Even though I don't blog enough I at least try and make a post on New Year's Eve. It does matter some.
So this is my first New Year's(and Christmas, and Thanksgiving) away from home and family. It's not like we ever do anything for the holidays though, seriously, so I guess I'm just being a pussy about all this. Ok, fine I'll admit it: I do feel homesick, I can't lie. I feel like crap as of now(bad cold and possible ear infection) so my demeanor probably isn't the most positive right now, but I'll still write this the best I can.
2010 has been a pretty interesting year for me.
I went to my first concert.(which I still need to write about, it's been almost a year!)
I got my first electric guitar, got better at the acoustic and was getting better at piano until I had to send it away to storage. I really miss my piano and I really really miss my acoustic guitar. Since I've been over here in India I've forgotten the calming and clearing effect that playing has on me.
I got my first boyfriend(and got a crash course in relationships. Fun. Not.)
My parents finally tore down our old mold and mouse ridden house and built a new house. I'm so happy for them, especially my mom. Our old house stressed her out for so many years because it wasn't big enough for us, it was pretty much always messy. Due to lack of closet and storage space(only 2 closets between 5 people) we pretty much had piles of stuff everywhere for lack of better words(we're not hoarders, I swear!) It was cold and drafty in the winter, hot and sticky in the summer when the A/C was out, and the house pretty much made it's own dust. Trust me, dusting feels very depressing and counter productive when it comes back the next day. It's also not cool to have your own personal Niagra Falls in the basement every time it rains, or to feel like the house is going to blow off the foundation every time the wind blows. I could go on all day long about that house. I left before everything was done but to hear my mom talk about the house, it's like talking to a little kid who just built the most awesome couch cushion fort. She's so happy and it makes me feel a lot better about my mom knowing that she's got one less thing to worry about. It sounds like we may be getting a new puppy soon as well(nothing concrete) so I can't imagine how my mom will act with a new fort and a new puppy.
There is of course, also this trip to India, which will probably remain the highlight of my life. I've learned so much here, but what's funny is that I think I've learned just as much about my life at home as I've learned about stuff in general here. I've learned that in the past I never valued or appreciated my parents as much as I should have, and sometimes I mistreated them, and I'm really sorry for that. I've learned that having and keeping my family in my life is very important, and that I have taken that for granted over the years(damn adolescence). I've learned(and am still learning) what the key to good health is as well(article later when I can think better, I promise!) I've also learned how much I miss and even APPRECIATE doing goat chores. That's probably one of the hugest reasons I can't think properly, I've lost that way that I clear my mind and articulate my thoughts and it SUCKS. I'm not bored* over here(seriously Mukthi, if you're reading this I've never been bored, I don't just say that) but it's just really weird for me to be sitting still all the time and not doing anything. I really miss my goats too. I never realized how sane they keep me. I miss it when I'm having a bad day, I can't just go out to the barn and be with my goats. They always make me smile, they always make me feeling better. It's like they always have just the right thing to say, and they can say it to you without even saying it. I miss my fat little Ducky, the way she always just walks up to you unexcitedly, without a wiggle of her tail, just expecting to be pet. I can't blame her though, she is almost royalty in the barn.
*A note on boredom. Boredom is usually accompanied by impatience, and boredom is pretty much impatience with yourself and everybody else because you just simply can't think of anything to do. The reason why I'm not bored(even though I'm not doing anything) is because if I can't find anything to do I'll just occupy my mind with some course of thought that will usually keep my mind occupied for a while. Conquering boredom is all about patience and not letting your mind get stagnant.
So I'm going to wrap this up with an apology to anybody who reads this blog for the sole purpose of hearing about what I'm doing on this trip. I'm sorry but any time I've tried to write about things it's literally almost impossible for me. The best way I can explain it is like this: First, I've gotten pretty used to what I see over here, and also in a way it's been a sensory overload. There is soooo much information coming into my brain that I can't really process it. Second, if I write about what I'm doing all the time I start to feel like I'm not really here anymore, like I'm looking through a camera and not through my eyes. Ever shoot a video of something really cool and feel like you're not there at the same time? It's like that. Third, as I mentioned above I've found since I'm over here that I've been able to look at things back home(not just my own life, but American society as well) and see them from a totally different perspective since I'm not there anymore. I think it's going to be the same way when I get back home from here. I'll more than likely be able to write about it then.
So to wrap this up, I am going to try and blog a little bit more while I'm over here, but I'm not going to be blogging about India. I think it's time to put these other thoughts in my head into writing before they go away. I'd make it a resolution to blog more in 2011, but I'm pretty sure that I did that for 2010, and as you can see, there's less than a dozen blogs. So, fuck resolutions in my opinion; as soon as you make a resolution you probably won't keep it anyway because you made a point to make it a resolution in the first place. If there's things you want to change in your life, bring the change about when the time is proper(like don't try losing weight in winter, you need extra fat for insulation!) Also don't set goals that you know are unachievable, it's simply just counterproductive. If you're going to set goals, set small goals and when you achieve them set a few more small goals until eventually that big goal actually is accomplished.
Ok before I start sounding like a life coach(too late)............
Happy New Year. May your year be filled with health, love and happiness. If you want have a resolution be sure to have this one and keep it:
Enjoy the little things in life. You'll never realize how important they are until they're gone.
Namaste.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Merry Christmas
I know I'm late on a post like this but I am after all the queen of procrastinators. So Merry Christmas to all, and all that other sentimental crap.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
My trip to Kerala
So yesterday we traveled to Kerala, a state south of Karnataka(Karnataka is the state that I'm in now) to go see the Ayurvedic doctor. This is the world's first Ayurvedic hospital, and the main doctor there is the #1 Ayurvedic doctor in India and has received India's highest honor(like an Indian Nobel prize) He has done extensive research with cancer and has published a few papers on cancer as well. More on him in a moment.
So we left at 5 in the afternoon, we hired a driver for the trip. The driver had a diesel car, btw :P Diesel cars are pretty popular over here, which sucks because Americans want diesel cars too(Nissan makes a diesel!! for India though) So we had to get past this one check point on the highway before 9:00, since the highway goes through a forest, and the government doesn't want the wildlife to be disturbed at night. It was dark when we were going through the forest, but I did see one elephant.
After the forest stretch of highway, pretty soon we crossed over the Karnataka/Kerala border, and entered the Malabar Hills. In order to get to the bottom of the hill and back to normal highways, we had to go down the side of a mountain. Indian driving may be bad, but Indian driving+darkness+mountain driving=pretty damn scary. Since this was the main way between states, there was a lot of truck traffic, as well as buses. Its scary when the oncoming trucks and buses look like they're going to hit you at every turn, and in addition to many normal turns, there are nine hairpin curves. And these roads were built with minimum funds, since the engineers cut corners and pocketed the extra money, the roads are in poor condition. It reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons when the potholes in town were so big they were swallowing cars. What was cool though is when the car on the side close to the barrier, you could see the town down in the valley; we were really high up so the lights looked really cool.
So when we got down(finally) we went to Calicut, the city where we were planning on spending the night. When we got to Calicut we spent almost an hour asking where this certain hotel was, and we finally found it around midnight. It looked like a nice hotel except for the fact(and we never thought of this) I didn't have my passport. There's a police order in Calicut(and other cities) than foreigners cannot stay in hotels without their passports, since they're trying to track everybody's movements. They wouldn't accept a faxed copy of my passport so we ended up going to a hotel down the street who didn't ask for it. It wasn't as nice as the other hotel but it was tolerable, we had a sheet to put on the bed. We got about 4 hours of sleep before we had to get up and get ready again.
The town we were going to was about 4 hours away from Calicut(I don't remember the name of it) I dozed most of the way, so I don't remember it. I do remember seeing a cattle auction in some suburb of Calicut, they were selling what appeared to be breeding stock for this cow that sort of looked like a mini brown water buffalo. I also learned that auto-rickshaws are very versatile. I saw somebody sitting in the back of one with two goats :P
When we got to the hospital, it was sort of off the beaten path. I didn't take any pictures because Mukthi had my camera(I had given it to her the night before when I had to use a public bathroom) But the hospital was very beautiful. The Malabar region in general is very beautiful, there are soooo many palm trees and its very hilly and rocky. What is cool is in the hospital compound, there was a fenced in area inside where they grew the herbs that they used in all of their medicines, and Mukthi said they have many acres more of herbs that they used in their preparations. Mukthi's father commented that the mosquitoes were huge, probably due to the plentiful super herbs :P
So at the hospital, before you see the doctor you get to consult with a secretary and in short tell him(or her) all of your problems, present and past, which you wish to be addressed to the doctor. These are, of course, written down in a file. Then you had to wait your turn to see the doctor.
They had several doctors at the hospital, there is a different doctor there every day. The doctor that we saw only comes once a week, on Tuesdays, and the rest of the week he spends traveling around the entire country, only spending Sundays at his home. When I went into the room to see the doctor, he sits at a long table with about five or six other people; I'm not sure what they all do but one person reads from the patient file, and another person writes down the doctor's prescriptions. The doctor spoke English, but to be honest, I couldn't understand him that well because his accent was really thick. I got the gist of what he was saying though. He asked me a few questions about what I told the secretary, then prescribed accordingly. Because I didn't understand the doctor as well as I wanted to, I was worried that I didn't give enough information. Mukthi explained to me afterwards though that he is such a good doctor, that just by looking at you he can usually tell you what is the matter with you. Facial features are enough to be able to tell what a person's doshic* constitution is, which I thought was super cool.
*for those of you who don't know, Ayurveda treats according to what a person's doshic constitution. There are three different doshas: kapha, pitta and vata, and each constitution has a list of emotional and physical qualities. Different diseases are also related to specific doshas. Again, its hard to explain in a nutshell!
They have the pharmacy on the front side of the building where consultations are. I got two months supply of medicine(almost a dozen bottles of things) for $30, and the consultation was a few dollars. According to Mukthi, this hospital likes to stay low key, so that it can remain a mainly charitable organization, helping those that want to use the medicine for curative purposes rather than enhancing health. Therefore, they make the medicines and consultations affordable to poorer patients, making very little money in the process.
Another cool thing is that they medicines are made with herbs they grow themselves, using the same methods that were used 5000 years ago. The medicines take months to make, but in the end, they have a product that is unique only to them. You can only buy their medicines if they are prescribed to you, because all of these medicines are unique to each dosha type. You cannot buy extra medicine, only what you need, and you cannot buy medicine for another person(like to refill a prescription) They do this, again, because it is a charitable organization.
So afterwards we ate out; I only ate rice because I wasn't feeling well enough to eat spicy food, and Mukthi advised against eating certain foods out. Then we went home.
Its really hard to try and describe trips from one place to another, because there is so so so much that you see. From awesome houses, to temples, mosques, churches, roadside shops etc you can't describe it all. In the Malabar region though we saw a lot of rice patties and lumber mills. Another thing about traveling through India by car is that the main highways are only two-lanes, so you really feel like you're going on a back road through the forest.
When we got back to Malabar Hills it was dusk, so seeing the sun set over the mountains was a breathtaking sight. I got pictures, they're sort of grainy but its better than nothing. Going up the mountain in the dark was just as scary as going down the mountain in the dark.
I was so tired by the time we got back to Mysore at a quarter after 10. I hadn't slept much, I dozed in the car and that was about it. I slept in until 9 this morning. I start my medicine tomorrow when I can do it when I'm supposed to.
So I have have this bitter ghee to take in the morning at 6 AM, two alcoholic preparations to take after lunch and dinner, and a mixture of honey and herbs to take before I go to bed. Also I have two kinds of oil to apply over my body a couple times a week(according to Mukthi they are for pitta-vata)
So that was my crazy two day trips to Kerala.
So we left at 5 in the afternoon, we hired a driver for the trip. The driver had a diesel car, btw :P Diesel cars are pretty popular over here, which sucks because Americans want diesel cars too(Nissan makes a diesel!! for India though) So we had to get past this one check point on the highway before 9:00, since the highway goes through a forest, and the government doesn't want the wildlife to be disturbed at night. It was dark when we were going through the forest, but I did see one elephant.
After the forest stretch of highway, pretty soon we crossed over the Karnataka/Kerala border, and entered the Malabar Hills. In order to get to the bottom of the hill and back to normal highways, we had to go down the side of a mountain. Indian driving may be bad, but Indian driving+darkness+mountain driving=pretty damn scary. Since this was the main way between states, there was a lot of truck traffic, as well as buses. Its scary when the oncoming trucks and buses look like they're going to hit you at every turn, and in addition to many normal turns, there are nine hairpin curves. And these roads were built with minimum funds, since the engineers cut corners and pocketed the extra money, the roads are in poor condition. It reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons when the potholes in town were so big they were swallowing cars. What was cool though is when the car on the side close to the barrier, you could see the town down in the valley; we were really high up so the lights looked really cool.
So when we got down(finally) we went to Calicut, the city where we were planning on spending the night. When we got to Calicut we spent almost an hour asking where this certain hotel was, and we finally found it around midnight. It looked like a nice hotel except for the fact(and we never thought of this) I didn't have my passport. There's a police order in Calicut(and other cities) than foreigners cannot stay in hotels without their passports, since they're trying to track everybody's movements. They wouldn't accept a faxed copy of my passport so we ended up going to a hotel down the street who didn't ask for it. It wasn't as nice as the other hotel but it was tolerable, we had a sheet to put on the bed. We got about 4 hours of sleep before we had to get up and get ready again.
The town we were going to was about 4 hours away from Calicut(I don't remember the name of it) I dozed most of the way, so I don't remember it. I do remember seeing a cattle auction in some suburb of Calicut, they were selling what appeared to be breeding stock for this cow that sort of looked like a mini brown water buffalo. I also learned that auto-rickshaws are very versatile. I saw somebody sitting in the back of one with two goats :P
When we got to the hospital, it was sort of off the beaten path. I didn't take any pictures because Mukthi had my camera(I had given it to her the night before when I had to use a public bathroom) But the hospital was very beautiful. The Malabar region in general is very beautiful, there are soooo many palm trees and its very hilly and rocky. What is cool is in the hospital compound, there was a fenced in area inside where they grew the herbs that they used in all of their medicines, and Mukthi said they have many acres more of herbs that they used in their preparations. Mukthi's father commented that the mosquitoes were huge, probably due to the plentiful super herbs :P
So at the hospital, before you see the doctor you get to consult with a secretary and in short tell him(or her) all of your problems, present and past, which you wish to be addressed to the doctor. These are, of course, written down in a file. Then you had to wait your turn to see the doctor.
They had several doctors at the hospital, there is a different doctor there every day. The doctor that we saw only comes once a week, on Tuesdays, and the rest of the week he spends traveling around the entire country, only spending Sundays at his home. When I went into the room to see the doctor, he sits at a long table with about five or six other people; I'm not sure what they all do but one person reads from the patient file, and another person writes down the doctor's prescriptions. The doctor spoke English, but to be honest, I couldn't understand him that well because his accent was really thick. I got the gist of what he was saying though. He asked me a few questions about what I told the secretary, then prescribed accordingly. Because I didn't understand the doctor as well as I wanted to, I was worried that I didn't give enough information. Mukthi explained to me afterwards though that he is such a good doctor, that just by looking at you he can usually tell you what is the matter with you. Facial features are enough to be able to tell what a person's doshic* constitution is, which I thought was super cool.
*for those of you who don't know, Ayurveda treats according to what a person's doshic constitution. There are three different doshas: kapha, pitta and vata, and each constitution has a list of emotional and physical qualities. Different diseases are also related to specific doshas. Again, its hard to explain in a nutshell!
They have the pharmacy on the front side of the building where consultations are. I got two months supply of medicine(almost a dozen bottles of things) for $30, and the consultation was a few dollars. According to Mukthi, this hospital likes to stay low key, so that it can remain a mainly charitable organization, helping those that want to use the medicine for curative purposes rather than enhancing health. Therefore, they make the medicines and consultations affordable to poorer patients, making very little money in the process.
Another cool thing is that they medicines are made with herbs they grow themselves, using the same methods that were used 5000 years ago. The medicines take months to make, but in the end, they have a product that is unique only to them. You can only buy their medicines if they are prescribed to you, because all of these medicines are unique to each dosha type. You cannot buy extra medicine, only what you need, and you cannot buy medicine for another person(like to refill a prescription) They do this, again, because it is a charitable organization.
So afterwards we ate out; I only ate rice because I wasn't feeling well enough to eat spicy food, and Mukthi advised against eating certain foods out. Then we went home.
Its really hard to try and describe trips from one place to another, because there is so so so much that you see. From awesome houses, to temples, mosques, churches, roadside shops etc you can't describe it all. In the Malabar region though we saw a lot of rice patties and lumber mills. Another thing about traveling through India by car is that the main highways are only two-lanes, so you really feel like you're going on a back road through the forest.
When we got back to Malabar Hills it was dusk, so seeing the sun set over the mountains was a breathtaking sight. I got pictures, they're sort of grainy but its better than nothing. Going up the mountain in the dark was just as scary as going down the mountain in the dark.
I was so tired by the time we got back to Mysore at a quarter after 10. I hadn't slept much, I dozed in the car and that was about it. I slept in until 9 this morning. I start my medicine tomorrow when I can do it when I'm supposed to.
So I have have this bitter ghee to take in the morning at 6 AM, two alcoholic preparations to take after lunch and dinner, and a mixture of honey and herbs to take before I go to bed. Also I have two kinds of oil to apply over my body a couple times a week(according to Mukthi they are for pitta-vata)
So that was my crazy two day trips to Kerala.
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