Can't We All Just Get Along?

I have decided after about 2 weeks here, that I am going to stop killing the bugs. Everyday I take out various species of bug and spider that are inhabiting my room. This is time-consuming and quite frankly, does not seem to help. I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps we can't all just get along? I'm going to try this for a day or two and see how it goes. My guess is I will be back to killing in no time. I certainly am not going to make Buddhist of the year here.

Things at the village are going well! I've settled into a pretty good routine, my meal times are set so I'm forced to get up in the morning if I want breakfast. This allows me to eat and be showered (and on a good day, having already gone for a run) and ready to work by 9am (with the first 30 minutes spent catching up on the news and email, just like I would in the US!).

A side note about running here...no one does it. Obviously. Indians here get plenty of exercise in their daily lives through farming, riding bikes everywhere, and just general work. They have no need to go out and run around, especially when its gonna be 90 degrees by 10am and you sweat all day anyway. My morning excursions are quite interesting as I share the road with buses, cars, bikes, goats, pigs, dogs, and who knows what else. I do get lots of stares from people and I can see it in their eyes "crazy white girl." I'm okay with it though, as long as they don't try to run me over. And hey, when I run by and see a guy crapping on the side of the road, my mind says "crazy indian man" so I guess we are even.

This weekend was the 39th anniversary of the organization, there was a nice ceremony with lots of locals in attendance. Its great to see how much this place means to everyone around here.

I've attached a few pics of my room, I still can't believe what great digs I have (bugs notwithstanding). I need something for the walls but I figure I will get that on my first trip into Pune. The girl in the pic is someone I've been hanging out with here that actually knows some of my friends from STL, they all went to the same college, small world!!