Dear Friends and Family,

Please forgive me for my long silence, my schedule has gotten very busy and I was waiting until I had photos to show you before I made a new post.

My school is more or less in full swing, I only have four classes but they are a handfull.  I'm more or less enjoying all my studies at this point, the only thing is I'm suffering from lack of sleep and from the food.  Vice Chancellor Maharaj has arranged for me to take a snack at 1 O'clock in the University, which is helping a lot because the students normally don't eat from 9:30 AM to 4 PM, and then Dinner is at 9.  But there isn't much I can do about sleep, the first year Sanskrit kids are in class 12 1/2 hours a day.  I'm not with them in their classes but nevertheless I pretty much follow that same schedule.  We get to sleep around 11, sometimes later but sometimes around 10:30, and we get up at 5:15.  This is very taxing but whenever it gets to be too much I go and take a nap.

The food is also an uphill battle, but I expected that.  The snack helps, but the students food times are weird, we don't get anything besides a cup of tea and four biscuits between 5:15 and 9:30.  I don't like the food at all, I've skipped a couple meals lately and just eaten nuts I brought from the US.

But all these materialistic things aside India is a great place.  I'm defiantly not bored and there's no possible way that the material comforts of the West out way the benefits of this experience.

So don't worry about me any who are inclined too, if I really wasn't getting enough food, I would just make noises about it and VC Maharaj would manifest something I would eat out of Howrah.

The long awaited pictures have come, sorry for the wait and thanks for the few of you who keep checking this.

Hostel Bedroom

This is my corner, I rolled up my bed, but if you notice it isn't much more than a foam pad on a board.  It actually isn't bad though.  My mosquito net is rolled up in this, you have to have it on when you sleep or you're in trouble. 

 One hallway of upstairs hostel floor.

 Bathroom, it branches off into little rooms with toilets and showers.  I still haven't seen any toilet paper since I've been here and there's no soap anywhere, I started carrying my own.

 The Taj MaHostel

 Courtyard

 Palashda (Da is a suffix added to the end of the name of someone older than yourself.  It indicates respect and translates like older brother, there's lots of stuff like that built into Indian culture)

 Our ping-pong table

 English teacher Ayon Maharaj.  He's an American Bengali, PHD from Berkeley, joined here a couple years ago.

 Arupeshananda Maharaj with our cows.

 The VU cows.  I guess in villages if a driver accidentally kills a cow, the villagers will kill the driver.

Thanks for reading, just everyone know that I'm happy and I think its better to be here starving and tired than slouching around some City College.