life: in progress

(this is who i was) (this is who i am) (this is who i want to be) You know those little spongy things that start out really tiny and then you put them in a glass of water and they grow bigger? They squish up against the sides of the glass and you think they’re done growing, but if you put them in the bathtub, they will get even bigger? It’s like I just got put into a bathtub and realized that I have so much more room to grow. I feel like I’m outgrowing my clothes. I mean, as a person, I’m just taking in so much that I don’t even think there’s room for it all in my head (hopefully the overflow doesn’t go to my hips). My current, somewhat narrow worldview and understanding of things literally can’t even keep up with everything my mind is learning. What do you do when this happens? Well, you buy new clothes. I don’t know exactly when this process began. But if I could draw it on a graph, it would look something like a series of exponential curves, with ea...

It’s easy for me to talk about poverty from the comfort of my bedroom, propped up with a few pillows, typing on my laptop, and trying to decide whether I should play music with my phone, computer, or ipod.    It’s much harder to talk about poverty when it’s staring you directly in the face. If you’ve never experienced this, take a ride on any passenger train in India. The train station in Bangalore was about 1 hour by bus from Visthar, through the most crowded streets I have ever encountered, and I’ve been in some pretty serious traffic.   The difference is that in America, we categorize.   “Trucks only” “Cars only” “Bus lane” “HOV lane.”   But in India there are no such laws.   “Truck? Rickshaw? Camel? Bike? Feet? Whatever your mode of transportation, you are welcome here!”   One thing that you will never be in a car in India is bored, even without a built in DVD player.   On the ride M, R, and I were having a casual conversat...

I am catching a flight to London tonight, and from there I'm going straight to Bangalore, India.  Even after reading it in print and seeing my bags stacked next to me, I can hardly believe that in two days, I will be in a foreign country. And not just any country at that, but INDIA!  I have wanted to go there for as long as I can remember, collecting wooden elephants and buying sari material to drape over my windows in my bedroom.  Now, it's finally happening.  It seems to me that everything is more extreme there: the heat, the traffic, the wealth, the poverty, even the colors seem more vibrant.  I can't wait to find out if that's true.  Goodbye USA, hello love. :)