Living in a rural village in Rajasthan, India can be rewarding as well as monotonous. Most days tend to be the same without any change of scenery. That being said, I don’t know where all my time goes. I came here with a list of things that have been on my bucket list to get done, and none of them have happened.
I knew I would have an expansive amount of time once I got settled into my life in Chandelao Village, and because of that, I thought I would have all the time in the world to do things like write a book and write a script to pitch for a TV series, both things I would like to mark off my bucket list. However, I have not started either of these tasks and have not even been as diligent about writing my blogs as I started out doing when I arrived.

At first, the time seemed to consume me and I would spend most of my off time conversing with the tourists who were trickling in from around the world. I enjoyed this very much at the beginning and I was as interested in them and their cultures as they were about me and why I am living in the village. I also had not become good friends with the other interns since I hardly saw them, so I had no reason to go to Jodhpur on the weekends unless I had to go shopping for the crafts center or myself. That soon changed and after a few months; I was close with the other interns and wanted to escape to the city on the weekends for a day away from the village, and I could only talk to tourists for a certain amount of time without getting burnt out.
That time has changed and now while I still act very personable during dinner and at the center when guests come by to visit, I have grown tired of explaining the center to guests and what I am doing here. It is just very monotonous and I have gotten tired of saying the same thing over and over again. Now my daily routine is the same on most working days:
• Wake up and read or do Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutation yoga) and emerge from my room around 9 to 9:30.
• Once I have dressed and prepared myself for the daily routine, I make it to the kitchen or dining area and eat breakfast by myself, unless there are late rising guests.
• At 10 o’clock everyday I go to work at the center until 4:00 with a one-hour lunch break at 1:00 for everyone.
• After 4, I used to go for runs, but now that it is getting hot, I end up reading for an hour then exercising in my room for another hour afterward.
• By 6:30 or so I come out of my room and either read or chat with guests if they are English speaking until dinner at 7:30 or 8:00.
• Once dinner has commenced and the talking has come to a standstill, I usually go to my room and finish some pending work or read, unless that night I have a call on Skype or my phone.
This is the normal day for me, and I have no idea where the time has gone. I would have thought for sure that at some point or another I would have time to just sit down and start writing things that seemed important at one point or another. The fact is that I work most of the time and even when I am not working at the center I end up helping with managerial duties at the hotel in which I live.
The end of this week and the upcoming week will be very busy though because the initial donor and funding organization are both due to visit the village to check up on projects and see the return of their contributions. This is actually good news for me since I have been trying to get a hold of them since coming here to Chandelao to help with setting up the website and have yet to receive and help. I will be able to express the need and desire for the center to have an updated website to feature the project and it’s products. It is quite difficult to get anything done when the project is somewhat forgotten about and my supervisors are based in Kenya working for a Norwegian organization. Hopefully by this time next week I will be updating the website- something I have trying to since week one of my time in Chandelao