Indian Adventures! - July 11, 2012

July 11, 2012 6:19 p.m. (8:50 a.m. MA/Toronto time)

Hi friends! I’m currently sitting on my bed at the “Silent Valley Hotel” in Rajasthan, India. We are situated about two hours outside of the city of Udaipur and the only way I can get cell reception is to hang out a window in the tower-like restaurant, or climb a big hill behind the hotel until I see those bars pop up! It’s absolutely lovely here. The only issue we have come across with the location is that we do not have a lot of facilitation room. We have the grass outside and the restaurant area. It has been raining the last two days so outside is off limits, and the restaurant is just the right size. Overall, it is amazing though!

Since we have been here we have visited a tailor shop to get saris made (I didn’t get one made, but many participants did), started working on our build site, visited the community of Lai to see the full Adopt a Village in affect in India, rode camels (!), visited an art school to learn about how the students make their paint from minerals they find (all natural!), and done multiple leadership activities to start honing in on the skills the participants hold as well as pull out the skills they don’t know exist! The group is getting along really well and we haven’t had any major issues come up so far (knock on wood). It has been raining the last two days (damn monsoon season) so we have had to cancel four build site sessions, which isn’t ideal but unfortunately how it is during monsoon season. The kids were pretty bummed out but we took their mind off of it with games, leadership modules, and a movie.

Many of my hesitations I had for India have gone away. The airport went smoothly, the kids are fantastic, no one has gotten sick so far, the food is great, and my relationships with Kailea and Mona are fantastic! Tomorrow we will have our community day where we go on a water walk with a local woman, learn about her chores she does every day, etc... We are hoping it doesn’t rain because then we would have to cancel it, so fingers crossed there’s no rain in the morning. If it rains, we will go into Udaipur to do some city activities of some sort, we’ll see. That’s a lot of what I’ve been up to... Just taking the time to work on my facilitation skills, getting to know the kids, and having a great time getting to know Kailea better. I’ll have more to go into detail about next time, so until then... Tata!