"No one sees the fuel that feeds you." ~Naomi Shihab Nye

Every day I go to bed and think "tomorrow I will blog" - cause I know that all of you are DYING to read my updates (Hi Mom and Dad.) And then I don't. One reason is that I am incredibly busy here - every night when Lauren and I finally slump back to our apartments, well past dinner time, we collapse and talk about how the events of that morning seem to have happened ages ago. But it is a good busy - a fulfilling busy.

But there is another reason, I think, that I have not blogged in a while. I feel like I don't have very much to say. When I was a student here, every single day was an exercise in having my world shaken, having the rug ripped out from under me. Every day was one more inch on a roller coaster of emotions, feelings, and thoughts. I had a lot to say. But this time life is, well, routine - if you can imagine that, in India. And I'm not saying any of this in a bad way - I actually really have come to appreciate my ability to live here. No, not appreciate. Be in awe of. It never ceases to amaze me that Lauren and I go through our day-to-day lives without so much as a thought as to the fact that our lives here are worlds different than our lives at home. The human's capacity to adapt and change is pretty remarkable - and every once in a while, I remember that. Every once in a while I have a moment where I stop and think "wow, I'm in India." But those moments get more and more rare - and the time in between them passes with as little thought as to the location as time in Natick or in Amherst or in any other place in the USA.

It is why I love my job, I think. My job is to help first-timers adjust to being here. And they notice things that I long ago stopped noticing - they are struck by inequalities that to me have become routine, they are fascinated by sights that I no longer bat an eye at. In a way, it must be like being "grown up" and having children - being constantly reminded of the little things that one takes for granted, the little things that one has glossed over as being normal. One of the students commented that being here was like resorting to being a small child - you must learn to read, to speak, to dress yourself, to eat. All fundamental actions are suddenly different. And yet slowly, they become normal.

But if normality changes, and so too every fundamental action - your speech, your body movements, your dress, your food, your day-to-day activities - what is left that is you? Where does identity lie, if not in all the outward manifestations of such? Is it really possible that there is something that is inside me, unchanging, that can withstand all these outward changes, that can go on living as it always has when every single thing is different? I mean, there has to be. I know that. I can feel it. I'm still me. Will be me no matter how many times I dye my hair, how many different costumes I wear, how many different jobs I have, how many different cultures I identify with, how many different names I am called. But isn't that remarkable?