Catching up!

So sorry, I thought I posted something on 3/1, but I see it is not here.

Much to catch up on.  Let’s see. I have seen no money from the India bank and my bank at home is late on sending out paperwork to file the claim. So no money yet. But my roomie, left his wallet here and it had the exact amount I lost at the atm in his wallet in US dollars. How about that for karma! I won’t see him till maybe late April, so if I need the money I have it now.

We moved houses and are back in our original house minus roomates. It needed quite the cleaning after 6 months of men living here. I mean big ick! So Laksmi, Mag’s babysitter and her friend, came and cleaned the house top to bottom. Ahhhh! Randy gave us a mosquito net too, so we are sleeping like babies now. They were eating us alive at nite.

My practice is going great, I have lost about 6/7 pounds now and am binding like I was pre baby. Hooray! The shala is also clearing out since this is Sharath’s last month to teach for 2 years here. He is quite happy, smiling and even joking during practice now b/c there are so few people. It is very nice and I feel honored to be here this month. Not that it is small by any means, but I would say we are down to 150 - 175 people from 250.

I finished sanskrit level 1 and for some insane reason started Level 2 last week. It is completely kicking my butt again as we are making full on sentences and I am doing homework about an hour each nite.

Mags is loving it here. She has tons of friends. People shout out, “Maggie!” from cars, rickshaws, across the street, from store when we walk by. She is a true celebrity. Sharmila is back from Nepal and she plays with her in the mornings. She has also been playing with Anjenah and Nayarana, Andrew and Jess’s kids. They all get along great which is wonderful b/c they are moving to Seattle in June. Andrew will be opening a space to teach as he and Jesica both juts got authorized here to teach. Quite a big deal. Sharath authorized about 8 people in one full swoop since he is taking the 2 years off. To put the “Authorization”/”Certification” into perspective. There are about 40 - 45 authorized people in the world and about 30 certified in the world.

We started to spay and nueter the homeless dogs here. Well, we is the rickshaw drivers and Mags and I, along with the vet of course. It was quite nerve racking with our first guy. The vet shows up, gives him a shot, puppy is paralyzed but still conscious, I pick him up, lay him in the rickshaw. We drive 4 blocks to the vet, carry him in, lay him on the metal table. 1/2 hour later vet calls to pick him up. Sanjay and Swami, rickshaw drivers, pick us up from the coconut stand and we go get puppy an bring him home. No painkillers, just giving him some powder blasts on his incision and an antibiotic. Man!

He is doing great today and actually ran out on us on Day 2 and was gone for the nite. We had the whole town looking for him. He showed back up today and is asleep on our floor. We have raised $400 to date for this project, which can spay at least 20 dogs.The vet is an amazing man and he has cut his costs in half to help with this.

We are doing 3 females tomorrow and a little male on Sunday. He has quite the mange and he is in horrible pain. The vet has been giving him some solution and pills to get the mange to go away. India can be a harsh reality. In other dog news, the “corporation” (animal control) showed up and tried to sweep all the shala dogs to poison them. Siva and his guys saved all 6 of them. They then came down to our street and went to sweep and we saved 3. I didn’t see them get any from this area that day.

I saw a Vedic astrologer/palm reader yesterday. He is quite the man around town and lives across from the old shala. He was very good. All is good. He said I have an extremely rare palm where I have 6 lines shooting straight up to the planets from Mercury to Saturn. This is so rare and means I am happy all the time. I started laughing and said, yes, for the most part I am very happy most of the time. Money will be fine for us, my husband is a brilliant/smart and so nice of a man (I knew that!), we will move and run a huge farm of flowers in the next 2 - 3 years (I asked if we would have cows and pigs, but Ray will be happy thathe was not seeing that). I will have one more very tragic accident in the next 3 years. He said I must be very careful with speed and driving and to be cautious. I say one more because I have been in 3 car accidents, one where I flatlined and traveled through that tunnel towards the white light. Yes, for me there was a white light and people trapped in some limbo on the sides of the tunnel. He said this would have been fatal for me, but that I have a guardian who watched over me then. I also have fell off a 60 foot cliff in Hawaii which was quite tragic around the same time in my life that he saw this first accident. So I guess another one is coming. I’m a little freaked out, but will always be cautious now.

Lastly he said yoga was my destiny and that I would be profitable and that this will do me very very well in life.  Ithought perhaps I would hear this for my practice, but for teaching, it has suprised me. I love yoga, but I feel very much a student at times, especially here in India seeing Sharath, Saraswati, Laksmi (my sanskrit teacher), Kumar (meditation teacher). I feel so tiny in knowledge to that.

We have not traveled to Bylakuppe yet to see the Dalai Lama. Perhaps we go Saturday. My friends have been there and say it is great, but he speaks in Tibetan so you are there to see his prescense which is truly amazing. We are going to Melakote Sunday. My deity is Dattatraya. By this I mean, most yogis follow a Hindu God who they feel close to or some relation to. Dattatraya or Dattareya always has 4 dogs by his side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dattatreya

There is a temple in Melakote worshipping him.

We have become friends with a family who owns our first nuetered dog’s girlfriend and his 2 puppies. The father is a garbage collecter, his sons go with him. They have stopped by our house in the past to have their lunch. They are very very poor, but such good people. Today his wife was with him. We sat and talked as best we could with not knowing eachother’s languages. Mags played with their kids and everyone had a great time. They have invited us to their house tomorrow at 2. I have seen their house, they live in a part with many families around them and many goats, chickens and dogs running in and out of their houses. When we have seen them here resting we always bring them fruit and cold juice and water out. They are so hungry and so thankful for it. I gave them puppy food and a small bag of rice as they have no money to feed their puppies. The wife asked me what I make Maggie for breakfast, I asked her what she made today and she said rice. I know it is that bag of rice that I gave them yesterday. We’ll go over tomorrow with fruit, drinks and some rice. The rickshaw drivers and Shiva’s guys say this family is truly good people. They are both 25 and their kids are 7 and 3. I guess the father’s father was a garbage man and he grew up like his kids are growing up, tagging along on the garbage cart and never went to school.

More on that after tomorrow. We miss Ray so very much and he is done with the house remodel. Well, he is wanting it to be done. Wish he would come out here for our last month.