white girl in a sari.

well hey there U.S.A.!

oh man, i have so much to talk about yet again. and yet i have so little time to write because now i have... dun dun dun... an internship! the actual work has begun. oh shit!

so today i woke up bright and early for yoga at 6:15 A.M. when i was in the "downward facing dog" pose i felt this fuzzy, grungy creature sit up against my heels and as i looked back i realized it was... Sugar! sugar is jason and l'aura's new puppy and she has been intruding on our yoga circle every morning. we are now using her as the ultimate test of our concentration. my dilemma: should i concentrate on my breathing and posture or should i stare adoringly at the two month old puppy chewing on my yoga mat??!

then i blasted some music in the shower from my discman and speaker set to wake myself and everyone else up a little bit more. after that i cycled off to C.S.R. to do some measurements on the algae there. my service learning project/internship for the past several days has been to watch over the new algae growing in the wastewater treatment system demo there. the system basically consists of a large cement basin that has six compartments (all at graduated levels, each one is higher than the next) filled with several types of algae collected from lakes in neighboring towns. a water pump sends water down the different levels of algae in the basin all day long (keeping the algae covered in about 1-5 cm of water at any given time). my job is to bike there three times a day to make sure the pump is running, measure the water levels, add more water if needed, measure the temperature of each compartment in the basin, feed the algae nutrients, and note the weather conditions and availability of power supply.

here are some of the problems i have been running into:
(1) the electrity in auroville shuts off OFTEN (about three hours in the early afternoon, an hour or two in the evening, and then at various other times throughout the day additionally), which means no power for the pump.
(2) yesterday i rolled up on two dogs having a field day with the algae basin water. they were lapping up the water while the pump was off and when i shoo-ed one away, (s)he jumped up on the basin and planted one huge paw in the middle of the algae blooms. i then chased him/her with my notebook and got laughed at by some nearby tamil workers.
(3) one of the dogs chewed up a pipe and a filter (still works, i guess).
(4) someone shut off the power yesterday during saraswathi puja, a local festival celebrating the goddess of learning.

the guy who's heading up this project is named Lars. he's german and has been working with wastewater systems of a more traditional type for years. i'm helping him first figure out if the basin water is staying within the proper temperature range for algae growth each day and if it is stable enough to start adding actual waste water and get accurate measurements. it's really interesting stuff and i don't even mind biking out there three times a day (but it certainly makes me tired by the end of the day..). actually, i should head out there again soon to make my midday measurement...!

so, yesterday was A LOT of fun. it was the ninth day (last full day) of the saraswathi puja festival, so we all dressed up in saris (oh jeez..) and visited a nearby Ganesh temple. it felt like a really intense push into indian culture since we haven't had the chance to spend much time outside of auroville. we also visited chaturvedi, a well-known indian author and friend of our teacher, bindu. he is a spritely old fellow who talked to us about the how the indian woman's role in society has changed over the centuries. we were not told anything about him before going, so unfortunately we hadn't the time to think of questions for him, but hopefully we will visit him again. we then shuffled (limited mobility in saris..) off to a friend's sister's house in a suburb of Pondicherry. there we were given the nine grains of saraswathi puja and some bangles to remember Anandi's family by. they were really great to talk to and i will always remember how gratious they all were for sure!

when we got back i didn't even want to take the sari off right away. i shuffled over to the tibetan food buffet we had for dinner and scarfed down some mo-mos and chickpeas still in full sari. once you get the whole walking thing down saris can be pretty comfortable. surprisingly enough. i wish i had some pictures to put up, but i don't. i figured the other girls were taking enough pictures for every single person in the U.S. to get their own, so i'll see if i can copy some to bring back with me.

some people felt uncomfortable going to the temple and wearing saris, but i think our effort to show our respect/adoration for Tamil culture was received well.

well, i'm off to chase away the dogs and protect that freakin' algae..
peace!!
hope all is well!