"our individuality is dependent on others. individuality is indivisible." -satish kumar

auroville, india is a very unique place, without a doubt.
for instance, last night our college guest house guardian, martine, arranged a bellydance class for all the girls on our "campus". when the class started, our dinner guest, who is also my mentor/boss for my service learning project, joined us. only in auroville, india would you get to bellydance with your internship mentor the day before you start your internship... haha. this morning when i met up with Min, he just laughed and asked me "how was the rest of class" since he had to leave early since he was laughing too hard..

oh man, so many thoughts have been swirling through my head. our community is becoming much more intense as we get to know each other better, for sure. this is part of why we are here.. to learn how to live in an "intential community" devoted to environmental and social sustainability. people are clashing and (not to make a general statement about ALL girls/young women, but..) the gossiping has already commenced. without a doubt we have entered the part of community building that requires some ironing out of our differences. just about every other day we have meetings that last at least two hours on how to communicate more effectively and work for the common good of the group. it is exhausting and draining, but most of the girls come out smiling and ready to take on the challenge of establishing a "true community". it'll take time, and i am a TAD bit skeptical that everyone (including myself) is up for the challenge, but i am trying to trust that we will learn to trust and deal with each other in a healthy way.

besides our arduous consensus decision-making meetings, we've been doing yoga or tai chi five mornings a week at 6:15 A.M. this is without coffee in my system. i repeat: NO COFFEE. i am no doubt enjoying the yoga more than the tai chi we had last week. originally we were all going to do tai chi, but so many of us wanted yoga that the program has been changed. i even wrote a note to tai chi last week expressing my discontent, haha..
i don't have the note on me, but it goes something like:
dear tai chi,
you suck so much ass,
even though the Chinese practice you with such class.

Thlaloc (my instructor) seems to love you so,
but for right now i must go.

i swear it's not you, it must be me,
right now i just fail to see your chi.

maybe we will meet again when the time is right,
but right now i have a gut feeling i must not fight.

goodbye tai chi.
disclaimer: sorry to those of you who like tai chi. for the most part, i was just frustrated with having to do tai chi instead of yoga. i really wanted to do yoga.

now that that situation has been worked out (the tai chi-ers vs. the yogis), some tension has been lifted from the group dynamic. we are all practicing what we want now!

so, in the past week i have visited some amazing places in auroville. last week our group visited thamarai (a village school, thamarai = lotus flower in tamil), the life education center (a women's school/outreach center, AMAZING!/made me cry), upasana (a clothing designer/tsunami relief project), the isiambalam (spelling?) school for little kids, the botanical garden, sadhana forest, and others..

let me just say, sadhana forest is the SHIT. last friday we took a van to the outskirts of auroville with ross, our wild-eyed, Australian mentor/teacher/friend. after driving down a heavily forested road that seemed to stretch for miles, we arrived at a beautiful community composed of humongous keet-roof (interwoven leaves) homes and dorms that housed dozens of families and volunteers. we were ushered over to an outdoor dance area for an african dance and capoiera class with anna and tiago, a couple who are from portugal and brazil respectively (did that sentence make sense??). in the class were little tamil kids from the surrounding villages, korean teens that are a part of a traveling body percussion group (i know, random.), and various aurovillians and sadhana-ians. after sweating more than i did at the gogol bordello show, which i didn't think was possible, we were handed glasses of warm ragi (a local grain) and coconut milk and taken on a tour of one of the most surreal, awesome places i think i will ever step foot in. ben, the man who started up sadhana (i think), showed us the giant kitchen where everyone takes turn cooking and cleaning dishes, a pool that they fill with water to cool down in before draining that water for plant watering purposes (so the water they use for watering the plants everyday is first used in the pool to provide recreation for the people who live there- makes sense, right?!), the dormitories where ALL volunteers can stay for FREE (my thoughts at the point= jesus christ, this place is the shit..), and the giant keet-roof building devoted to library/hanging out/watching movies every friday night. oh yah, and the ENTIRE place is off the fuckin' grid. solar panels and bike-powered generators galore. can it get any better? yes. yes it can..

all the visitors from around the globe, the hippied-out residents, and our living routes group then gathered to watch a national geographic film about solar panels in nevada for an hour. the man who ran the projector looked like jesus and wore nothing but boxers. and as we watched the movie bats zig-zagged across the screen from time to time. that's what an auroville drive-in movie experience is like, haha..

then everyone was served a vegan feast for free. after munching on pesto covered tomatoes, french onion soup minus the cheese, sauerkraut in spicy sauce, and homemade bread, the late night festivities started to unfold. there was hula-hooping, a drum circle, spastic dancing, a body percussion group performance, and beatboxing.

as soon as we got back to the guest house i missed sadhana forest. i think i'm going to stay there for a couple weeks later on in the semester. and i think i'll be going to an african dance class later on with michelle, mayana, and some other girls from the LR group..

oh man, i still have so much to say... in brief, today i started to look into doing an internship at the Center for Scientific Research (CSR) with Min and some other people there. i want to help them out with various projects like algae wastewaster management and making butanol for fuel from that algae, helping with distributing LED lights to villagers in the area to replace dangerous kerosene lamps, and possibly working on the sustainablity display at the auroville visitor's center. i need to get the ball rollin' on my service learning project and figure out what i want to focus on. hopefully i'll figure all that out this week because i'm ready to start working more!

finally, i hope everyone is enjoying themselves at home.. i miss you guys!! i hope you are all enjoying the fall weather and indulging in some bangin' coffee/beer!