It's past midnight the night before the semester begins. As is typical, I'm up late finishing up various last minute personal projects that will very soon fall to the bottom of my bag as I embark on a wonderful intensive community-based experiential learning journey along with 3 other faculty-types, 3 staff here in India, many more back in Amherst, MA, and 17 student community members.

I'm grateful to be in this moment, in this place, in this team, and very much looking forward to meeting my learning community over the next 24 hours!

Having spent the past two+ weeks in and around Auroville, and barely just brushed the surface of the complexity and intrigue of this place, I'm excited to delve in deeper once we officially begin.

A few random thoughts and observations:

Amazing how quickly one can become completely unsurprised by passing beautifully painted cows on the road regularly, waiting patiently for them to amble across the road.

I can't begin to express how much I'm enjoying the food. flavor, flavor, flavor.......

My first time fully eating with my hand the other day was quite a joy. I'm a big proponent of eating with hands, licking bowls, etc. anyway (within reason, I'm not such a fan of the mouth noises that can go along with licking ;-)), so it's great that it's expected here! The trick is to stop multi-tasking; yes, eating with your right hand creates a wonderful space where you cannot also be doing 10 other things.

Back to driving or just being on the road in India. The rules of the road are quite simple:  if you're bigger you have the right of way, if you're smaller, get out of the way. And also use your horn a lot and at night flash your lights and then leave your lights on highbeams so you can see everything that might cross your path, like bicycles, dogs, cows, speedbumps,... I plan to do as little night driving or cycle riding as possible. If I do need to go out at night, a taxi is bigger than my bicycle!

And, finally, I actually quite enjoyed my ride from Chennai to Auroville in the middle of the night when I first arrived. The outskirts of Chennai reminded me of Lima, Peru, which in a wierd way put me right at ease. The drive is about 3 hours long, I sat in the front with the driver and had the distinct feeling that I was not on the ground but rather was in a colorful and sound-filled driving video game. The way the car moved reminded me of how a video game car moves back and forth across lanes and slides between obstacles. Furthermore, the taxi was small and quick while most of the night traffic were large (small by US standards) trucks moving relatively slowly. Thus, the weaving in and out, flashing and honking the whole way. What's simply amazing is how well all the signaling works.

The night breeze was both warming and cooling and perfect as we drove.

My bags arrived safely and soundly the day after I did--so grateful for all arrivals.