Indoors/Outdoors

The boundary between inside and outside is more porous than in the US, where everything is hermetically sealed. Hallways are open to the air, sometimes uncovered, so it rains inside. There are little holes at the base of walls where dust from sweeping is pushed outside, and where chipmunks enter and exit. Ants, frogs, small lizards, and mice all live in the ashram. Once I was sitting in the main hall and a pigeon was repeatedly swooping in a wide arc in and out of the main door. It was building a nest inside. No one has tried to take the nest down. Yesterday in the stairwell there were all these tiny crickets chirping and jumping around.

They do have bars on the windows to keep out the monkeys, but a few days ago, three monkeys somehow got into the kitchen. This 100 year old woman chased them out: