2009 08 14. Friday.

We had a big crew of people at the compost work today. Lots of Indian and western and male and female volunteers. We put them all to work and it went pretty fast. Felt good that everyone was working together well and seemed to be excited about the compost project. One of the young Indian ladies (who works as an MBA at the Indian Stock Market) worked with me to dump all the food waste on the pile and spread it out. She was pretty strong! And not afraid to get dirty. She's an Amma devotee in Mumbai and wants to start composting at the Amma ashram there. Another group of ladies had the job of shredding some big bins of elephant dung. Elephant dung comes out in big very fibrous spheres that need to be pulled apart into small pieces before we can use them on the pile.

At dinner one of the senior red robed swamis (Swami Ramakrishnananda, I think) was serving the Indian curry. Cool He has a beautiful smile. I'm coming to respect and admire the senior ocher robed swamis (orbs) more and more. They radiate a wonderful energy.

After dinner as I was trying to sleep, I knocked on the door of the Indian ladies next to me and asked them if they could chant more quietly. One of them has been chanting from 9:10 to about 9:40pm and I usually go to bed around 9:10pm. The chanting is loud and keeps me awake, even if I crank up my ceiling fan. The older Indian lady who chanted appeared to get huffy and miffed that I would ask her to be more quiet just so I could sleep. Sigh... With a negative expression on her face she said she had to chant it loud. She said the chanting was only happening for another 2 or 3 days. I sure hope so. When they talk quietly at night its fine, my ceiling fan drowns that out. But the chanting is pretty loud and very rhythmic which makes it hard to ignore.

Later on, just as I was about to fall asleep, she started chanting again after 10pm. I could hear it clearly in spite of my ceiling fan at full speed. Jeez. No end to this. Official quiet time (as directed by Amma) begins at 10pm. I asked her how much longer she would be chanting and she just told me "Go back to America!" and closed the door. Sigh... I'll pester the guys at the Admin Office again about moving soon.