Positive Times

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated (although, not as long of a break from my ‘blog’ as some other people I know) I was waiting until I uploaded some more photographs from my travels and of my new place.

In the personal life: I went to Rishikesh (meditation/yoga town), relaxed, thought of the Beatles, watched the Israelis go by and saw the most gorgeous statue of Shiva I have ever seen. Is it wrong to be inlove with a God's statue? I slacked off of work and did some sightseeing around Delhi. Just got back from Jodphur (blue city in Rajasthan) this morning. I have moved into my new flat and I love my roommates and the sounds of the temple bells when I wake up. I like walking down the tiny roads around cows on my way to work and I like the fact that everything is at least ½ price in the nagar. I’ve bought a guitar and am currently attempting to strum the chromatic scale without realizing that I’m a cliché. I have also spent a good time of the last few weeks contemplating what I’m going to do when I grow up. As ironic as it is, I’m tired of the road to all that, I just want to be there already.

In the work life: started assisting my coworker with the HIV/AIDS sensitivity groups. Unfortunately, so far, the groups we’ve helped with are much more comfortable with Hindi. Damn my colonialistic English Canada. I’m also currently attempting to edit our first edition of “Positive Times” - a monthly newsletter my co-worker and I came up with to disseminate HIV/AIDS current information and news to our member associations, grassroot branches and volunteers. On Thursday I leave for Bangladesh to attend and assist at IPPF SAR Gender Based Violence monitoring and evaluation workshop. I am, for the most part, just there to record and create a “tool kit” on how to run similar workshops in the future but, hey, it’s a free trip to Bangladesh dealing with a very interesting project/topic.

I have to run but I will post some pictures up as soon as I get them. The rest will be on my flickr website when I upload them at http://www.flickr.com/people/michelle/.

Take care folks! Love yah!

Technology.

So this is my new favourite thing – that invariably someone I’m with has a digital camera (and gets the pictures to me in a timely fashion) These are photos from Udaipur that one of the guys I met took.

First, this is just your average street vendor:


And here is the lake Palace. Not much to look at in this picture but the scenery was actually very very gorgeous. As an interesting fact – this lake has never dried up before. It’s quite an ecological dilemma.


New Years. This is us sitting on our rooftop restaurant drinking out beer out of teapots.


Here’s monsoon palace. Looks a bit foreboding. But it was Bond’arific’


Here’s a shot of the famous sunset from Monsoon Palace…not the best shot but you get the idea.


There you go, pictures, happy?

Octopussy

I’m just going to give a quick overview of my weekend. Sonya and I went on an overnight sleeper bus (the bus has rows of seats but then above those rows are berths...it’s actually pretty comfy – or rather would have been if it wasn’t so damn cold). For the day we just looked around, walked, watched to an amazing dance and “cultural” Rajasthani show. Udaipur is a beautiful city but the tourists and villagers reminded me much of Pushkar. It is a great place to sit and reflex. For New Years we sat and ate with some new friends on a roof-top restaurant drinking beer out of tea pots. Then, we snuck into a very fancy new year’s party to celebrate and watch the incredible fireworks which overlooked the empty(!) lake. Day 2: toured around. Went to morning yoga, got a look at the city palace, hung out more with the travelers from the previous night watched the sun set from the magnificent view at Monsoon Palace. Day 3: just walked around. This play-by-play isn’t really doing the weekend justice but I’m getting horrible at writing these days. One more thing...you’re probably wondering about the title – the, as one taxi driver pointed out, “zero zero seven movie was filmed here. You know, with Uogar Moore”. It’s played every night in every restaurant.