a blurry picture of the whole team:
Around the circle starting with Jessica (front in red), Dr. Sunaina, Sony, Dr. Miraj, Nupur, Yamilee, Julie, Dharani, and Mushir)...I took this awesome picture.

Today was our first full day of work during which we visited the two NGOs that we will be learning from duing the 4 week research period. It was another super-hot day (44C) and everyone had their low points during the day, but overall we are a tough group and I am very proud of all of us.

I liked this 'thought of the day' from a chalk board outside a "posh" 1-12 adademic school/vocational school run by Deepalaya that serves the surrounding slums:

2007-06-10T19:21:00.001-07:00

Catherine's first rickshaw ride (bonus points for going against the flow of traffic
first bounty from the local market (each subdivision in Faridabad is numbered and has its own markets...these treasures are from 37 Market)

freeways are for people and cars

Apparently I have become veggie

2007-06-10T09:39:00.001-07:00

First, let us review our hot weather conversions: 1. 30 min outside at 46 deg C = feel like crap 2. 6 L of water in (24 glasses) at 46 deg C - ~1 L of water out = 5 L of sweat and evaporated water! This morning I learned that monsoon season will start in about 1-2 weeks, bringing cooler temperatures...I have a new favorite season! (Pictures aren't uploading today..will have to save for tomorrow)

Fun Fact: "Brain freeze", like that experienced when eating ice cream too quickly, can be alternatively obtained by moving between outside and inside temperatures. Wooo!