A new kind of New Years Eve

I'm sitting in a small blue internet booth covered in Looney Toones characters. The internet connection here is very slow, and I have a lot to say.

We're killing some time in Trivandrum, Kerala, before heading to an ashram for a yoga retreat. We arrived in Trivandrum around 11 am this morning via train, which departed from Kochin (Kerala's capital city) at 5:50 am. I only got four and a half hours of sleep last night. It has been a rough week of sleep. I wrote about our city-hopping tour in my last blog... which included lots of buses and very questionable accommodation.

I spoke too soon. If you wanna talk rough bus rides, oh my god. We took an overnight bus from Madurai to Kochin, which broke down three times during the night. The first break-down, not so bad. Up and running in half an hour, maybe. The second break-down, well, was worse. I opened my Tylenol-PM-induced-sleepy eyes and saw the engine overheating. We were instructed to pass up our water bottles, so one by one 1L water bottles are moving from seat to seat to calm that engine down. It worked! Until... break down numero three. This time, who even knows that happened. The bus just stopped. At 5 am, in the middle of nowhere. It was dark outside and no one spoke English. Juliana and I sat in our seats for a good ten minutes, nervously looking around and at each other, while some people started grabbing their luggage and just leaving, trying to hitch another ride. While we were still in the bus, some of the go-getter types flagged a bus down, got on, and the bus left. All as we watched from inside our broken-down bus. So we thought, better start moving.

Another twenty or thirty minutes goes by until another bus finally stops for us. Asking no questions, we pushed our way on (because not everyone from our bus was going to fit -- this was a serious Survival of the Fittest situation) and the bus took off.

You know it's desperate when you get on a bus in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, without knowing where it's going, and you do not care.

I'll spare you details, but we - eventually - made it to Kochin on December 31st.

So it's New Years Eve, and we're exhausted. We (or should I say, Juliana, because I was too tired/delirious to function) found a hotel and we slept until dark. Then! the fun begins. This was an interesting New Years Eve, because for one of the first times in my life (or, let's say, the last decade), I A) Didn't need to coordinate plans with anyone, B) Didn't try and find something "fun" and "New-Years appropriate," C) Didn't strategically plan myself at the location of my desired New Years Kiss, and D) Didn't get drunk. It was fantastic. No anticipation.

Instead, we A) Bought 2 lobsters, 6 jumbo shrimp and 2 live crab at the local fish market for under $10 and brought it to a restaurant to grill, just to our liking, B) Talked about the good and the bad of 2009 - and how far we've come, how much we've grown, etc.. C) Counted down to midnight with locals who were burning a giant stuffed Santa Clause in the middle of the street, and felt as though maybe I was burning away some of 2009 as well, and D) Did some serious dancing at a block party, around the corner from our hotel. A beautiful New Years Eve, indeed.

Juliana's friend from school, Suman, joined us on January 1st... and we all spent the next few days couchsurfing in Kochin with our new friend, Vinay.

Can I just say, couchsurfing.org is amazing. It's putting such trust in strangers to be good people, and to not be scared of one another. To want to help, and take of each other is something we are not often taught in our society... or at least, to want to take care of strangers, as if they are not strangers. I feel very lucky to have both couchsurfed with, and hosted, some incredible people. The thing is... I don't think I just got "lucky" with who I have met. I think everyone is capable of having this connection, if we all just opened up, and let loose a little bit. Taking care of strangers, and then being taken care of by strangers... it makes the world a little bit smaller.

Vinay completely went out of his way to help us out with everything we asked. He took us on day trips to mountains and beaches that Lonely Planet has not yet discovered, to a restaurant serving 36 different kinds of dosas (!!!), and even to the train station at 5 in the morning. So kind.

One of my favorite moments of the past few days was being at the beach at sunset. Juliana, Suman and I were standing with our feet in the Arabian sea, looking out at the horizon... kind of playing that, "Should we go in? Would that be weird?..." "But I don't have a bathing suit..." "It might be really cold when we get out..." "Maybe we should just do it... should we just do it?..." game for a good five minutes or so, until we were just like... fuck it. And ran in. So we watched the sun set over the Arabian sea on the West coast of Southern India with palm trees behind us and locals looking at us like we were out of minds. It was fantastic.

I just finished reading Even Cowgirls Get the Blues for the second time. Everyone should read that book. Dad, thank you again and again and again for giving me that book. Although round two was not as life-changing as the first time I read it, I am forever thankful to Tom Robbins and his thoughts about Time and Magic and Poetry and being the exception to an otherwise very standardized world.