GOA

Wow so we just got back from GOA! Las VEGAS of india - but definitely not as exciting. But we stayed in a beautiful 5 star hotel that rebooted me for the next 3 weeks. I got an oriental massage - best decision ever and we lounged on the beach and went clubbing all weekend.

Goa is a little Portuguese state in India (it was colonized by them). It is mostly catholic which is so weird since i have been so used to seeing ganesh and all of the hindu statues in taxis and rickshaws and now all there was was crosses.

I also went parasailing over the arabian sea which was sketchy and beautiful! Goa was like going to a different country. I could finally show my shoulders and knees in public and even wore a bikini though there was lots of staring. It was also ridiculously international. We met people from australia, somali, dubai and ireland. I also became good friends with this group of 22 year old indian guys who were in goa for a bachelor party for one of the guys who was getting married in december. He had met his wife twice and it was of course arranged. One of the other guys had a girl he really liked but he didnt think his parents would let them marry because she was in a caste below him.

So we are finally back in Hubli and are beginning our social entrepreneurship/grassroots training program. There are 3 americans and 3 indians in my group and we will be working on a social issue in india and creating a ngo to solve the problem. There are 20 indians we will be working with for this program and they are all super nice and i cant wait to get to know them better.

For our last project for my agricultural ngo we created 10 model kitchen gardens for the villages that my ngo works with. We provided seeds and women's health flip books for the villages and a training manual to train self help group leaders(identified community leaders) who will teach and provide health training for their villages. This is a very abbreviated version but each group did absolutely amazing work and created programs that will truly help their organizations that they have been working for.

ahh i have hw to do!

adios

love,

xxoxoxo

Sarah

diwali

Hey All

Wow so much has happened since dehli. We finished our service learning projects and went to goa for a long weekend.

ohh and i realized that i forgot to tell you all about DIWALI! Wow so this is the festival of lights and we went to dehli to celebrate it! This is pretty much the christmas for india and its very family oriented and you save up your money for this holiday to give your family presents and women always get a new diwali sari. So we celebrated by walking to the nearby neighborhood by our hotel and buying about 15 dollars worth of fireworks. Every house had lights outside and we all bought these yellow carnation necklaces. These carnations are EVERYWHERE in india. They are hanging on offices, homes and stores. Also women wear these white flowers in their hair. So walking down this street in dehli was magical. families in the street together lighting fireworks and crackers and the entire neighborhood was outside. It was so beautiful. We got our whole group together and we lit fireworks in the street with this family and they were so sweet and we have a lots of pictures and movies of all of us yelling happy diwali to each other. The family had some HUGE fireworks that would never be legal in the US and i got pelted with one and had a huge bruise for a good week after diwali. We also got harassed by what we call "feral children" these are kids who are wild. Probably homeless or are very poor and are somewhat animal like. I know this is a crazy concept to think of but thats just all i can think of how to describe them. They have no manners and just do things like grabbing you and touching you and pulling money out of your hand without any concept of manners or how you would expect a child of that age to act.