Saree-wrapping

If you want to see part of what it involved to get me dressed in a sari, Paula put up a video of Parul dressing me for the farewell dinner...

Stress, Spice, Sarees, and Sightseeing

In the past week, I have completed (in order):

* one 12-page microeconomics paper

* one 20-minute Cities of Delhi presentation on my final project (transporation in Delhi)

* one 1-hour presentation on the Public Report on Basic Education (PROBE) in India (microeconomics class)

* one 12-page Cities of Delhi paper

It's been a long week. I've been a little stressed. And a little sleep-deprived.

BUT to balance it out, I've had more mini-adventures.

Wednesday's adventure was just lunch at the Market Cafe in Khan Market with my roommate Rachel and another friend Sara. The reason it was an adventure was because I had whole wheat fettucine with spinach pesto and pearl-cut vegetables. It was delicious.

Thursday was definitely the big adventure of the week. We had our student-planned farewell party themed "Film Farewell," and we pretended we were Bollywood stars. I apparently was again compared to Katrina Kaif (I'll have to buy a poster to put in my room or something) when I was walking down the hall with Cate, but I didn't hear that. All the girls wore sarees, the boys wore Indian clothes (except Jon), and we had fancy, delicious Indian food at one of the function halls at the India Habitat Centre. Sydney didn't sleep at all the previous night because she was working on a slideshow of pictures from the past four months, which turned out to be amazing. I gave her about a hundred of my photos, most of which other people hadn't seen before, so it was fun watching everyone's reactions. We also had thali awards, where every student and staff member was given a superlative or nickname or something similar. The awards were printed on little aluminum-type plates to remind us of all the delicious thalis we've eaten. I turned one corner of the room and made everyone come over for individual portraits, since we had spent so damn long getting ready. (Sarees are complicated.) Since I'm not going to upload them twice, and I already put them on Facebook so that all the other students could see them, you see how pretty we all looked here.

My other Delhi excursion took place today. I was itching to get out of the house since I've spent so much time in my room working, so I finally made it over to the Purana Qila (Old Fort), which I've been meaning to visit all semester.

It was hot, but it was only in the upper 90s today instead of hovering near 110º as the weather has been wont to do of late. The Purana Qila is very pretty, with an interesting mix of landscaped lawns and flower beds mixed with crumbling stone walls and buildings, like in the picture above. The reason why it was so interesting to me before I visited it is that this is the place historians believe Indraprastha was - a city where parts of the Mahabharata takes place. These structures are from around the mid-1500s. The only two buildings that look like they've held up well against time are the Sher Mandal (don't know what it originally was, but it was later used as a library by the Mughal emperor Humayun) and the Qila-A-Khuna Masjid (mosque).

As I was walking along the top of one of the outside walls, I discovered an interesting tree.

After doing some highly scientific research (googling), I discovered that this is the same tree that those funny flowers are from that I blogged about earlier (the ones that fall to the ground in full bloom)! The Sanskrit name is Salmali; it's called Semal or Semul in most of India. It's a cotton tree! I've seen fluffly little balls of cotton floating around Neeti Bagh in the last couple of weeks, but I couldn't figure out where they were coming from. Now I know.

But I digress. As I was wandering around the Purana Qila, I made some friends. I resisted the urge to push a boy about my age off the top of that outside wall because I figured getting arrested for murder in India was probably not the best idea. He was with a few friends that I had crossed paths with on the opposite side of the complex, and one of his friends had asked if he could take a picture with me. I said, "No, sorry" and kept walking. This guy, however, decided to skip the asking and just take pictures of me on his cell phone as I was walking by. Which bothers me more than almost anything else in India. I hate it. I always struggle to not rip the phone out of the perpetrator's hand and smash it on the ground.

After that obnoxious incident, though, I made some friends. For a pleasant reversal of situation, I had a cute Indian couple ask me very timidly if I could take a picture of them, rather than them wanting a picture of me!

They were really cute. They were very pleased with the way the photo turned out, and then we parted ways. I'm taking that reaction to mean that I have permission to share this with all of you.

Later, I was walking through the garden outside the fort walls, and a few boys were walking in the opposite direction. They shouted "Hi!" as they got near me, but they didn't try to talk more than that or do anything annoying. About thirty seconds after they passed me, however, I hear running footsteps behind me, and I hear, "Excuse me! Ma'am!" so I turned around. They were all standing in front of me and asked me in Hindi to take their picture. I guess for a few seconds they had been debating whether it was okay to ask me, and then they decided my camera was too awesome for them to pass up the opportunity to be models.

Once again, they just wanted to see the picture, then they ran away looking quite pleased with themselves.

I love when I have willing subjects and don't have to feel like a creep taking photos of people who don't know that I'm doing so. :)

When I had seen all there was to see at the Purana Qila, I walked over to the Crafts Museum. On the way there, I had to go through an underpass because there was a metal fence on the median in the middle of the road. There was nifty art, so I took a picture:

I didn't actually make it to the museum part of the Crafts Museum; there's a village complex that has full-sized models of various types of village houses from all over India, along with other structures (temple, theater, storage shed), so I meandered through there a bit. The next part of the Crafts Museum area was a craft demonstration area, where they had people from all over India selling things. Because it was hot and the middle of the day and there was no one there, I didn't actually get to see any demonstrations, but I got a lot of explanations about lacquer, metalworking, embroidery, leather puppets, vegetable- and stone-based paint colors, and all kinds of fun things. It's very similar to Dilli Haat, which I enjoy. I love being able to talk to the people who actually make the stuff they're selling.

When I ran out of water and energy, I made my way back to Neeti Bagh, where I did some homework and did my laundry in a bucket for the last time! I have enough clean clothes to get me through the next nine days, so I'm not hand-washing clothes again for a very long time.

I wanted to go out and do something fun tonight since I finally have no more papers to write, but everyone else in the house has papers to write for classes I'm not in. So I'm sitting here blogging and going through pictures, and when I'm done with that, I will finally finish reading City of Djinns, which I started forever ago. I haven't had time to read for pleasure in weeks. It's book and early bedtime for this tired larki.

Namaste.

Desert Winds and Spreading Dirt

Weather conditions at 10:30 p.m. Sunday night, April 19th: 90ºF and "widespread dust". This is when it becomes quite apparent that Delhi is, in fact, remarkably close to the desert.

I have had mini-adventures almost every day for the last week, as I planned to. Here's a brief summary:

Wednesday: Shopping at Lajpat Nagar for more light-weight summer clothes so I can attempt to be comfortable in this heat.

Thursday: Community Potluck dinner at the Residence. Not going somewhere new, but I was in class all day, and it was a special event. We had 40-50 people squished onto our terrace in Neeti Bagh, which was decorated prettily. Teachers, board members, the guys who led our rural excursion (Harpreet the awesome Sikh guy and Captain Karma...I mean, Sharma...), and homestay families all showed up. It was a grand old time filled with delicious food. Cate made apple pie to die for.

Friday: In the morning, I went to Akshardham Temple, a Swami Narayan temple complex designed by amusement park people. (It was an optional Cities of Delhi field trip, with one other girl in the class, Harini, and two students not in the class.) One of the stranger places I've been. Ever. Similar to the ISKCON temple I went to during orientation but on a much larger and more ridiculous scale. Unfortunately, I do not have photos because they have crazy security and essentially don't let you bring anything other than money inside, but the website I linked you to above has pictures and descriptions, including the "exhibitions." We saw the animatronic light and sound show of Swami Narayan's life, which was...something. Due to misinformation and unyielding temple workers, we didn't get to do the boat ride and we weren't interested in the movie. We got there at nine, but the temple didn't open until ten and the exhibitions didn't start until eleven. But we walked around the whole place, and it was definitely an experience.

On Friday afternoon, Rachel and I went up to Chandni Chowk in North Delhi because I was sick the day that our Cities of Delhi class went there. Chandni Chowk is a chaotic maze of tiny little alleys you don't even know exist until you stumble upon them, and they are impossible to navigate, and it was all very exciting. Every galii (alley) sells something different. Furthermore, there is a jalebi-wallah on the main road, and the place has apparently been around forever and is really famous. Those jalebis were amazing.

On the way up to Chandni Chowk, we took the metro. I stopped at Patel Chowk (one station away from where I got on) to meander through the metro museum there. Geeky as it sounds, I actually enjoyed it. The layout of the information is funny, and it's fascinating...like how yoga and meditation are part of every training session for Delhi Metro Rail Corporation employees, and the fact that the uniforms for DMRC employees were designed by the National Institute of Fashion Technology. (I actually went here to get some information for my Cities of Delhi project, which is about various modes of transportation in Delhi, but it was kind of fun, too. Rachel even liked it, and she had no reason for being there other than the fact that she was going shopping with me afterward.) Unfortunately, no pictures of this visit, either; also due to angry security man who was already following me around because I guess I looked suspicious taking notes on the information...in a functioning metro station, open to the public, designed to be looked at. Oh well. I stayed out of trouble.

Saturday: Sari shopping! We have a fancy farewell dinner on Thursday, and almost all of the other girls had already bought saris, so I got Kashika to agree to go back to Lajpat Nagar for sari shopping with me (since I had no idea what I was doing and couldn't go by myself). I meant to buy one, but I got two because they were just too pretty! I dropped them off at the tailor's when we got home, so hopefully the blouses he makes will fit me. Sometimes tailors here don't do a very good job.

Sunday: Spent the whole day doing homework. On Saturday night, it took Sam, Sydney, and I about four hours to do one question for our microeconomics assignment...and there were three of them due on Monday. So Sunday was largely spent doing econ, along with some other homeworks. This week = 8-10 page econ assignment, 40 minute econ presentation, 20 minute Cities of Delhi presentation, and 8-10 page Cities of Delhi paper. Sounds fun, right?

Sunday didn't bring new adventures, but I figured that's okay since I went to two new places on Friday.

Monday: More homework, though I got to take a post-breakfast and post-emailing econ assignment nap, which was fantastic. After Hindi class I went back to Dilli Haat, where I did more shopping. Also, I spoke to lots of Indian people, some of whom thought I was British, some of whom thought I was Kashmiri, and nearly all of whom asked how old I was and if I was married. I walked away with a bunch of gifts and three phone numbers. It's sad when the quickest way to get away from unwanted conversation is to just take down some stranger's phone number and say you'll call soon. I'm looking forward to going home and being able to buy things without being interrogated or hit on. I did find an Indian guy who spoke a tiny bit of German, though, which was fun.

Today is Tuesday (again, it has taken me two days to write a blog post), and I did not adventure to a new place because I wasted a large portion of my day attempting to have meetings with my Ramjas teachers. To make a long story short, I left my house just after 10:30 this morning after my first teacher pushed back our meeting by an hour and a half, didn't go to Hindi because my other teacher didn't show up even though I waited a long time for him, and didn't get back to Neeti Bagh until after 3:00 p.m. (without either of my meetings really taking place). Oh, and there was a giant traffic jam, so the ride home from the metro station was really long. It's about 105ºF right now, and after sitting in traffic so long, our auto-wallah decided to stop and get gas about a half a mile from our house. When I finally got home, I took a shower to cool off, and when I got out, the power was off. 

In short, I've had better days here, but the day's not over, so hopefully it will end better than it's been going so far.

As to the second part of the title of this post, there have been mysterious piles of dirt sitting in the park across the street for a couple weeks now. The other day, I realized that they had, in fact, spread the dirt out over the grass, which is what our guard told me they were going to do when I asked if he knew why the dirt was there. I have no idea what the purpose was; they didn't need to level out the ground and they're not re-seeding the grass. It's one of India's unexplained mysteries.

Anyway, I'm off to prepare my presentations now that the power's back on and I can plug my computer back in.

Baisakhi & Lodhi Garden

Yesterday's Baisakhi celebration at the India Habitat Centre was not quite what I expected, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. It was more or less a concert of Punjabi music, and a bhangra group rounded out the evening with one dance. Not as exciting as what I had hoped for, and it was in a very crowded auditorium, so I didn't get to dance.

For being a multipurpose, pretty big holiday (first day of the solar year, harvest festival, Sikh holy day), I was surprised it wasn't more visible. I'm glad it didn't go by without my knowledge, though. Holidays here fascinate me. (Well, holidays anywhere, but here I get to experience new ones.)

Anyway, today I went to the Lodhi Gardens. Trust me; this was a huge achievement that few would attempt. I went during the late morning because it's pretty close to the IES Centre, where I had to be at 1:00 p.m. So I planned my visit around my schedule, not the weather - it was 105 today.

It's a beautiful place, and even though it was quite hot and I had my backpack and my camera with me, I walked around for about an hour taking pictures before I found a quiet shady spot to sit and relax.

The guy in this picture was a drunk bum who emerged from a small grove of palm trees looking for money. I ignored him, went up the steps to the tomb I had been heading towards, and when I came back, he was sitting down there. 

This is Sikander Lodhi's tomb. The tomb and the lawn are surrounded by a wall. Kind of like a fort. The rulers of Delhi were apparently a big deal after they died; I wonder who started all that. Seems to me that they all tried to outdo each other.

I wanted to get some pictures of the flowers in the garden before they all wither away and die from sitting in the scorching sun day after day: 

There were a lot of different kinds of flowers. More photos can be found on Flickr.

I miss Delhi's winter days where the fog enveloped the city in a quieting blanket, and it was just cool enough to make me really enjoy my morning tea. It was so quiet and spooky and mystifying. Now when I wake up at 7:00 a.m., it's already as bright as it is at noon in Massachusetts, and the temperature is already up to about 85. There's a chorus of birds singing in the park and in the trees outside my window; sometimes this is wonderful, but when I want to sleep, it's not. The fruit- and -vegetable wallahs, and the trash-wallah, and the guy who buys old newspapers get an early start so they can sleep away the hottest part of the day. Which I wish I could do. Alas, students do not have that luxury.

I do enjoy getting up early in the mornings, though. I'm always the first one up in my house (except for the cook), so I can sit out on the terrace watching the people doing yoga in the park, read a book, and enjoy the sunlight before it becomes uncomfortably warm. I'm glad I don't have class in the morning anymore so that I'm able to be productive as soon as I wake up; I function much better when I can relax in the evenings rather than being stressed out right before I go to sleep.

Speaking of sleep, it's been a long day, and I'm going to get to bed, I think.

Namaste.

Ramjas College: Failure to Communicate

Greetings, everywhere-friends and family.

I've been quite busy when I got back from Paris (and was sick for a while), so sorry for the lack of updates. (I figured after the last two book-length ones, I'd give you a break as well.) I was going through pictures on my Canon today, though, and I discovered that I had a story there that never made it to my computer!

The last day of classes at Ramjas college was officially March 23. I went there (alone, as my roommate decided to sleep in) for my political theory class, and there was exactly one other boy in the classroom. After about five minutes, I turned to him and said, "We're not having class today, are we." More statement than question. Boy: "Political theory? No, not today." And he goes back to looking at his notebook.

I do a double-take. "Not today? Do we have it some other day? Rahul-sir [what the Indian students call him] told me in an email last week that today was the last class, and that he wasn't canceling any more classes." (After showing up to an empty classroom the week before, I sent a terse email to my professor asking if he could kindly inform me in advance when he was not going to show up.) "No, there's no class today, but tomorrow we will take class. That is the last one," the boy responds.

Great. 

The next morning, my roommate and I trek up to Ramjas for class, and we're greeted by an empty campus, since it's the equivalent of reading period back home. I documented this day until my batteries died in my camera. This is the hallway outside our classroom:

And this is the door to the classroom where we were supposed to be:


Something seemed a little off to me. I had a hunch that something was up. To test my superior detective skills, I peered in through the (very dirty) window, and this is what I saw:


Usually, in order for the classroom setting to be beneficial, the situation requires at least one student and one teacher. My suspicion was confirmed: this classroom contained neither inside its walls with peeling paint. Rachel and I were not pleased. The janitor sweeping the floor looked like he thought we were crazy.

Either the boy from the day before neglected to mention some minor detail along the lines of change of time or location, or he lied to me. Or class was cancelled again and I wasn't informed again.

Whatever the case may be, I'm not entirely sure what day was my last day of class at Ramjas. I've gone a couple times to meet teachers before, but that's because the month of April is an "independent study", which means writing a paper that is the sole basis of my grade for each of those classes.

Anyway, we walked downstairs and looked down another hallway of the (only) academic building. It was lovely and deserted, too. At least it looks pretty and tropical, though!


This is the sidewalk in front of that building. If you turn left at the end, you're at the main gate, and if you turn right, you can walk to the canteen and the hostels.


Instead of having classes, the students we saw on campus were putting up all of these signs:

I waited until a boy finished dusting this before taking a picture. (Yes, he was dusting a poster board that had just been put up.)

On the walk back to the metro station, we go through the main drag of the North Campus of Delhi University, which is a cluster of little colleges like Ramjas. But the walls along that stretch are prime advertising space, and this obviously environmentally-conscious student group decided it was necessary to wallpaper several panels of this wall with flyers for an event hosted by the National Campaign for Combating Terrorism. The best part about this phenomenon (which is not unique to this one event) is that usually these hundreds of flyers are put up at most 24 hours before the event. Usually, it's the same day.

However, spring is in Delhi, which means that pretty flowers whose names I don't know make walking around more enjoyable and pleasing to the eye. My favorite part of the flora during this walk is a giant conglomeration of trees and vines that spills over the wall creating a canopy above the sidewalk. When the vines all burst into bloom with different colored blossoms, it got even better.


Spring is over in Delhi now. Currently, it's plain old hot. It's supposed to be in the low 100s for the rest of the week. I don't call that spring.

We had a fantastic thunderstorm (with intensely appreciated rain) last week. I stood up on the terrace watching the storm one late afternoon, and it was so refreshing. It wasn't supposed to happen, though; Delhi isn't supposed to get rain like that until the middle of May. Hooray climate change in action.

***

In other news, I wrote two fifteen-page papers in eight days. Aside from taking time away from playing in the sun, it was actually quite reassuring that my brain still functions in an academic manner and that I was finally able to find the resources I needed in order to complete the research. (I'll save that story for another day - how impossible it is to find books in this city.)

I'm starting to get all anxious that I only have three weeks left in India (three weeks minus one day now, actually). I've decided that I'm going to make time in my schedule to do at least one fun and preferably new thing every day between now and when I leave, since I don't think I'll get to go on anymore trips outside of Delhi. (Some adventures will be to places I've already been but that I feel are necessary to revisit. Some will be to places I kept saying I was going to visit but never ended up actually doing.)

Today is Baisakhi, the beginning of the solar year. It's a Punjabi harvest festival and also a holy day for Sikhs. This will be my new and exciting event for the day; the taxi is picking me up in an hour to go to the India Habitat Centre for a Baisakhi celebration. I imagine it will be something along the lines of the Lohri festival way back in January, but with more bhangra! :)

Paris: Reflections

I'm actually glad this picture came out a little blurry, even though I tried to keep my hands as still as possible when I was taking it. Life's a little blurry, though, so I think it's appropriate.

I was getting quite frustrated with Delhi before I went to Paris. Classes are frustrating and were stressful for a little while, the city is noisy and dirty and intrusive, and I don't feel particularly close to any of the people on my program. I'm friendly with almost all of them, but I'm not actively included in much of the planning and socializing that goes on. As the semester goes on, the group gets more fractionalized and cliquier, which is to be expected, but I don't feel like I found a niche. I'm not at all on the same page as everyone else most of the time. Based on what I've seen and heard the other students do and say, I don't think I'm here for the same reasons. Or perhaps I am, and they just like to keep those things hidden under layers of other behavior. 

I love to go out and explore on my own, but in Delhi I don't feel safe doing that in a neighborhood I don't already know or anywhere at night. There are still many, many places in India I want to see before I leave, and it's such a hassle to try to get people to commit to a trip and actually make plans. I want to just go do it by myself, but again, I don't feel like it's exactly safe for me to do that. I don't think that anything would actually happen to me if I travelled alone, but it's not a risk I'm willing to take.

All of that played a part in my decision to go to Paris. We had an IES trip scheduled for that weekend that was supposed to complement a class that I never planned on taking and which wound up being cancelled. Everyone was talking about traveling that weekend since we would have a few days off, but after a lot of thought, I decided that it was a better use of my time and money (and better for my mental state) to meet up with Kevin somewhere in Europe rather than have a trip pulled together last minute (and consequently more expensive) for somewhere in India with people I may or may not get along with to a destination I may or may not have chosen. Some of the students did, in fact, go to places that I had mentioned earlier in the semester that I had a strong desire to visit (mainly Kerala and Darjeeling). However, although I probably won't make it to those places before I return to the States in May, I'm certain I made the right decision in going to Paris.

When I landed in Dubai, I realized that I've changed as a traveller. First of all, it's incredibly gratifying to be able to pay for my trip myself. I had been under my budget for my time in India up until I left, and I had started saving last fall as soon as I knew I was coming here, so I had very few qualms about spending the money to go such a long way for only a few days. That feeling multiplied when, two days before I left, I was offered a job I had been pursuing for the past two months. Now I know for certain that I'll be making a reasonable income over the summer and doing something I think I'll enjoy and that could potentially lead to a career after graduation. I enjoy being able to be independent. and I'm slowly becoming more confident in being able to do that from a financial perspective. For a while, I didn't even think I would make it to India at all because of the cost. But I did, and it has been a great investment by my parents and myself, with the added benefit of actually costing less than a semester at the University of Rochester.

Back to traveling. As the plane took off from Delhi, I felt very nervous, and I thought back to my flight to India back in January. I was anxious and tense then, too. I never used to be edgy about flying, but now I'm starting to be. I still love it, but there's always this little part of me that thinks something horrible will happen. I worry when people I care about are flying, too; I guess part of growing up is realizing how easily you could lose anything or anyone and not wanting that to happen. As soon as the plane landed in Dubai, however, I felt perfectly comfortable. The fact that it was an airport in a city in a part of the world I had never set foot in didn't faze me at all. I had looked at my itinerary so many times that I had my flight numbers and gates and times entirely memorized, so I was able to just meander around the airport in the general direction of where I was supposed to be going, people-watching and architecture-admiring and generally just enjoying myself. My layover was fairly quick and uneventful, and before I knew it, I was in Paris.

I had actually heard some rather terrible things about Paris, about how dirty and unpleasant and expensive it was. The expensive bit is definitely true, but I was surprised by how completely and utterly wrong those descriptions were. It was extremely clean, and I don't think it's just because I'm accustomed to the dirt and debris of Delhi. The streets were very quiet, even at night, and though we had relatively little interaction with other people, those exchanges that we did have were with relatively friendly people. I'm sure that part of it had to do with the time of year that we were there; during the height of tourist season, I have no doubt that the city is dirtier, noisier, and more crowded. I found it thoroughly enjoyable to roam the streets, and I actually found Paris rather charming. 

A large part of Paris' charm was simply due to my company. After experiencing at least minor personality clashes on all of my trips in India, it was refreshing and relaxing to be with someone I knew was compatible with me. Each morning we made a general plan for what we wanted to do, but we left lots of room for spontaneity. There's something really comforting about experiencing something you know someone else will appreciate and being able to talk about reactions to different parts of the trip with someone who understands. Neither of us had been to Paris before, so it was nice to be experiencing it together, too. I was happy not to have to worry about arguments breaking out over where to go next or how to get there or how much money to spend on dinner. Those kinds of things can ruin a trip if they occur too often. So thank you, Kevin, for being a wonderful travel companion. :)

Seeing a new city on a new continent also reaffirmed my love of culture comparison and firsthand experiences of different ways of life. I loved that sitting at breakfast in the hostel meant catching snippets of conversations in at least three or four languages. I love seeing the layouts of different cities, how the city planners made use of natural elements, and  how historic monuments are incorporated. For example, the Eiffel Tower appears out of nowhere if you don't approach it from the Parc du Champs de Mars. You're in a neighborhood that could be any neighborhood in Paris and suddenly between two buildings you glimpse this giant structure that happens to be a world-famous landmark. I love watching how people move through different cities and thinking about what and how people choose to preserve the city's history.

In general, I found Paris to be a decidedly worthwhile experience. I'm fairly certain that any city in Europe where I got to meet up with Kevin would have been an amazing experience, but that does not detract from my enjoyment of Paris. Spending time with someone who knows me well and re-igniting my love of travel made me let go of all the things that had been bugging me when I left Delhi, and though I was sick on my return trip, I came back to Delhi with a renewed spirit of adventure. I may not get to do much traveling between now and the end of the semester because of schoolwork and other commitments, but there's plenty of this city that I have yet to explore.

My friend Liz is in New Zealand this semester, and she wrote something in her blog a couple days ago that captured my attention. She was musing about the "great big Why?" of studying abroad, and she included a quote from a travel writer that I think is fantastically articulate, and so I will leave you with that:

"You're coming to realize that travel anywhere is often a matter of exploring half-understood desires. Sometimes, those desires lead you in new and wonderful directions; other times, you wind up trying to understand just what it was you desired in the first place. And, as often as not, you find yourself playing the role of charlatan as you explore the hazy frontier between where you are, who you are, and who it is you might not want to be." - Rolf Potts

(Photo credits for pictures of me: Kevin Gessner)