well the drama with gk vale continues … i’ve been promised that film was ready only to have it not ready when i show up, i’ve been promised that film would be delivered to my house, i’ve been told that the film would only be released if i brought the manager sweets … lots of things that never ended up happening. well i did bring them sweets thinking it would help matters, but it hasn’t. at first i figured i would just put up with it if it let me get photographs developed while I here, but today was the last straw. i went in to pick up the first roll i processed with a pinhole camera and the manager says “so why don’t you buy a digital camera from us, your stuff on film doesn’t look very nice”. when i told her that i liked working with film better she says “ohh you must have lots of money, you should give it to charity instead”. it really took all my patience to not yell at her, which is probably a good thing since i still wasn’t able to pick up the four rolls of 120 film that i’ve been promised since sat.

sherry is here now for a month and i think i’m just going to save up all my 120 film and sent it back to bkk with her to be processed and uploaded. i’ll keep working with my new 35mm pinhole camera and my digital camera … just need to find a new place to process and scan my 35mm film, i think i’d sooner start drawing pictures than head back to gk vale. hopefully at some point i’ll get back the remaining film they have.

i haven’t really posted much in a week or so, i guess i’ve fallen into that familiar routine that i can get into here. i practice in the morning, have breakfast, eat lunch, fight with g.k. vale, study sanskrit … hang out friends some and also spend a good amount of time with my books.

four or five evenings a week, russell and i have been doing walking meditation around the lake and then going to chanting at the ramakrishna ashram after. we started out just walking around the lake, but after a few days decided to do it silently. it’s interesting how i notice different things when i’m not talking … some days there are more birds, some days the wind blows the trees differently .. today the light through the clouds was much different, and i think the recent rains made for many more ants than normal.

things are the shala seem to be picking up, when i got here the latest start time was 6am, not it is 6:30. it still doesn’t feel super crowded, but the number of students is definitely increasing.

here are some digital pictures … more film shots to follow …. maybe.