This week we are doing yoga with an instructor every morning this week, and I plan on continuing it while I am here and hopefully when I get home too because it is a great way to start the morning. Other than that and breakfast, the days are not super regular. On days there is class we start around 9:15-9:30 am, have chai and biscuits around 11, then class again until lunch at about 1 or 2, and then either some type of speaker or experience for a couple hours in the afternoon evening.

All water I consume, even for brushing teeth, is filtered and the food has given my stomach a round trip ticket to the bathroom many times...however, I am feeling much better today after being sick for 5 days. Sometimes, especially when I was sick, I take food that I want to try and end up not liking it, then I proceed to either make myself throw up by eating it or to simply throw it out. I feel guilty about “simply” throwing it away and am reminded of the walk I took through the slum and the beggars at the basilica. I feel so spoiled and privileged and white. I wonder how much the average Indian associates the color of my pale skin with the negative connotations such as being wasteful or if I am “simply” seen as privileged and unaccountable. I sometimes feel as if I am personally a part of colonization, whether I like it or not.

We are all in a dormitory-type building in which we all have a roommate and a bathroom to share in each room, which is much nicer than I was expecting! At the slums, you have to pay at least 1 rupee every time you go to the one squatting bathroom in your area and toilet paper is NOT included in that deal. Many people in India share one unsanitary outhouse with all of their neighbors and I only have to compete for bathroom time with my roommate. This situation reminds me of my bathroom at home and the one in the apartment I lived in last year at Concordia. I would get frustrated at not getting to take my shower at the time that I wanted to take it. In both situations I get to use a clean, well-maintained bathroom that comes complete with as much toilet paper as I need. Is this wasteful or just different and “modern” in stature? If we had fewer bathrooms in the US would we waste less toilet paper and water? Save trees, use your hand Indian style?...I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with not using toilet paper!