I'm the 3rd rinse button on your washing machine

Today I started my work in the Missions of Charity. I worked at Pen Dam, one of the homes for adults that are dying and/or mentally and/or physically disabled.

I ventured out at the early hour of 5:45 this morning to attend Mass at the Motherhouse. It was delightful... at least the walk there. There was hardly anybody out, it was actually quite cool (by that, I mean I only sweated about half a liter on the way, rather than the usual full), and what I thought was constant honking here on the streets had actually subsided.

Mass... eh... what can I say? It was long. It was aerobic-like. It was hot. The sisters looked fabulous in their cool white sari's with blue stripes. I want to wear things like that. Instead I wore my linen pants that seem to get baggier by the day (that's not because I'm loosing weight, it's because they stretch out more and more the sweatier they get), so I struggled to keep them from collapsing to the ground from heat exhaustion.

After Mass all the volunteers converged downstairs, received directions, and took off for various corners of the city. I followed a guy from Spain (his name was not Herardo, Claire, but he kind of reminded me of him! Maybe less intense and less lost, though...), and hopped a bus. Buses in India are fun! Actually, any sort of transportation is fun, even taxis that run the meter up ridiculously high by "accidentally" taking you out into the countryside... But I'm getting ahead of myself. Traffic is very fluid here - we weave, we bob, we squeeze. And then there's the honking. Every single vehicle has its own personality, which is relatively distinguishable by the sound of the horn. There's the angry toots, the friendly "don't hit me, I'm here!", the intimidating goose-blows, the bicycle water-bottle rigged airhorns, the rickshaw fingers-on-chalkboard sounds, and the occasional taxi with a ice-cream-truck-jingle. Incidentally, if a vehicle's horn doesn't work, it's totaled, regardless of it's other capacities to drive.

I was surprised by the Pen Dam compound. It was bigger than I expected, cleaner than I expected (in the slums, that's quite the feat!), and more institutional than I expected.

I spent 2 hours washing laundry by hand at the 3rd rinse sink station. There were two Spanish med-student gals on either side of me, a French woman further to my right, several Japanese ladies down off to the left, and an English nurse to keep us company. I was the only American woman.

After the washing session (it was like a shower - I sweated enough to soak through my clothes, and I splashed enough to wash the sweat off), the volunteers "breaked" for a few minutes while the lunch foods were finished being prepared. I wandered through the woman's dorms and met a bunch of ladies. I'll write more about them in later blogs. I'm still processing at this point.

During the break the ladies and gents all drank chai and ate biscuits together. I met 2 french half-marathoners with strikingly handsome good looks, Jason-from-Texas who has been here since January and is staying until November. He's writing a book about his experiences and keeping a blog. I'm going to try to remember to ask him for his blog address tomorrow so I can post it here as a link, for any of your curious folks. There was also a Chilean dude, and the Spanish guy previously mentioned, a plethora of Japanese men, and I think a couple other Spaniards. There's a lot of Spaniards.

Lunch was next, and then we were finished for the morning shift. I was supposed to head to an orphanage for the afternoon shift, but I got hopelessly lost somewhere between the metro and autorickshaw and building itself, so instead I found myself wandering through more slums, with my camera like a permission slip. I was far and away the only Westerner, along with being the only woman out really by herself. It's also a bit of an unnerving feeling when I realize, "I'm so lost, I have no idea where I am, I have no idea where I've been, nobody knows where I am or where I've been, and I'm really grateful my parents don't know what's going on right now." And then I duck down another back alley and look for clever photo opportunities - this is sort of just how I travel, I guess!

As it turned out, I just followed the flow of traffic out to a main road, hailed a taxi, asked for "Park Street" (which is the part of town where I'm actually getting comfortable), and took a hey-day of a ride out into the agriculture fields outside the city, past marble wholesale lots, alongside some botanical gardens or something, over and back over the river, and finally through the big pasture/park in downtown Kolkata, all while my driver feigned being lost and then dropped me off at Park Street after the meter topped off at 200+ Rupees. I bet YOU have never taken a 45 minute cab ride and had a private discovery trip of Kolkata from the comfort of a yellow taxi cab for the grand price of 5 bucks, have you?! It was fun.

Then I finished walking blisters into my feet on the way home. Now I'm tired. I just finished another cold shower and have a cup of tea beside my toes. Evening relaxation can commence!