Tess

Today, Emma received a package containing 8 Reese’s’ Peanut Butter Cups, 8 Kit-Kat Bars, and 6 boxes of No Pudge brownie mix. Several boxes of brownie mix had burst, spilling their contents into the box they had been mailed in. The box was splitting at the seams with bits of brown powder pouring from its corners. I tipped the package and poured as much of the spare mix as I could into my palm and licked it clean. Emma removed the bags of brownie mix from their boxes and put them in a plastic bag together to keep them from spilling further. I took each individual box and dumped its loose contents into my palm, or into a cup, or onto a folded piece of paper and dumped them directly into my mouth. It was kind of like eating hot chocolate by the spoon full and mixing it with your saliva to simulate drinking it. I have become the most glutinous person I know. After about an hour of gorging myself, I sheepishly crept to the bathroom looking like I’d spent the day working in a chocolate coalmine.
It has taken me about a month to adjust to my current surroundings physically. Sometimes the altitude still makes me act like I got hit in the head with a brick, but I can now spend the whole night in my bedroom instead of the composting toilet. Life sans indigestion is simply heavenly. I’ve started running every morning (if you count the past 2 mornings as every morning) and can feel my stamina increasing. Hopefully, I won’t end up being the one riding a pony on the next trek, which begins the 16th or 17th.
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I will now describe the schedule at SECMOL. Breakfast at 8 a.m., class at 9, tea at 11. (As I mentioned earlier, I go running every morning. That happens at 7.) After tea, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., we have work hour. Today I helped dig a canal that may be filled with water by the end of the week. The Ladakhi girls and I would work for about 3 minutes, then rest for about 5. When a man and two women from Rajasthan drove up looking for tin cans, we stopped for about 20 minutes to talk to them. We ended up heading back early. (I want to mention that I was surprised by today’s leisurely pace. The Ladakhis are the most productive, hard-working group of people I have ever met. They’re also tough as nails, yet sweet as honey. But Hell, today’s Friday.)
After work hour, we have 30 minutes to do our responsibilities. My responsibility is gardening. During this time, I usually pick spinach or water the garden. Because the pipes froze every night in February, the plants went through a bit of a dry spill, as did every other being on campus. This dry spell had an effect on our ability to bathe. Thankfully, due to Ladakh’s dry, cool climate, we don’t sweat very much here.
Gulab Singh.
At 1 p.m. we have lunch. From 2- 3:30 we have more class. Lately, we’ve been using our class time to work on a solar-heated garden bed. The heat for the garden bed is created by recycled bottles filled with water and painted black on one side. The black side absorbs sunlight, heating the water. The heat of the water emanates into the soil. The weather has warmed up a lot since we got here (it is now about 65 degrees in our room at night instead of 40), so the plants no longer have to be covered at night and un-covered in the morning to prevent from freezing. (That last bit isn’t actually relevant to the project, but it’s relevant to gardening, which is my responsibility.)
After that class, we have free time until 6 p.m., when we have English conversation class. During English conversation class, VIS and SECMOL students split into groups to discuss designated topics. The goal is to improve the conversational English of the Ladakhi students. The last conversation class concerned VIS’s most recent trek, which three of the Ladakhi students (Padma, Kunzes and Dorjay) accompanied us on. We discussed hiking and home-stays, wood-stoves, farm animals, food, Chang (Ladakhi beer), and 3-storey composting toilets. A highlight from a past conversation class was when I learned how hard it is for women to become trekking guides. Apparently, Ladakhi trekking companies often refuse to hire women. Tinless, a former SECMOL student who visited during February, is a trekking guide. She’s currently working on becoming more qualified so that a company will hire her.
At seven, VIS attends Ladakhi language class. Dinner is at 7:30. Sometimes after dinner, there’s an evening activity, usually a dance party. Most of the dance parties have Ladakhi music. I really liked the Ladakhi pop songs, all three of them, the first 12 times or so I heard them. They play on repeat in the kitchen. And on the bus. I have the lyrics memorized but I have no idea what they mean. One of the VIS students (Toben?) asked Kunzes if she ever gets tired of listening to the same songs over and over. Kunzes told him he didn’t understand. He’s American, she’s Ladakhi. Jansyn said that the songs make her think of a chipmunk prancing around with a fist-full of flowers.

The schedule at SECMOL is fun, but it’s nice to have some unstructured time every now and then. We get this in the form of trekking. Our next trek is in about a week. We’ll be going up to 18,000 ft. and we won’t be bringing any ponies. (Last time, we had two ponies to carry food and sleeping bags and one to carry a person if need be. I guess if we don’t have any ponies this time, I don’t have to worry about riding one.) The picture accompanying this Blog entry is from the last trek when I lent Dorjay my camera. It’s his glamour shot.
MOM: SEND RAISINS, DRIED APPLES AND GRANOLA BARS.