settling in

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I met my other roomie. His name is Miguel, from Barcelona. He is very friendly, and his english is a bit better than my spanish, so it works out well for both of us a practicar los idiomas . Today we went down the block to the Mother House, got the free for volunteers of breakfast of plantains, biscuits and chai. Hopped on a bus to Prem Dam. The buses in Kolkata are suprisingly nice, and they only cost 4 rupees. Most of the work at Prem Dam was physical- washing clothes, washing dishes, hauling buckets of water to help clean the grounds. A friendly but perhaps mentally ill man worked next to me on wet clothes ringing duty. Most of the time he was singing what sounded like Bengali religious music, but at one point he looked a bit concerned and put his fingers in his ears. Primarily he did alot of laughing at nothing in particular. I guess the spirits/ voices/djinn/ manfestations of pschizophrenia inside his mind are moslty begnin. The best part of the day was when I got to spoon feed a middle aged man and practice my bangla. Don't worry too much masks were provided for the volunteers. Took a terrfying auto-rickshaw ride to Sudder st with some Spaniards from Prem Dam. I was convinced that he was going to take his harvest of 5 ferangis to his tough buddies to beat up and rob. However, it just took him a long time to get there, and he did not rip us off on the fare.

A though occurred to me at some point in the day when I was feeling good about myself for helping others. Many of the people in Kolkata are "undocumented" immigrants from Bangladesh. Part of the reason this city is so mired in poverty is because of all the new people coming here to try to survive. Part of the reason they need to leave the countryside is because of increasingly biblical flooding and monsoons. Part of the reason behind these floods and monsoons is the rise in temperatures and sea levels globally. Part of the reason for gloal warming is the lifestyle of myself, my countrymen, and the other roughly 1/6th of the world that lives like we do. When one factors in the carbon emitted by the airplanes that took us to India, perhaps our serving the destitute and the sick and the poorest of the poor will leave us, accounting for all aspects of our trip at best with a karmic balance from the experience.

Went to a mass in Spanish with Miguel. Fully 40%!o(MISSING)f the volunteers seem to be from Spain. About 30%!f(MISSING)rom France, 15%!C(MISSING)anadian, maybe 10%!t(MISSING)hat I've talked to from America.

There is an internet cafe right by the Mother House that only charges 15 rupees an hour. Unfourtunately, its computers do not seem to be running spell check.

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