It's been a little while since I posted anything. I have just been chilling out and getting addicted to sitcoms. We had a four day weekend and now that it's Sunday night I can't believe it went by so fast!! I mean I have this history report due on Tuesday and I totally expected that I would be done by now. Oh how time flies!

I finally found the software for my camera and am getting it installed tomorrow so I should be able to get some pictures up within the next week.

The weather is changing. It's getting colder and it's more foggy in the mornings. Today was Ram Das, Siri Sham and Guru Parkash's birthday. GP took her class out Go Carting, I hear it was really fun. I definitely need to try that some time!! She also made cookies with Guru Dev, Jagat's wife, and served them after Sadhana. They had m&ms in them!!

It's so funny how Amritsar is becoming more modern. I mean there are big chain shops here now like Nike, Adiddas, Reebok, FabIndia, Dominoes, Pizza Hut and a bunch more that you probably have never heard of, but are still modern like Coffee Day, Bakes and Beans and Sweet Life. There are billboards up about this mall that they are building. I think it's going right outside the Golden Temple; they are doing a lot of construction over there. I just hope that all the smaller restaurants and places that make Amritsar what it is don't go out of business because of all these mainstream places that are showing up.

Kick in is in half an hour. It's where a staff member goes around and rings a bell signaling that we have 5 minutes to get in our dorms. If everyone is not in the dorms on time then we will start having formations but luckily this system has been working well enough that we don't have to do that.

40 day sadhana is going well, I think we're on the 12th day. It's challenging, especially bowing Jaap Sahib, I feel so relieved when it's over but you just have to keep up, after that is another day.

I like today, it's my birthday and we have art and a free period in the computer lab becasue the computer teacher isn't here today. There are actually a lot of teacher's who aren't here, I think it's becasue today is a fasting day or something.

Last night was Guru Ram Das' actual birthday. The Cherdi Kala Jetha played again, but this time it was outside of the takhat. There were tons of fireworks and tons of people, it was packed. I made some wished and lit a few candles, like everyone else. There is going to be a lot of dried wax on the prakarma today.

It was soo cool to look around and see all the little lights on the altars and around the prakarma.

We are starting a 40 day sadhana/sewa on wednesday. You can pick which one you want to do but I think after you pick you have to stick with it. I am definatly doing sadhana, we already do a 40 day sewa at the end of the year. Our sadhana is going to be around 4:45 I believe. We are going to do some really short warm-ups, then recite Jaap Sahib while rhythmically bowing to it. I forget what the benefits of that are, I'll get back to you on that. Then we are going to do a half hour of breath walk, which is where to inhale 8 times saying sa ta na ma and exhale 4 saying wah-he-gu-ru, while walking; we are going outside for that. Then we will go back inside for Kirtan Kriya which is chanting, whispering, and meditating silently on sa ta na ma. That is for half an hour.

I know it's going to be challenging, especially bowing Jaap Sahib, but just think of what we'll get out of it!

I just read this article that they made a new law in india saying that kids under 14 are not allowed to work in tea stalls or resturants or any sort of hazardous industry. I always see so many kids working in roadside dhabas and places like that. I think in some situations it's fine. I think they are just trying to get more kids into school.

gtg to math

Sorry about the lack of pictures, i am working out some technical issues at the moment.

Tomorrow is Guru Ram Das' birthday! Tonight there is a function at the Golden Temple that goes until 1am. I am definatly going, there is always really good kirtan at these kind of things. We leave around 8:30pm.

I wonder if they would let us sleep in tomorrow if we go, probably not.
Time for me to go finish a movie!!!

Tomorrow we don't have school!! It's the anniversary of the Siri Singh Sahib's birthday so we are going to watch a lecture as a school at 11am. The akhand paht is set to end between 6 and 8 tomorrow morning. Other than that we have the whole day free, oh wait except for sports at 3:30 and yoga at 5.

I am taking over the sevadar job from Baldev in five minutes, from 2-9 tonight so i better go!

today is sunny....

maybe a little too sunny. Why do they have to paint our school and dorms WHITE? Ow it hurts my eyes. We are in computer class right now. The teacher intruduced us to some annimation program called Flash and now we get to use the internet for the rest of class.

Yestereday we had no school becasue it was Dussehra. It is a hindu holiday having something to do with the Ramayana. It was also Ghandi's birthday.

Hey speaking of birthdays, mine is in a week.
time to go to class the bell rang

This weekend we had a turban tying competition between the four houses. It was acutally pretty fun. The placing was pretty much the same as the skit competition.

Blue
White...my house
Silver
Gold

It is really interesting, they switched the server on the school computers from windows xp down to windows 2000. Hmm, I wonder why.

Tomorrow we don't have school, no one really knows why but it must be an indian holiday or something, we get a lot of those.

Baldev wants to use the computer now so i gtg

will write more later!!