Less Than a Week Left

Hi again!

So now it is officially less than one week left in India. Time really does fly, but now I need to take full advantage of the next upcomming week before leaving Saturday morning (and arriving back in San Francisco Sunday morning.)

During the past couple of days, there has been a lot of rain, and it looks like it will rain more today. Here is a picture of the rain from my host family's house.

So Friday I went into Setrawa to work on our student council project. In the morning, we met with the student body, and told them of our idea to have them form a student body, and they were very excited about the prospect. They do realize all the problems they have, and hadn't really thought that they could take at least some responsibility for trying to fix these problems.

So our plan for the next week is as follows: Monday the candidates make their speeches, Tuesday is the election, we count the ballots, and start training of the elected co-presidents, and Wednesday we finish up training and help them figure out how they wish to put together a student council (just the co-presidents are elected this time.) The training will include their responsibilities, how to be a good leader and other such starting points for them. Hopefully this will all work, but our slight problem so far is that none of the eligible girls (top 5% of class for 9th grade and above) actually completed the application for the female co-president. But, we do have 6 male candidates, so at least that much is set.

Other groups were also able to accomplish some of what they needed to then as well. The health and hygiene group ran a workshop with the students that they seemed to enjoy. The trash group has the plans for building trash cans around Setrawa (currently there is no trash can and no trash collection in the town.) And the last group is working on putting together workshops to emphasize the importance of saving for bad times, and how banks can be used effectively to both save and borrow money in a responsible way.

The next picture is of the outskirts of Setrawa. You can definitely see how much it is really a desert. Although, on the way back it poured, which wasn't great for our bus, as it, like msot Indian vehicles, did not have any windshield wipers.

Saturday was a big planning and relaxing day. After dinner, we all went to see a Bollywood movie in a very nice movie theatre (cost a whole $2 for good seats!) The movie we saw, Kamaney, was a good long action movie (3 hours.) Also, it was a bit hard to follow because most of the movie was in Hindi, but fortunately, every once in a while they spoke a bit of English. At intermission, Sagar, the group leader who speaks English, informed us that it was a movie about a good and bad twin. That really helped me understand the movie a bit better, I had previously thought it was one person living two lives!

Before the movie, we went to a nice store next door, where the following picture was taken.
Well, before I go, I want to give you a couple of pictures of the house I am staying, so here they are. First, this is the view into the dining room. Second, here is a picture of the outside of the house (the wall right outside Dennis' and my room.
I am not exactly sure when I will be able to write next because of lack of electricity/internet in Setrawa, but hopefully soon,
-Andrew