Happy Thank You!

Happy Thanksgiving, all!  I hope that each and every one of you was able to share a delicious meal with your loved ones and are currently sleeping soundly with full bellys.

My Indian Thanksgiving was absolutely beautiful.  A friend of ours from New York, Anthony, had his heart set on having a very special feast for Thanksgiving and he (as well as the rest of us) definitely made it happen.  And we worked darn hard for that meal, too!  We spent most of yesterday shopping and cooking (on a 2-burner stove with no oven) and I do think that it was the most delicious meal I've had in India.  We ended up with spaghetti, garlic bread, a green salad, a fruit salad, an amazing pumpkin soup, and mashed sweet potatoes.  And, of course, a delicious chocolate cake provided by some of our wonderful Canadian friends.  I think really the best part of the night, though, was how many beautiful faces we had at our table!  We really weren't expecting quite the turnout we received, but we ended up sharing our meal with 17 people!  It was a delicious mix of Canadians, Irish, and USA friends.  It was truly incredibly to get together such a wonderful group of people to celebrate something that is so special to us back in the US.  So, needless to say, I was most satisfied with my meal last night.

And I certainly hope that everyone back home had just as incredible of a night.

I love you all.

I am thankful that you are all so amazing.

Peace,
Melissa

Melissa, you have very nice handwriting.

This was originally an e-mail just to my surrogate mothers in California, but I find that the more I get to know the sisters, the more I love them and want to share them with the world.

Sr. Karina is the Sister in charge of organizing the volunteers once they arrive in Kolkata.  This woman is so absolutely vibrant!  I really don't know how she does it; I would think she would be exhausted from having to always deal with these crazy people coming in and out of the homes and her life.  But she never shows her exhaustion.  Every time I see her, she smiles and says, "Oh, hello, Melissa!  How are you doing?"  (I really can't believe she can remember my name.)  I went to a talk of hers a few weeks ago for the english speaking folks, and she had us all cracking up the entire time with stories of various other Sisters, her own work with the Missionaries, and of course, Mother Theresa.  I've started working at the orientations, keeping records for the government, so I hope to get in good with her there and become one of her Golden Children.
I work with Sr. Aneill, a Sister from Albania, a lot at Kalighat, and she is another firecracker!  She was chasing a couple of the patients around the other day with a plastic snake the other day, and they were all LAUGHING and SCREAMING.  It was great.  And she is ALWAYS play-arguing with the patients, and just making us all die of laughter.
Even tonight at Kalighat, one of the Sisters I didn't know made me laugh!  A friend of mine, Elijah, had some firecrackers with him and when Sister came by, he asked if she would like to see a few.  She got SO excited by the prospect of fireworks.  He brought out a sparkler and one of the sparkly shower type ones.  The sparkler wasn't lighting, but she just kept at it out of excitement, and when the the shower one went off, she absolutely lit up!  It was so lovely to see.
And the Sisters as a group are just all so cute! It's wonderful to see just how human they are!  They're just such a chatty group of women.  The Seattle kids were sitting in the Mother House one night after Adoration while the Sisters were having their dinner.  We were outside the dining hall, and it was so much fun just sitting under the window and listening to their loud, undecipherable conversation and their girlish giggling.
My final story wasn't in the e-mail because it happened after I wrote it, but it's too wonderful not to share.  This past Wednesday was Children's Day in India, and all of the houses that take care of children had some sort of celebration.  I got to Shishu Bhavan and was told that we would be going to Mother House for a puppet show.  I figured some puppeteers were coming in or something and there just wasn't enough open space at Shishu Bhavan, so we had to go there to see them.  But it was in fact the Sisters who were putting on the puppet show!  We had a brief song and dance from a group of the novice sisters.  One of our kids apparently knew the dance to one of the songs, and it was the sweetest thing watching her get up to dance with them.  And then, the main attraction!  About 8 Sister hid behind a curtain and used handpuppets to dance to songs about Jesus.  It was adorable, to say the least.  And Sr. Karina, who I already mentioned, came out with one of those giant birds on puppet strings and danced with the kids.  It was great.  Oh, those Sisters.  I don't think I've ever seen so many kind and generous hearts in one place.  It's beautiful.

I've survived my first bout of sort-of serious sickness!  But thank heavens for AMAZING friends, Advil, and antibiotics.  I'm back alive, and feeling better than ever.

"Cha, Coffee, Chai!" "Tea, Lemon Tea!" "Puri! Bhel Puri!" "Polissssh!"

I've been back from Shantiniketan about 4 days now, so I figured it was about time I let you all know how it went.

It was very nice.

Thanks for asking, have a nice day. 

Ok, kidding.

We left for Shantiniketan on the first day of the Bandh, which is a general strike.  Sophie and I were a bit afraid that there would be no buses or taxis running and that the Metro would be closed, but I guess we left early enough and nothing frightening had happened, so we were able to catch a bus to the train station (Howrah!  Howrah!  Howrah!  Howrah!).  Both the bus and the train were fairly empty which was very very nice.  It was delightful to stretch our legs across our 6 seats and watch the countryside go by as we ate the bhel puri from the man who hopped on the train at the last station to make his living.

Like I said, the bandh was going on at the time, so when we got to Shantiniketan almost all of the shops were closed down and the streets were quite empty.  We settled into a hotel (with a flushing western-style toilet AND a tv!) and decided to take a walk.  This was one of my two favorite parts of the trip.  Let me preface this by saying that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of foreign tourists who come to Shantiniketan from what I observed.  Our walk led us down a residential street, where women were out hanging their laundry, men were working at their various occupations and children were playing in the streets.  They all stared as we walked by.  And not in the sort of threatening way women get stared at in Kolkata, but in a sort of curious and amazed way.  It was one of the few times that I've felt comfortable walking down the street, smiling from ear to ear.  On our way back down the street, we stopped to ask the names of some of the children who were waving at us.  They followed us down the street a bit.  I couldn't stop smiling!  I was even able to smiled when some of the men gave us weird looks or acted funny when they saw us because you just knew that they weren't looking at you in the same way the men in Kolkata do.  They were just curious and surprised by these white women, one of whom was almost bald.  The almost bald one is Sophie, in case you're wondering. 

That evening, we decided to go to the local theatre to see a bollywood film.  The owner was wonderfully observant, and noticed that we were in fact foreign and probably did not speak Hindi.  He sat down with us before the film and explained the plot of the film so that we wouldn't be entirely confused by the end.  He was great.

The next day we visited the college.  The buildings were closed up for the Bandh, and not many students were around, but the campus was beautiful.  There were murals and statues all over, as well as some beautiful greenery.  I took a lot of pictures, so I'll upload those ASAP and let them tell the story of our college visit.

That evening, we were wondering about in hopes of finding a place to rent bicycles.  We found no bicycles, but we did find a gigantic tent full of Bengalis.  As it turns out, there was a Bengali play touring at the time and was currently making a stop in Shantiniketan.  An ex-professor explained this to us and helped us get our tickets.  We went and bought ourselves a ton of candy and then returned to watch a Bengali play in celebration of Halloween (I should have mentioned - this was Halloween night).  The play was very colorful and involved some very stereotypical characters, so we were able to get a very basic idea of what was going on.  I definitely enjoyed the play itself, but I would say that the most interesting thing was the contents of the tent itself.  It's impossible to describe, really.  I would have thought that the entire municipality of Bolpur (of which Shantiniketan is a part) was there if it weren't for the hundreds of people just standing around outside.  But this tent must have contained at least a thousand, likely many more (I'm not good at estimating these kinds of things) Bengali men, women, and children.  Just a sea of people.  It was incredible.

The next day, through the kindness and generosity of our hotel management, we were finally able to take a bike ride.  We hadn't really expected that renting bikes would be so easy, we thought we might actually have to find one guy who would find another who would finally let us rent, at least that's what our ex-professor led us to believe.  However, when we asked hotel management, they consulted for a minute and decided to let us borrow their bikes for the afternoon.  I really can't begin to tell you how accomodating these guys were.  The ride was lovely and we got quite far.  We also got lost, but somehow magically ended up back where we needed to be.  I won't bore you with details, just know that I thoroughly enjoyed getting back on a bike.

The rest of the trip as well as the time in between the above stories was spent relaxing, reading, watching Spongebob, Discovery Channel, and Bengali music videos, and a bit more exploring. 

My last story of Shantiniketan involved the accomodating hotel staff.  We were on our cycle rickshaw back to the station when I realized that I had forgotten my water, which they had just filled up with their filter, in the room.  I was disappointed, but resigned myself to not having water for the trip or drinking some of Sophie's.  Less than a minute after my realization, a man on a bike rides up shouting "Sister!  Sister!"  We both look over, and it was one of the hotel staff handing us my water bottle.  They were amazing.  If you find yourself going to Shantiniketan sometime, let me know.  I'll give you their card so you can have a similarly wonderful experience.

The train ride back was more crowded and fairly uneventful.

The bus ride from the station (Park Street!  Park Street!  Park Street!) was also more crowded but far more interesting.  After Shantiniketan during the Bandh, MY GOODNESS, I was amazed when I looked out the window.  I had totally forgotten how many people there are in Kolkata.  Just everywhere!  It was actually a very nice thing to have experienced, though, because it was not the initial feeling of being overwhelmed by the people.  Rather, it was more of a ditzy, "Oh yeah, this is what I've been living with for the past month!  I had forgotten!"

Since being back, things have been fairly good.  We had some trouble with the rooming situation, which was frustrating.  It didn't feel quite as homey having us all spread out, a feeling which was underlined by the fact that one of us left yesterday.  But the five of us who are currently in Kolkata found ourselves a five-bedroom room this morning and I, personally, am very excited to all be living together in one room. 

It was also nice to get back to work.  I had missed my women and my children quite a bit.  I'm having a bit of trouble dealing with one of the Sisters and how she likes to organize things, but that's another entry for another day (hopefully once things are resolved).  I don't want to have to pay for two hours of internet time, so I'm off. 

Peace, kids.

Melissa