Today I officially gave upon my netbook and purchased a paper journal at the Vivekenanda Rock in Kanyakumari. Getting a journal at all was a very fortuitous experience as my current travel buddy Kristi said they are very hard to find in India. I have to admit it was the first one I had seen in my travels. To catch people u on my technology saga.. I've had numerous technology problems on this trip and have had to really let go of a lot of expectation regarding access to and reliability of technology. When I started my preparation for my RTW journey, I had a great plan of focusing the journey on reading, writing, and meditating. It seemed like the perfect trifecta for personal transformation. I did my research and decided on a combination of Kindle 3G Global and Toshiba netbook so that I could fill my mind with amazing thoughts and write about them. I purchased my netbook in late December and in true Veleda fashion dropped it. : / This voided the warranty (it had a small scratch on the corner where it dropped but that is enough) and broke my netbook. After beating myself up about it for awhile, i took it to a repair shop and was told the only damage was to the LCD screen. I ordered a new screen and off I went. I've been here for two weeks and now it doesn't turn on at all. I started by simply not booting randomly though it was still mostly usable in the first week. This second week it started booting less and i would have to try to boot it for 30 or 40 times to get it to start up at all. This morning it just died the way of the dodo bird. The power light is on but the hard drive light is not. I had planned to do most of my writing on this netbook..envisioning many hours of quiet contemplation at cute internet cafes across the world.HAHAH!! It's been a significant struggle not being able to write as I used to writing every day in order to clarify and order the flow of ideas in my internal universe. It was oddly liberating to accept the fact that things are the way the are. I could get upset and waste an entire day being upset or I could let it go and move on with creating a beautiful day for myself. Much of my experience in India has been about releasing expectations and attachment and learning to quickly return to a state of happiness after things don't go my way. Traveling the 3rd world is by no means a vacation. Nothing fully works in India: electricity, water, roads, public transport. Add to that a language barrier, a gender barrier (women are still very much 2nd class citizens in India), and a tourist barrier (people want to get all they can from you) and you get a series of insane experiences, of which, the proper and only worthwhile response is to laugh your ass off and go with the flow.
Today marks my official 2 weeks on my trip and despite all sorts of frustrations, it has been a truly glorious life changing experience. It's like pulling the blinders off of my pampered American life and seeing how things really are for many people. It's enlightening and incredible but not in the least bit relaxing. Well..the day I spent rejuvenating at Kovalam beach in Kerala was relaxing. Being a bay area girl, oceans always soothe my soul. I've accepted I have no idea what the fate of my lappy will be. Sita, my new friend from Mumbai, is calling her friends in Delhi (the biggest city next to where we will both be doing humanitarian work) to see if she can get a referral for a repair shop. We'll see if that pans out and if it does whether its even repairable. I find myself delightfully unattached. If I need to i will pay to gt a new part, get a new one, or simply fill out loads of paper journals.
So there goes part 1 of my three part plan. Writing. Luckily - I now I have a journal and it works. :)
For reading - I had purchased a Kindle 3G Global. I hopped on the plane in San Francisco on 12/31 and took out my kindle to read My Name is Red, which is the current book for my book club and much to my chagrin, it didn't work. Luckly, amazon tech support has been a dream and is sending me a new kindle..but with internal mail it is going to take a month to receive it and its quite an adventure to get it as i have to send it to one person, have someone else pick it up and fly it to the Barsana Eye Camp. I don't know what i would have done if not for the wonderful network of awesome people I have met through the humanitarian work I will be doing. So there goes reading.
Luckily - Meditation doesn't require technology and I've had lots of opportunity to meditate, pray, do ritual, and otherwise contemplate the universe.
We have a lot of expectations, often unconscious, about our lives. I thought wifi would be fairly easy to get at hotels and that internet cafes would have access to the internet (the internet goes down all the time for hours, and many cafe's have antiquated and often broken computers). This is probably themost off the grid I have been in the last 13 years of my life. It's strange and different to be so out of touch.
Communication in general has been difficult. I've finally figured out how to dial internationally on my local fun but dialing in India is quite difficult. The country is changing from 3 digit to 4 digit area codes and most of the printed material i have lists four digit area codes and most of them don't work. I find myself laughing a lot as otherwise I would be crying. In fact, I don't think I've laughed this much in ages. I was wanting to have a pina colada while at the beach to rejuvenate from the crazy and it was warm coconut milk and rum. No pineapple juice, no ice. nothing. this sums up my experience. you never know what you are going to get so you just have to learn to be happy with what comes.
I think I will come back a saint or a mad woman.
After releasing my worries about my netbook, I went to the Vivekenanda Memorial Rock and meditated in their meditation hall. It was kind of hokey with a glowing Om symbol and Vivikenanda chanting om over and over..but that is part of the Hindi way. Hindi consciousness must be seeping into my brain a bit because I prayed to Vivekananda and his Guru and line of enlightened beings to bless my trip and ease the path towards my enlightenment. I'm not so into Gurus as a concept, its a concept foreign to me as a Westerner..bu that day it seemed appropriate. I came out of the meditation hall feeling a deep sense of non-attachment and peace so something worked. When I came out, I found a journal and all has been well since.
pss: I've been accepted into U. of Illinois and Indiana. No denials yet. Neither of them have great social justice and environmental law programs..but its good to know my 'safe' schools are safe schools .. not giving up hope for Berkeley yet. Keep your fingers crossed.
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Today marks my official 2 weeks on my trip and despite all sorts of frustrations, it has been a truly glorious life changing experience. It's like pulling the blinders off of my pampered American life and seeing how things really are for many people. It's enlightening and incredible but not in the least bit relaxing. Well..the day I spent rejuvenating at Kovalam beach in Kerala was relaxing. Being a bay area girl, oceans always soothe my soul. I've accepted I have no idea what the fate of my lappy will be. Sita, my new friend from Mumbai, is calling her friends in Delhi (the biggest city next to where we will both be doing humanitarian work) to see if she can get a referral for a repair shop. We'll see if that pans out and if it does whether its even repairable. I find myself delightfully unattached. If I need to i will pay to gt a new part, get a new one, or simply fill out loads of paper journals.
So there goes part 1 of my three part plan. Writing. Luckily - I now I have a journal and it works. :)
For reading - I had purchased a Kindle 3G Global. I hopped on the plane in San Francisco on 12/31 and took out my kindle to read My Name is Red, which is the current book for my book club and much to my chagrin, it didn't work. Luckly, amazon tech support has been a dream and is sending me a new kindle..but with internal mail it is going to take a month to receive it and its quite an adventure to get it as i have to send it to one person, have someone else pick it up and fly it to the Barsana Eye Camp. I don't know what i would have done if not for the wonderful network of awesome people I have met through the humanitarian work I will be doing. So there goes reading.
Luckily - Meditation doesn't require technology and I've had lots of opportunity to meditate, pray, do ritual, and otherwise contemplate the universe.
We have a lot of expectations, often unconscious, about our lives. I thought wifi would be fairly easy to get at hotels and that internet cafes would have access to the internet (the internet goes down all the time for hours, and many cafe's have antiquated and often broken computers). This is probably themost off the grid I have been in the last 13 years of my life. It's strange and different to be so out of touch.
Communication in general has been difficult. I've finally figured out how to dial internationally on my local fun but dialing in India is quite difficult. The country is changing from 3 digit to 4 digit area codes and most of the printed material i have lists four digit area codes and most of them don't work. I find myself laughing a lot as otherwise I would be crying. In fact, I don't think I've laughed this much in ages. I was wanting to have a pina colada while at the beach to rejuvenate from the crazy and it was warm coconut milk and rum. No pineapple juice, no ice. nothing. this sums up my experience. you never know what you are going to get so you just have to learn to be happy with what comes.
I think I will come back a saint or a mad woman.
After releasing my worries about my netbook, I went to the Vivekenanda Memorial Rock and meditated in their meditation hall. It was kind of hokey with a glowing Om symbol and Vivikenanda chanting om over and over..but that is part of the Hindi way. Hindi consciousness must be seeping into my brain a bit because I prayed to Vivekananda and his Guru and line of enlightened beings to bless my trip and ease the path towards my enlightenment. I'm not so into Gurus as a concept, its a concept foreign to me as a Westerner..bu that day it seemed appropriate. I came out of the meditation hall feeling a deep sense of non-attachment and peace so something worked. When I came out, I found a journal and all has been well since.
pss: I've been accepted into U. of Illinois and Indiana. No denials yet. Neither of them have great social justice and environmental law programs..but its good to know my 'safe' schools are safe schools .. not giving up hope for Berkeley yet. Keep your fingers crossed.
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