School has started again and I already feel busy with classes and shocked at how much work I have to do. Its great to be studying with the teachers again and the new students seem fantastic, but I do miss my summer friends horribly. With school, life is beginning to again fall into as normalized a routine as I have found (and really want) in India.
(This summer at school: some of the teachers and some of my summer housemates)I've also begun taking yoga classes at a yoga center. I really enjoy these classes a lot and look forward to going there everyday. I have a personal yoga routine I work on for an hour and an instructor leads me through the process and corrects my posture/breathing. On Sundays, they have a meditation class that I went to for the first time today. It was interesting, but a little difficult to follow because the woman spoke only in Hindi. We've arranged for her to do a private meditation session in English this week. Hopefully after hearing it once in English I'll have an easier time translating and next Sunday I'll be able to understand the lesson better. I think the meditation session today was so peaceful that I dozed off for a bit - I hope I don't do that during the one-on-one session! In addition to the health and mind-clearing benefits of the yoga class, I enjoy it because I've been able to meet some women my age that live in Lucknow.
Not only is the yoga class an adventure, but the process of getting there has proven to be interesting. Today, I was late for the class because there was a traffic back-up because there were about 30 water buffalo being pulled down the street (by their mouths) by these small women. The water buffalo decided in the middle of the intersection that they did not really want to go where the women were going and this led to lots of general chaos and honking on an otherwise peaceful Sunday morning.
A few days before, I was going to the yoga institute and took a wrong turn. Now, I blame the reason for the wrong turn on the fact that all the intersections look alike and that all the roads meet back up again (not on the fact that I may be a little spacey and absent-minded). Also, I've never looked at a map of Lucknow, even though one hangs in the common room at my house, because I fear it will further confuse my percarious knowledge of the city. The result is that in my imagination, all the roads in Lucknow are giant maize of overlapping circles. This is reinforced by the fact that everytime I take a bicycle rickshaw (pictured at top), they take me on a route I've never seen before and arrive at a place I regularly go. So, having turned down the wrong road, I decided to continue along the wrong road, sure that it would eventually turn into the correct path. I noticed as I rode past a mysterious intersection that there were many many police officers in the middle of the road, but as clusters of policemen are not terribly uncommon, I rode right past them. After riding past them and noticing their frantic whistles, I stopped, but, they grew tired of listening to me speak Hindi and told me to continue without explaining the reason for the road block. About half a kilometer down the road, I saw the reason: Traffic was stopped going both ways on the road by the police and everyone was waiting. People had even come out of their houses to watch. Now, I could have turned around at this point and headed back the way I came, but I wanted to see what could possibly be coming. As I sat there (for about 10 minutes) I became increasingly excited. Was it a parade? Perhaps some elephants? the possibilities were endless and I needed to stay, especially because I love elephants. Eventually, a politician drove past and traffic upon the street resumed. Slightly disappointed and still dreaming of elephants, I continued along my road. Eventually, I returned to the intersection that I had made the wrong turn in (reinforcing the circle theory) and tried another road.
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