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Ok! Hello again! I’m not dead but very much alive and have much to post; unfortunately I haven’t had the time/ability to put it up onto the blog for some time, but I’ve been writing nonetheless and now have a ton of material to share. For convenience, I have broken everything up into a total of 6 posts; that means that if you read one a day you can spread the joy out for a whole week. And then rest on Sunday. Enjoy!

On Tuesday (last week) Joe Nicholas and I arranged to meet at his hotel to visit and meet all of his colleagues. Joe was my baseball coach in like fourth grade; he was in Hyderabad because he has been in the process of getting the construction of a cancer treatment center mobilized just outside the city. It will be a top-notch facility, providing optimal treatment, and likely the finest in India. This appeals to those with enough money to pay for treatment who would be traveling outside of the country, maybe even to the States, for quality treatment. Eventually this will provide enough funding for more treatment centers. Planning has been under way for about 2 years now, and the construction will finally begin in a few days. We spent time at the bar talking about my past three weeks and discussing their plans for the treatment center. I also was able to practice some Hindi with the bartender, who was really excited to hear a foreigner trying to speak the language. A private driver took me back to the university, how comfortable it was to be in a car again! (a rickshaw offers a slightly different, more cramped/smokey/bumpy experience). The hotel was also so glorious in comparison to the guest house :) The next day I was back at the hotel for a delicious buffet that offered not only Indian, but Oriental and Italian food as well. The cooks were very friendly and even directed me to a bowl of chili peppers when I asked for extra spice. Despite all the work that Joe and his colleagues have to do while they are here, I imagine it would be so much fun coming to India so often. He is very lucky. Actually it would be pretty tough to leave so quickly, I mean 5 months isn’t even enough. Anyway it was a ton of fun to visit Joe, how coincidental that we ended up just 15 minutes away from each other on the other side of the globe! It took my friends by surprise too…*Matt, where are you off to?* “Oh, actually my old baseball coach is in town, I’m going to visit him.” *…Oh, really?...that’s…interesting!*

I was woken up the other day at seven in the morning by power drills. I hadn’t set my alarm because I was fully intending on sleeping in to my heart’s content. They’ve been doing construction things in our dorm for a while now, so it was nothing I hadn’t heard before, but certainly not this early in the morning before. Last time I ended up with a hole in my wall that opened up into the hallway though which an internet wire was run. This time they wanted to encase the wire and attach it to the wall, running it down to an outlet by the floor. To do that though, they had to enter the room. So if the jackhammer-like drilling in concrete wasn’t enough to wake you, pounding on my door would be. I opened it barely clothed and eyes half open; the workers didn’t speak English, so I couldn’t ask them what they wanted, but they showed me the end of one of their wires and I figured that they would need my outlet to power their drills like they’ve needed before. So I showed them my outlet and, with my door open, laid back down. Before long, one of the workers started to use my room for storage. He set down coils of wires and tools on the floor, having to move some of my stuff out of the way to do so. Then he took my backpack off my chair to move the chair to stand on the chair to start drilling holes in the concrete wall up high by the ceiling. Dust and paint from the wall fell all about the floor. Still lying in bed under my blanket, I watched him intently as he went about his work, trying to figure out exactly what he was doing and amazed that he didn’t need more equipment to do it. He never used a tape measure, nor a straightedge, but managed to drill holes in a straight line around the door and cut wire casing at exactly the right length. And then I capitalized on the moment to practice my Hindi. I asked him what his name was, how he was feeling, and where he was from (token questions to learn to say when you’re picking up a language), but he responded briefly and didn’t appear too keen on carrying on a conversation. This was ok I suppose because I wouldn’t have understood anything he would say beyond the scope of these questions, nor have been able to respond even if I did understand him, and to boot the drilling trumped any conversation to be had. I continued to watch him work, being too tired to get up and shower but to distracted to go back to sleep. I still can’t tell if I have the internet in my room. There’s an outlet but no wire to connect my computer to it. Anyway it was an interesting way to start the day and certainly was a tribute to the Indian regard of personal space (in comparison to what I’m used to).

That afternoon, I went with several other students to a “school” that took care of the children of the workers who were building new facilities on campus. These laborers are nomadic I guess, moving their tarp residences wherever there is work to be done; their kids fortunately have the opportunity for some education while their parents work on campus. The school (one room) was founded and is staffed by students of the university, several SIP students as well go frequently to play with the children. I also heard that today we were going to help construct a fence around the school. While playing with children is not my favorite thing to do, building walls and fences is. As we rolled up to the school on our bikes, the several dozen children poured out of the school, shouting and screaming with excitement. This was kindof nauseating for me, but it was fun to see every kid come up to you, put out their hand to shake, and ask you how you were doing (obviously eager to practice their English). The fence was just a few lines of barbed wire that we strung around trees to stretch around the school grounds (harder to do than it sounds because you can’t really touch the wire without carefully placing your fingers on it). They were constructing the fence in part to legitimate the school and in part to keep out the cows that had the tendency to wander around the area while the children were playing. We couldn’t finish the whole thing though, so by the end of the day there was still a gap through which the cows managed to mosey in; the problem this time was that now they were trapped inside the school grounds, and we had to shoo them out with much effort. The day had been laughably counterproductive, but when the fence is complete it should actually serve its function. It reminded me of making my cinderblock walls in Mexico; although I was working with completely different material, it was still around a school and in a foreign country. I guess I’ll need to make a wall of some sort in any country I visit now; it seems to be a theme so far.

As I pulled away from the school on my bike, the kids literally jumped onto it. I had to slow so I wouldn’t run over any of them; by the time I had stopped, there were at least 6 or 7 kids clinging onto me and my bike, excited about the prospect of getting a ride. Thy (pronounced “tea”) saved me; she rode back seeing my situation and pried the kids off of me, shouting over the kids’ voices at me to ride onward or risk having them smother me again.