In general, I don’t really like it here.  I hate not being able to walk around alone. Not that women don't do it at all, but I'm uncomfortable enough that I’ve been wearing sunglasses around just so that my eyes are a little more difficult to find. Plumes of dusty exhaust burn the back of my throat while we’re walking through traffic, and this may seem insignificant, but our apartment ran out of filtered water two days ago, so we’re boiling water instead. It’s really that any one of these things seems like it should be manageable on its own, but when you group them together with the overall culture shock and challenges of living with many people, I wonder how I’m going to make it through the next seven weeks.

I’m down to the last few food items I brought from home to eat on the plane, and I’m disproportionately sad about this. I had a bag of snack bars, but I think they were mistakenly thrown away.  Tali made me a batch of cookies for the plane, and I finished the crumbs out of the baggie with a spoon.

I woke up this morning realizing I’d dreamt about a baked potato with avocado, so that’s my next meal.  I must have been delusional thinking I would be totally good living on rice and cooked vegetables for two months straight, three meals a day. I wasn’t even planning on eating raw vegetables or fruits here, but that insanity ended. Today for lunch I made a salad of chopped cucumber, pear, and hardboiled egg. Kind of weird, and not super filling, but at least it made me a little less thirsty. Celiac is lonely here. At least the two people who are so strictly kosher can meal plan with each other. Maybe this trip will be an exercise in being hungry. I’ve never been long term hungry before. Very fortunately, Leah (who is here for the year kind of coordinating us) is super knowledgeable and sympathetic and said she'd be my cooking buddy.

Today was our first day visiting the students in the slums. We had to cross railroad tracks to get there. Ba dum tshhh. As we made our way towards the slum, a stream of people, mostly men, were passing us in the opposite direction, heading out to work and school. Almost all of them were dressed rather smartly, in clean button-ups and jeans or khakis. They looked like anyone you’d see walking down our street or through the mall, highlighting the fact that the line between living in a slum and in a middle class neighborhood is so, so fine. As one of our staff pointed out, in India, middle class doesn’t mean comfortable, it means living hand-to-mouth and having just enough, with nothing to spare. Anyone with less simply doesn’t have enough.

Our first stop was at a women’s collective, where the women were rolling out chapatis, or flat bread, and cooking them as the mid-day meal for our students. I couldn’t go in because of the flour in the air. Afterwards, we walked through the slum to the first classroom. As soon as we appeared in the doorway, the students hopped up off the floor and chanted together, “Good morning teacher!” with the cutest rolling R. Teach-ehr. In a single classroom, there are around thirty kids from ages five to thirteen. Some of them are pretty good at English. And then several kept trying to speak to me in Marathi. I would just say my name a few times in a row. I’ll have to work on an alternative response. I told them my name means tree, but then they thought my name was Tree. Fail.

We tried playing a rhythmic clapping name game, and the rhythm didn’t really translate, but the kids had fun. They have the best smiles. I was sitting next to three siblings, and the sister kept hiding her face in her brother’s stomach. In the next class a little girl wouldn’t let go of my arm. The last classroom was tiny and dark, and they were the only group of kids who had never worked with a group like ours before. They were more reserved, but they counted to one hundred, sang happy birthday, and recited a rough version of “one, two, buckle my shoe.” Not too shabby.

To those of you who were in touch earlier this week, it was so nice to hear from you. Keep sending me love and happy vibes! Hope to write more in a couple days.

Most sincerely,

Tree