These are a few of my favorite things

There’s a song my mom used to sing to me when I was little that goes, “When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I’m feeling sad… I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don’t feel… so bad.” That generally works for me, except instead of things, I like to remember experiences. And going forward, yesterday will be among those that I pull out of the vault whenever I need to remember a few of my favorite days.

We woke up to rain in the volunteer house, and I was immediately bummed. I’d been enjoying the streak of warmer, sunny weather, and had no interest in being wet and cold all day. Nevertheless, we donned our salwar kameez and headed to the daycare, only to be sent back home because no kids would be foolish enough to come out in this rain.

I had planned to go to lunch in McLeodganj with Justine, but the rain was even more intense by noon, so I stayed home and attempted to cook dosas (Indian-style crepes) and sambar (a spicy lentil soup) for myself from a mix I had bought at the store. The sambar turned out fine, but the dosas were an unequivocal disaster. My day wasn’t exactly looking up.

In afternoon we all tromped over to the CCS office, where it was volunteer cooking night. We’d been planning the meal for several days, and my job was to cook mashed potatoes. I was a little wary of how the whole night would go, given that 10 cooks in one small kitchen rarely yields good results. But as we all chopped, diced, peeled and sautéed in harmony, I couldn’t help but smile. This was the first time our whole volunteer group had done something productive together, and it turns out we worked well together.

We all became increasingly excited as one delicious smell after another reminded us of home… sautéed garlic, roasted vegetables and buttery mashed potatoes. Add delicious deviled eggs, fresh fruit salad, vegies with cucumber dip, and rich chocolate brownies with ice cream and chocolate sauce, and we were all in heaven.

We reconfigured the room where we normally eat dinner from plates sitting on our laps while watching TV, and instead all sat together at a long, beautifully set table. The staff said they loved the food we prepared, and told us they’d been nervous after the disasters of past volunteer dinners. Everyone was smiling and laughing, and I think we all walked away stuffed for the first time since getting sick at the beginning of the program.

Walking back to the volunteer house, lightning lit up the sky and the sound of thunder rolled across the valley below us. We all gathered in the front room for an impromptu concert by Ben, one of the volunteers. We’ve all been eyeing his travel guitar, his sitar and his tabla (Indian hand drums) over the past few weeks and threatening to make him play for us. Now that he has, I can’t believe we wasted all those evenings without his playing. He performed a few original songs, plus one James Taylor song and one Jack Johnson, and all were fantastic. The best part was the final song, Perseus, as Ben sang, “the sky will be our symphony,” with lighting flashing every few seconds and thunder crashing in the background. I told him afterward, in all seriousness, that I look forward to telling people about our private concert in the Himalayas when he’s famous some day. And by the way, you can check out his music yourself at www.benrossmusic.com.

As if the evening hadn’t been enjoyable enough already, that day I had been able to download the latest episodes of two of my favorite TV shows. So we dimmed the lights and gathered around my laptop to watch what I would say has to be the best (and most emotional) episode of Grey’s Anatomy ever, followed by a mood-lightening episode of The Office. Afterward, a few of us lingered, talking and listening to the rain.

When I finally crawled into bed at 11:30, I felt the happiest and most connected to the rest of the volunteers that I have since I got here. So when I woke up today to torrential rain, brooding dark skies and hail, I thought, “Yay – another great day!”

More photos at http://babas.typepad.com/photos/my_gap_year_3/.

Comments

[Jan]

That was beautiful Barb. Thanks.