The Typical Day

Now that I have written about the trips into Gadchiroli, to Bodli the rural village, and the Markanda temple, I will give a description of what the normal day is like at SEARCH. I am supposed to be doing an internship here and not sightseeing every other day.

For those of you worried that I am ten days behind the present day in my blogs, I will say that the next few entries are going to bring us up to speed as we flash forward through the typical day here at SEARCH.

The daily schedule:

6:15am Shramdan (group cleaning, only on Wednesdays and Saturdays)
8:00am Breakfast
8:30am Research Meetings (only on Friday and Saturdays)
1:00pm Lunch
6:45pm Prayer Service
8:00pm Dinner

Shramdan is group cleaning. It's not voluntary, but you can try to get away with missing it by staying in bed. However, they bang this large metal plate they have hung up in the center of campus, so that you are immediately woken up, and it is difficult to stay asleep after that. I was sorta excited at first because I don't mind cleaning, and I was under the impression that Shramdan would include all sorts of tasks. Really, the only chore to do is to take straw brooms and sweep the grounds and paths outside so they stay beautiful red sand and don't have leaves all over them. It's really boring and you can't help but think the whole time that you are sweeping the dirt outside. It does make all of SEARCH look really nice when we are done though.

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner are self-explanatory and I will have a post on the food in the future.

Research meetings are a chance for the research interns to present their progress and their results to Dr. Bang and Anand and the the others on the research team. You get assigned the weeks that you will go and it is mandatory that all the interns present while we are here. This is not that bad either, and it's very typical of any research lab.

In the evening, prayer service is also mandatory. Every evening follows the same structure. Everyone shows up between 6:45pm and 7pm while some meditational music is playing and you are expected to sit there and meditate and be quiet. Then, once everyone seems to have gathered, Anand, or one of his parents if they are there, starts the prayer. It is in Marathi. It sounds like one big song, but Sona told me it's actually five different prayers combined. It's non-denominational, but since it's in Marathi, I have only picked up some of the words here and there. After the prayer, people are invited to sing songs or discuss events during the day in front of the entire group. This portion can last anywhere from 5 minutes to 45 minutes. I have gone up in front of the group twice now. The first time was as an ensemble to sing a Jewish song last Friday in honor of Shabbat that Miriam led. The second time was this past Monday when they made Jessica and I get up and tell everyone about our field trip to Gandhi's ashram (future post). I really like when prayer service runs on the shorter side because we sit cross-legged on the floor and my feet fall asleep and then I get all fidgety.

In between meals and mandatory events, the rest of the time is your own, when you expected to work on your research project. However, if you'd like to take a nap, or go for a stroll, that is ok too, as long as you get your work done. I spend most of those hours in either the library or the research building and I probably spend only half of the time on my project. The rest I spend reading emails, surfing the web, and writing on the blog. The internet connection can be very slow so sometimes it takes a while just to look up one thing online. Overall, the atmosphere is very relaxed. I really enjoy it. The work that SEARCH does is very good, but it never feels stressful. This is the first summer in a long time that I have been able to feel like I am taking a long vacation, with just enough work to keep my mind stimulated.

One other thing that I wanted to mention about the typical day here is that the power always goes out because all the energy comes from generators and sometimes the weather or the overuse causes it to short. The power must cut out at least five times every day. The good thing is that it always comes back a few seconds later. There has only been one time that it stayed out for more than five minutes. It is a good thing that the power always comes back on because I would feel really uncomfortable in the evenings when it is dark. Knowing that it is going to come back on in a few seconds makes it not so scary. In addition, I always have my head lamp with me in the evenings, so I am never that long in the dark.

Pictures of my room: I started at the door and panned left around the room.


Doorway. You can see the blanket I use to seal the bottom of the door at night.

My "beauty parlor" bench. I keep my most basic toiletries and water up on the bench. This is all I had with me when I arrived at SEARCH. Now, I have a few more items placed up there. The white and blue container is a small water jug.

The large window and my bed. The geckos love love love to hang out on this window, fortunately on the other side of the screen. For the first four days I had a table under the window, but SEARCH ended up taking it to use for another purpose.

My bed, the other bed, and the green metal armoire. Now that they took the table away from me, I use the other bed to keep my stuff off the floor. Rushina is coming tomorrow and will be my roommate, so I have to come up with another solution.

Another shot of my bed. I sleep with the blanket that is folded at the end. I am currently using the pillows from both beds, so again I will have to find another one tomorrow when Rushina comes.

A shot of the mattress. You can see it's more like a bed pad. I've become quite used to it though, and I have decided I like firm beds instead of soft beds. I think I sleep better.

A picture of my things neatly arranged on the other bed. This is all I had with me when I first arrived at SEARCH in addition to the few toiletries on the bench. The blue bag has all my granola bars. Inside my backpack I had important papers, a book and a journal, my camera, my cell phone, my laptop, ben's ipod, adapters, and chargers. Now that my suitcase has arrived, I keep it on the floor under the large window.

When my suitcase arrived I arranged all my toiletries on the middle shelf of the armoire. I suppose I could empty out all my clothes into it too, but I'm paranoid that a bug will come, and that they are safer inside my suitcase. When Rushina comes we will probably figure out a better solution.

Back to the door. I have some nice hooks to hang up my purse and my scarves. When my suitcase hadn't arrive I started using the scarves as towels. This works out nicely because the air here is very humid and the normal bath towels would take forever to dry. Even with my suitcase, I still use the scarves as towels because they dry quickly and the air dries me off pretty quickly too, so they are all I need.