It’s been a good day at the Ashram (what a surprise). The Yoga students are all so friendly and come from so many countries. Annie and i are the only “guests” here who are in the 60’s… all the others are in their 20’s. They are in awe of Annie’s flexibility. She became an instant celebrity… then they found out her age and she became whatever the next stage is. She’ll be leading them in a fairytale yoga session tomorrow. Of course I’ve been doing balloons for the local kids each day. Tonight I did a balloon story for the other guests at the campfire (we have a campfire each night). They jumped into the story, no problems getting them to volunteer. Many of them whipped out their phone cameras. The head guru has given me a title: MHC (Most honorable Clown). He’s a chess player and has been playing one person here each day. His “partner” wasn’t here today and I had mentioned that I’d be up for game if he’d like. We played three. I won the first and determined to play totally “out of the box” to have fun and be sure to lose during the next game. I guess I totally confused him – I won the next three games. When we began game number 4 the bell for yoga class rang so I knocked my king over and said, I forfeit, you win!” we both laughed. In that yoga class there was one balancing pose (more than one) that I couldn’t even get close to. These students are serious, some are taking this ashram’s month-long yoga training course). I adjusted the pose, leaning one leg against the wall and anything else I could think of not to start a dominoes falling effect in the class. A couple of the students must have seen me because they began to laugh… the type of laugh you do in a serious situation when you aren’t aloud to laugh and try to fight it but it keeps burping out. It wasn’t intentional… and I felt guilty. I don’t believe they had an awkward laughing experience like that in one of these yoga classes before.
The mountains are all around us. It’s cold in the evening…especially because there are only screens in our windows. We have a squat pit hole for a toilet in our room (it’s a deluxe room). We keep the door shut (the aroma is a bit much). I did the laundry today in the sink and hung it up to dry on some balloons. After three days I finally got the nerve to try the shower… that was an experience. However I needed to ask someone to explain how to “flush” the squat pit hole in the bathroom. That’s what the bucket is for next to the sink…. Silly me!I felt like I really accomplished something yesterday when I used it for the first time. When I told some of the others here that I was going to put this into a post, they thought I was joking….but I thought anyone reading this blog would really want to know these details.
very good to learn to use plumbing in all places on the globe. Sounds pretty good there compared to some spots in India. Indian latrines were a topic in the NY Times this week.