Recharge

We headed off to Ram Nagar bright and early in the morning as usual to teach English, but ended up dancing there instead! They are having a program next week because it has been 3 years since their abhyasika started so the kids are doing plays and dances. I didn’t really expect to be doing choreo this summer during YFS, but hey, it definitely helped me bond with the kids more. They look absolutely adorable when they dance and I can’t wait till next week when they perform!

Afterwards we headed to the office to get some work done and then ended up doing more choreo so we could teach the kids tomorrow morning. One of the other volunteers called me over to see something, and I went expecting that it would be work-related. But then I see him holding a stick out of the window and a little bucket to catch the ‘zambhla’ which are this yummy little, purple fruit. I’m a fruit fanatic, and eating freshly picked fruit off a tree is just so much more fun :) After this lovely afternoon snack, we headed over to visit another vasti and got to see the initial stages of how an abhyasika is started by talking to local volunteers. Oh and I don’t know why I haven’t mentioned this already, but riding on motorcycles in India is so much fun, and equally nerve-wracking. It takes some real skill to maneuver those roads at high speeds.

But while we were at someone’s home, we find out that there’s supposed to be a ‘Bharat Bandh’ (literally translated as ‘India closed’) the next day. This is basically where shops and public transportation are closed for most of the day in protest for some sort of change all over India. In this case it was in protest of the hike in gas prices. You would think that we should have been told about this earlier, since sometimes there’s violence on the streets and safety is a concern. But thankfully we found out early enough to get water bottles for the next day!

However, we did not realize that we should have also figured out a million different ways to keep ourselves entertained for all of Thursday. We basically spent all morning/afternoon to ‘recharge.’ This meant staying in the hostel, sleeping, reading, and working on my project. This relaxing day will definitely keep me charged for all the work I have to do starting tomorrow!