The clock is ticking

We leave two weeks from today for India. We'll arrive a week earlier than the students so we can get sick with some degree of privacy. Ben Abdulah Manne has been there since last spring and will join us in Delhi and help us welcome the other 24 students when they arrive a week later.

We're exceptionally excited about this trip. Our excitement is equal parts apprehension and anticipation. We'll be in India almost 4 months with 24 very bright, active, highly motivated and really cool Lewis and Clark students. Our itinerary takes us from Delhi to Hardiware to Rishikish to Dehra Dun to Varanasi to Bangalore to Mysore to Coorg and back to Delhi. All of us have two weeks of independent study/travel and who knows where everyone will go. Carol and I plan on spending our first week of independent travel in Darjeeling in the north and our second week touring Kerala in the south. We have 10 days of travel after the program ends on Dec. 5th and we haven't decided if we're going to Thailand, Laos or Vietnam. Life is hard sometimes.

This trip has been a part of our lives now for about a year and a half. We spoke with Dell and Helen Smith, who led the trip in 03 and 07 after they returned in the spring of 08 and hearing from them of their adventure prompted us to apply to lead the 09 trip. We were accepted as leaders in the fall of 08; interviewed and accepted our super students in the fall of 08; led a semester of orientation with the students in the spring of 09; spent this summer fine tuning the program details and now we leave as the fall of 09 approaches. We'll be back just in time to celebrate our 33rd. anniversary, Carol's xx birthday and the holidays in December of 09.

Right now, Carol's trying to get her garden ready for a four month absence. Mia, who went to Australia with us, will be herding the cats and guarding the gate while she starts her graduate program at Pacific. Joe and Rose will be making sure the hay gets baled. Judy and all our lovely neighbors will assist as needed.

I'll try to write about how we and the students are experiencing India--not so much where we've been, but how we experienced where we've been. Huxley wrote that experience isn't what happens to you, it's what you do with what happens to you (this won't be on the exam). I'm much more interested in what we do with what happens to us than what we do. Blogging, like journaling is a way of giving voice to those processes and making them conscious--and, more than likely, boring the hell out of everyone else. But hey, it's all about me, right? If you're interested in these musings, then please peep in from time to time and if so inclined, let us know what you're thinking as well. Carol has agreed that she will force herself to write her thoughts now and then and, I'm sure, bring her usual clarity and charm to the task.

We just came back from Peru where the dazzling Yasmina introduced us all to the wonders of Picso Sours. I'm finding they are a marvelous way to deal with apprehension and anxiety and I recommend them to all my fellow Incans headed to India.