hey!

so its been awhile since the last blog entry, and since then have completely switched continents! being at home for 2 weeks was really awesome, it was so nice to see friends and family and such! so thanks guys! you all looked great and it was so nice! and i got to enjoy the snow for a bit and go sledding and thoroughly enjoy my amazingly cozy bed. he he

i took off the 8th of jan and arrived after hopefully the worst flights ill have to take in the near future he he. it took 4 airports, 3 planes, 5 buses and a lot of running through airports to finally get to chennai, which is in southern india on eastern coast. pretty tiring and slept for a whole day in our hotel which emma and i met up at.

the next day we headed to our current location, sadhana forest, which is a volunteering reforestation project near pondicherry. there are over a hundred volunteers right now, all working towards sustaining the community and reforesting the area. we live in grass huts and its pretty crazy. every morning we wake up before sunrise at 5 am (yay!) ha ha to head into the forest to work at building these dirt compressed walls around groups of trees, called bunds, that keep in the water during rain and monsoons so that it doesnt run off with all of the top soil. we get to be in holes with shovels and crow bars and stuff and its pretty fun. the rest of the day we do garden work, cleaning, cooking, hygene or other jobs around the place. the best thing is that there is this huge mud pool that we go to daily to swim and cover ourselves in mud and believe me its AWESOME! he he.

the second day we were here a bunch of us headed to a local orphanage because they wanted volunteers for a festival, pongal (local harvest fest). it was pretty great, all the kids were dressed up with flowers and such and dancing and playing and singing.

besides the community weve also headed to pondicherry to see the markets and such and the bay of bengal.

the community is a crazy cultural experience and besides the food (vegan with no processed anything ie any salt, spices, sugar, oil..... i think im gonna die lol) its really cool. and its cool to be helping out in the forest as the whole area used to be really deserty and the changes that this project has been able to do is really impressive.

its also been really fun because every day ive been working with a few people in the childrens area to build a huge clay kitchen with oven, stove, sink etc. its been really cool, making clay bricks and building.

in terms of weather it is REALLY hot here in the afternoon, but pretty chilly at night. definately getting my tan on! yay! ha ha

its been really cool because this place is full of raelly interesting people and weve made a lot of friends and such.

im trying to upload photos right now, and it was working really well and now it just stopped, so hopefully ill get some photos up today... just depends on how many hours i want to spend in an internet cafe ha ha.

love!

S