Friday - and a collapse time! :-)

Just had the most wonderful chat with Margaret, with whom I have hardly
corresponded for AGES!!!!

Our Chaplain at the school once commented that I was "blessed" - and that has stayed with me for ages. I truly am blessed and have some wonderful people in my life - who may be a long distance from me - but they are always near to my heart. It's funny to think about that when there are times when I really struggle and feel down at the same time - so, I guess that is something that I need to hang up as a memory that needs to be drawn upon whenever I am going through one of those "dark patches" in my life.

I have been reading Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, and this sort of fits in with my serialised reporting of my trip to India. There are a couple of thoughts that I found quite interested and thought I would put them out there for people to look at (if they so wish) and possibly even offer their thoughts about the two extracts. So, here goes!

The first is when the speaker of the book, Lin or Shantaram, who is actually Australian in the novel, but now living on the run in Bombay (I'm giving this background for people who haven't read the book), sits down on the border of a slum where he is currently living, on a large rock and looks out to sea contemplating life and love. He is joined by one of the other residents of the slum, who has a fairly senior position in the hierarchy of the slum in particular, but also in the "underworld" of Bombay.

"It is very beautiful, isn't it?," Johnny Cigar asked, sitting beside me and
staring out at the dark, impatient restlessness of the waves.

"Yeah," I answered, passing him a cigarette.

"our life probably began inside of the ocean," Johnny said quietly. "About
four thousand million years before now. Probably near hot places, like volcanoes,
under the sea."

I turned to look at him.

"And for almost all of that long time, all the living things were water
things, living inside the sea. Then, a few million years ago, maybe a little
more - just a little while, really, in the big history of the Earth - the living
things began to be living on the land, as well."

I was frowning ans smiling at the same time, surprised and bewildered. I held
my breath, afraid that any sound might interrupt his musing.

"But in a way you can say that after leaving the sea, after all those
millions of years of living inside the sea, we took the ocean with us. When a
woman makes a baby, she gives it water, inside her body, to grow in. That water
inside her body is almost exactly the same as the water of the sea. It is salty,
by just the same amount. She makes a little ocean, in her body. And not only
this. Our blood and our sweating, they are both salty, almost exactly like the
water from the sea is salty. We carry oceans inside of us, in our blood and our
sweat. And we are crying the oceans in our tears."

He fell silent..."

The next extract is much longer - I'll share it another time.
Yesterday, I took our exchange students, along with one of the Mums and Christine Ashton, my colleague from the Girls' College to the Apartheid Museum. I was intrigued to see how this group would react , as when I had taken the six we had with us in the first term, they responded with the comment that amounted to the fact that they could not get over how far South Africa had come in such a brief space of time. That group comprised two Peruvian students, a Colombian, a Canadian, one from Tasmania and one from Scotland.

This group was made up of two Australian students, one from Argentina, one from Oman, one from the International school in Thailand and the other five from India. Their experience was quite different - even within the group. There were some who found it so out of their frame of reference that I think all of it simply amounted to a case of going around and having a look at things "from the past". This group in particular were more interested in the possibility of going across to Gold Reef City's theme park rather than spending the time at the Museum. The rest were more interested, but my sense was that they had not got from it the same as last term's group. It will be interesting to find out their thoughts when I meet with them again next week. I had planned to take them to the Newtown Precinct and then to the Oriental Plaza, but I think I need to think about that a little more - especially after all the time I have been off this week - did a two-day Emotional Intelligence for Leadership Course, so, in effect was out of the office for three of the five days, and then had late nights on two of the four at school. Hate to say this but age is catching up with me!!!

Well all for now!

All my love to all of you!