DAY 16 - Moving Day

When I get back from practice this morning there's a guy sitting in our living room waiting to move into my bedroom... it's not even 9:30 yet! So much for having breakfast; I have to rush to pack up my stuff and get out. I decide that organized packing is not an option, shove everything into my bags, and call a rickshaw to pick me up. While I'm sitting outside with my bags, waiting for a ride, I run into Rachel. She's another nice roommate at Mr Joseph's who moved in a few days ago, and she tells me she has an extra mattress I can have so I don't have to buy one. Now I'll just need to get myself a bed frame of some sort...

I spend the whole day dealing with moving. It's unbelievable how much time and energy every little thing takes around here! I move my stuff to the apartment, then grab a bite to eat and go back to Joseph's, where I am supposed to meet some guys about making a bed frame. This is supposedly cheaper than buying one. Rachel is having one made, too. This takes forever to figure out with the 2 carpenters and the translator, then they give us a cost that is about double what Joseph paid last time he had similar beds made. Joseph comes and argues with them and says he's going to check the prices of lumber, or something like that, so now I'll be sleeping on the floor until I figure something out.

I'm off to get the mattress with Rachel and we carry it on top of a rickshaw, each of us holding one side, back to the apartment. No one is there to let me in and I don't have a key, so I have to sit outside with my mattress and wait. When Emma comes back she tells me she went to make another key (very nice of her) but once she found the key place (actually just a trunk sitting on the grass down the street) the key man was not there. Ok. We bring my mattress upstairs and I get to work sweeping up all the giant dead ants on the floor in my room (ugh), separating out the few live ones and tossing them outside, and then mopping the floor I will have to sleep on with "Lyzol" (this is something I would not do at home, but if you've been to India, you will understand). A giant cockroach scurries out from the corner where I had set my bags and manages to climb into one that is partially open. I scream and then there's a big ordeal with getting him out of the bag and taking him outside. Soon there are more giant ants creeping around and I'm getting pretty upset about the sleeping on the floor situation, but, what can I do? Nothing right now, so I step away from this situation for a while and head off to my sanskrit and chanting classes.

After class, I rush off to eat and then my friend Lara and I have appointments with a local Ayurvedic doctor. I'm hot and dirty and exhausted and stressed, and then we have to wait for ages. When I meet Dr Kumar, he basically tells me a bunch of stuff I already know. My vata is high. Yeah, I'm sure. My pitta is high. Well, that explains why I'm feeling so aggravated... actually, that's probably BECAUSE I'm feeling so aggravated. And he says that things that are "destressing" are good for me. I do not bother to tell him that my state of stress today is extreme, not the norm. He thinks a 5-day package of ayurvedic massage, herbal milk bath, lunch, and herbal milk shirodarah each day at his spa will be beneficial. That's 3-3.5 hours at the spa every day for 5 days, and costs more than a month's rent here. Heck yeah, a week at the spa sounds great after the day I've had, but that's NOT gonna happen! I mentally prescribe myself a clean place to sleep with a working shower and a flushing toilet, and decide that I'll stick with our ayurvedic expert at home, Dr. Dugliss, in the future.