So much to do, so little time to do it – 10/14/14

                This is another topic that I’ve already talked a little about, but since arriving in Varanasi it feels like we have even less time to fit everything into our busy schedules. Now that we have gotten our service placements and all my schedule look something like:

                                                7:00 AM: Meet in program house for breakfast/morning meeting

                                                8:00 AM: Ben and I arrive at South Point School

                                                4:00 PM: Ben and I finish at the school

                                                6:00 PM: Hindi class

                                                8:00 PM: End Hindi class and go home

                                                9:00 PM: Dinner with host families

                                                10:00 PM: My unofficial bed time

Of course, each of us has a slightly different schedule. For example, Jenny has to leave at 7:30 AM to catch the bus to Kiran and Alex doesn’t eat dinner until 11 PM (don’t worry, though, he has nap time at Bal Ashram). As you can see, this agenda doesn’t leave too much free time. We always joke about how we’re expected to consistently update our blogs, skype with friends and family, upload pictures, go shopping for clothes & other necessary items, explore the city, drink chai on the ghats, prepare for our service sites, study hindi, write yaks/group updates, wash our clothes/go to the dobi, practice yoga, journal, and do it all while getting enough sleep to keep energized throughout day. I’m not complaining about the multitude of things I want to do while I am here (I’d much rather have the problem of too much to do rather than not enough), but it’s certainly require a lot of prioritizing.

                Since coming to Varanasi all of us have gotten sick in some capacity. It all started with Chase having a sore throat that she then gave to me and Alex, who then spread it to the rest of the group. I got an ear infection from the throat sickness and both Ben T and Stephen have recently developed a cough. Chase was throwing up yesterday and in general our group energy is in a current slump. I reckon it’s probably a mixture of the increased work, the crappy city air, the abundance of cow dung we are in contact with every day, and the rainy weather that’s come in as a residual part of the storm hitting farther south. This is just a gentle reminder to friends and family back home that we are all trying to stay connected and sometimes it’s just hard to get to an internet café when you’re running errands all over Assi.