We are having another eventful week! Luckily it did not include anymore trips to the hospital.

On Sunday we went to Sarnath, the town where the Buddha is said to have preached for the first time, with our art history professor. The town is only about 15 km out of Varanasi but it took us almost an hour to get there in our professor’s car because of how slowly the roads move. It’s good though – if people drove any faster I don’t think anyone, animals or people, would survive! I think my favorite thing that we saw was a Japanese temple whose walls were painted to depict the story of the Buddha’s life. We also saw the exact tree that the Buddha sat under to give his first sermon. Ok, approximately the exact tree. Ok it was in the same vicinity as the exact tree… at least the same species? Everything here seems to be approximately exact.

We walked through the ruins of the place where the Buddha lived, the Stupa where he prayed and even the small temple on the way from his residence to the Stupa where he would stop to pray, even though the two buildings are about a 5 minute walk from one another. Finally, we went to the museum which houses the relics found in the ruins. This was very interesting because we saw many of the pieces that we have been looking at in class. Also because there were a lot of pilgrims there who wear exclusively bright orange. My favorite was a guy who was wearing bright orange board shorts as a part of his pilgrim uniform.

While the history was all very exciting, I think our favorite part was when our professor told us we were going to stop for chai on the way home and then we pulled over at a small shack on the side of the road. They served us chai in the usual small disposable clay cups which we really enjoyed only after closely watching to make sure they boiled it.

Tuesday was one of the teacher’s birthdays which he first got to celebrate by catching a snake in one of the classrooms. After all of that excitement however he invited us all to his own surprise party which his fiancé had planned for him and then told him about just in time for him to clean his house and make dinner! The food was great and it was so nice to be in a home setting! We are also very happy to be making friends!

Yesterday was Indian Independence Day which is a big day for everyone. First the kids at the city campus where we live did a performance in the morning. They did adorable dances that one of the interns taught them and some groups sang songs. They all looked so cute with their face paint and flags! Then we went to the rural campus for the first time, which is in a village called Betawar, to see the kids there do their performances. It is so different there! It was great to see so much green and get some peace and a break from all the car horns and busy streets. It was so interesting to see an independence day celebration that is so different from our own because of how recently independence was attained. We have been picking up on a lot of lasting negative feelings about the British which has been interesting and the day was so much more about independence than our 4^th of July celebrations. The director of the school gave a speech about how people need to fight for a release from the trash as hard as they fought for release from the British. Can’t argue with that!

Everything is going very well but everyday is still a challenge. We have been trying to figure out what exactly is hard about being here. The power and water going out periodically and the intense humidity are inconvenient but not impossible to deal with. Instead, it is just the completely different culture, the inability to communicate effectively most of the time, the effect the heat, humidity, and pollution have on our bodies, and the knowledge of how long we are going to be here that seem to be causing us the most trouble. It is just starting to dawn on me that we are actually living here and that has actually been helpful. I no longer feel like we have to be doing something every minute and I am realizing that the classes we are taking actually count for credit at school. It is good to start feeling like we are on a normal schedule again. We’re doing it!

Tomorrow we are leaving for a weekend trip to Agra and Delhi! I am very excited but a little apprehensive for the overnight train ride…