Day three

2/5/10
This morning I look a bucket shower which was quite interesting. I filled the bucket with warm water and used a little cup to pour it over me. Although I’m definitely never going to get used to the “bucket shower” idea, it makes me aware of how much water I use in a single shower. My hair alone needs its own bucket!
Delhi is starting to get to me. I can’t take the traffic, the poverty, the trash, the pollution, and honking, the smell. I don’t know how people can live here. Today I saw a child holding a baby with its hand severely burned off. They do this just to make others take pity on them and give them money. In the market I saw a legless man hobbling around begging for change and a woman holding a barely alive baby shoving it in my face. Children limp around with failing health and dirty bodies, many missing limbs, asking for money and it’s all they do. Every day. For the rest of their lives. It’s so sad, almost unbearable to see every day. When you see it in front of your face you turn your head but the mage stays with you. Those sad yellow eyes, the dirty fingers tapping on the window, the amputated arm trying to move. All I want to do is help.
We had a Hindi drop off today and bought Indian clothing. I know I’m not going to wear much of it when I get home so I was thinking of making some of the fabric into pillows.
I can hear honking all the way in the Ashram…
It’s so crazy here in Delhi. There’s no way I can stay here for my independent study project. I feel like I lose a year off my life every day I’m here with the stress of the traffic and the heartache of the poverty. It’s all so much to take in