Hey everyone, I'm alive! I've been in India for about 3 weeks now, and have totally slacked on the journal thing. Sorry. Anyway, I'm gonna try to type fast to catch everyone up on the past three weeks. Hold your calls, and buckle your seatbelts.....

Landed in Chennai (formerly Madras) on the southeastern coast of India on December 22nd. Wandered around trying to find a hotel room, but the biggest annual music & dance festival in southern India was about to start in a couple of days, so everywhere was booked. Frustrated, hot, travel-weary, and a bit grumpy about the friggin' taxi drivers and vendors bugging me, I ran into a middle-aged couple from the US who had just returned to Chennai from 4 days in a small town called Mamallapuram. They loved it. I said why not, and caught the next bus.

Mamallapuram is a small seaside village with a history of some of the best stonecarving in the country. It's gotten a bit touristy, and had more than its fair share of burntout pothead travellers. Nonetheless, I chilled out there for about 5 days before heading to Vellore to meet up with the group I'm working with. It was a wonderful and relaxing break, and I treated myself to it guilt-free. Christmas was nothing major, since it was easy to forget that it was Christmas to begin with. I found the one tiny church in town on X-Mas Day, and went in to say a little hello at the nativity. There were a bunch of kids hanging around, since the church also runs an orphanage. They were all thrilled about showing me where the holy water was and what to do with it, and then demonstrated how to pay my respects to the Baby Jesus. All terribly solemn, and heartwrenchingly sweet!

I arrived in Vellore on December 27th. Where's that? Pick up a map of India. Find Chennai (or Madras... same same, as they say in these parts). Run your finger approximately 145 kilometers west, which on most maps of India will be something like a millimimeter or two. That's where I am. Even though Vellore's a twon of 300,000, relative to the size of India it barely registers on most maps. Do not confuse it with the Vellore that sits right on the coast north of Chennai. That's a different one.

When I arrived at the office of the organization I'm working with, I was practically whisked away to the project site with a couple of other folks who had just arrived. I had thought I'd just let them know i was here, figure out a game plan to get out to the worksite on the following day, get a hotel room and some dinner, do a little shopping and email. Nope. We got to the project site after dark, and since the recent rain had turned the roads into car-eating mudpits, we had to walk the last half mile or so. The moon was about half full, so the light wasn't too bad. As our group of 8 or so sauntered along, making small talk and getting to know each other a bit, we came across a villager bringing his cows back from the fields.

Cows here have big long horns. Paths here are narrow and flanked on either side by lots of thorny vegetation. Cows don't like surprises, especially when it's dark. The first part of our group went past the cows before they quite realized they were there, but in passing, the cows got a bit spooked. The last part of our group ( including me), trailing a few yards behind, was stuck. The cows couldn't figure out how to get past us, and we sure as hell couldn't figure out how to get past them, so there we were - a coupla skittish cows squished up against one side of a narrow path and a few extra-skittish foreigners squished up against the other side of a narrow path, both groups wondering what the hell comes next. Who's gonna break for it first, and will anyone get hurt in the process?

Finally, the cows broke, and plowed through the brush alonside the path. My adrenaline jumped up a bit, to say the least. When we came around the bend and arrived at the worksite, we met up with our head honcho guy, Ramu, and I told him about the cows. He laughed and said "Oh, not to worry. There's one cow with a black and white striped face and bells on her horns who is very aggressive. She might have attacked you. Lucky you didn't meet her!" Um, yeah, except that's who we did meet. Unless there are two cows fitting that description in this village. There aren't. I've met just about all the cows. Oy.

So what's life been like for the past couple of weeks? We all live in tents, pitched on a flat field that was formerly a rice field. Mountains surround us on all sides, so the views in all directions are pretty breathtaking. There's a hut constructed as a kitchen, and a staff of villagers who cook and serve us meals. The schedule of the day is roughly:
Wake up around 6AM, meditation/yoga at 6:30AM, shot of caffeine around 7AM, work for a bit until breakfast comes out, eat breakfast, work until more caffeine around 10:30AM, work more, meet briefly, eat lunch, take a siesta, afternoon class on design and construction, work more, shower/laundry, eat dinner, linger and chat, go to sleep around 9PM. We take a day off once a week. Meals are served sitting on straw mats on the ground, and the food is dished out either onto fresh banana leaves, or onto plates made out of large dried leaves stitched together with little bits of wood (which are surprisingly pretty plates, though not exactly fine china). Mostly we're eating variations on "spicy mush with rice". All very tasty, for the most part, but admittedly getting old. Fresh papaya and oranges and bananas are such a treat, and I really miss all the fruit variety of food in Thailand!

Our group is made up of about a dozen westerners (US, Germany, Holland, Canada, Australia, South Africa), 4 Thais, and 4 Indians from outside of the local community. Then there are local builders who work onsite as well, building the bathroom/shower building, helping us with the foundation work, etc. It's the high point of harvest time, so not many villagers have been able to come out and work with us, but Pongal (the big harvest festival) is coming up this week, so more should be showing up to learn with us how to work with cob and natural building materials that aren't used around here. In case I haven't mentioned it, this natural building course is centered around the construction of a school building. We are essentially breaking ground on a rural, free school being built through an organization called Buddha Smiles, which operates 8 or so other learning centers and schools around India. The folks from Buddha Smiles are truly amazing people who are completely devoted to the idea that everyone should have access to free education. Most of the children they work with can't go to a "normal" school for a number of reasons, so creating alternatives to the formal education system is critical.

When we got to the site, the building had been marked out, but no work had started. In the past 2 weeks, we dug out the foundation trench, laid the foundation out of granite stone (stonelaying is much better than Tetris!), poured a stabilizing ring beam, ran a course of patterned brickwork as the floor-level border of the wall, and started building the walls. For the walls, we plan to use cob (a mix of sand, clay and straw), unfired mud bricks, and wattle & daub. I'm finding these materials to be phenomenal. I like getting dirty. I like having aching muscles at the end of the day. I like being able to sing while I work, which you certainly can't do in the office! I like thinking with my brain and my body. It's good stuff. I'm in love!

Last night a group came out and performed local traditional music. It was fantastic. We all cleaned up as best we could, and put on the cleanest, nicest clothes we had. The band played for two hours straight. More or less one continuous song, as far as I could tell. There were times when each instrument took their solo bit to show off, and a couple of times when the two drummers did their version of "Duelling Banjos" - one guy would play something and the other guy had to repeat it. Amazing. The wind instruments (kind of like clarinets or oboes) were OK, but tough for my ear to get used to. Toward the end, I stood up and went toward the back of the audience to stretch and get some circulation back into my legs. I started moving around a bit, because the drums were going off and sounded really good.

All of a sudden, all the young kids swarmed me, trying to get me to actually dance. After much prodding and cajoling, my friends Carina and Elke joined in, and we tentatively tried to pick our way through the strange music. Soon we were the show and the band was the background. When I started feeling self-conscious, I told myself to shake it off. It wasn't about me or what anyone thought of me. It was about sharing a bit of fun and enjoyment and celebration. By the end of the concert, just about everyone was up and dancing, thanks in large part to a very funny, dynamic guy named Rana from Himachal Pradesh who is straight out of Bollywood.

The live music was followed up by one Tamil pop song, played over and over again, while we all boogied our booties off. I was SOOOOOO happy! I haven't danced like that since September's All Night Dance Celebration back in SF! Man, I felt so free and happy to be waving my hands up in the air and shakin' my bootie, barefoot in a village field in India with a group who came from just down the road and around the world. And we all got into it. The stone masons. The 5-year old daughter of the director. The foreigners. The cook. And who cared how we danced? There was no trendy style to follow or worry about, this was not the latest track to hit the collections of only the coolest underground DJs. This was us, miraculously dancing together, and loving it.

I think that should be enough for everyone to chew on for awhile! I promise to write again in less than three weeks! Love to you all, and thank you for the comments. It's been a blast to read them, and know that you guys are out there!