This week has wrapped up so quickly, and now we are in our last two weeks in Bangalore- I can’t believe it!  So here’s the recap of the last four days…

On Thursday we went back into the office after the day in the field and started doing some work to capture what we had seen in the villages.  Part of what we were supposed to do was take a bunch of photos and videos and stitch together some albums and videos for HLC’s facebook, website, and youtube channel.  So we started working on all of the above and drafting our final report, which is an overarching social media strategy for HLC.  Thursday was a half-day because of CSIM, so we left around one, got lunch, and then headed over to our session.  We had the founder of the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement and the founder of CSIM speak to us on Thursday, which were both excellent speakers that I think everyone enjoyed.  After the sessions, the HLC team went out to our small group dinner with Laura and Kasie at this funny 60’s-70’s place, and we were the ONLY people in there.  But it was a good dinner, and then we went to a place called Corner House for ice cream, which was absolutely delicious and just what we all needed.  We got home around 10 and had a quiet night and then turned in.

Friday morning, Amanda and Yoshi decided to work from home, but Maria and I had a meeting with Lily, so we went into the office like normal.  We did a little work, and then met with Lily, where we showed her a bunch of the photos and videos we took on Wednesday.  We made a plan for the next few days and have finally have some deliverables we can work on, which is great.  After our meeting, Maria and I went to lunch and then decided to go home for the afternoon and work there.  I actually ended up going straight to Commercial Street to finally pick up mom’s salwar suits and finish my souvenir shopping so I didn’t have to deal with evening crowds.  After a power hour of shopping, I came back to the apartments and did work for a couple of hours.  Then, around seven, a group of us went to dinner at the Tibetan place up the street, and while we were there, we decided to check out someplace called the Banana Beach Bar that we’d heard about.  So we all got in autos and went over there. 

It is quite the place.  Friday was karaoke night, so that was hysterical in and of itself to see, but the actual place is a lot of fun too.  We sat in a corner table for a little bit, and then we saw another big table open up.  There were a few of these cabana type tables, which were fabulous.  You had to step over an honest to goodness moat to get to our table, and the moat was lit up and had catfish swimming through it.  When we sat down, we had a guy take our picture and then another guy jumped up telling us he was a photographer so that he should take a picture, too.  As he tried to do just that, he fell in the moat, which he found extremely embarrassing and we found absolutely hysterical.  We sat there for a while and had a great time just visiting, but the place closes at 11:30, so that’s when we headed out, and we got home just before midnight.  After visiting for a little bit, we all went to bed after a fun night.

Saturday morning I got a lazy start.  I finally got showered and ready to go by about noon and I went out to run a couple of errands- I had to go put more minutes on my phone, stop by a pharmacy, and go to the store to get some food for lunch.  I came back, made lunch, and then did work for a couple of hours.  I got a rough sketch of an informational video done based on our visit to the villages and then tried to work on our report a little bit, but our internet was out, so I couldn’t look things up, which made things a little tricky.  I stopped working after a little bit, and then a few of us sat around chatting for a while.  Finally, a group of us decided to go grab dinner and then go back to the Banana Beach… because we had so much fun the night before. 

We got there about 9pm and had an even better time than the night before.  Skimming over some details, we had drinks called everything from “brain hemorrhages” to “crazy banana monkeys” to “kamikazes”.  Fabulous.  I was the designated purse watcher while the other girls went to dance, and so right after last call as I am sitting at the table, a guy comes over and sits down next to me as I am trying to figure out the bill I’d just been handed.  Great.  The other girls see this all happening, and as I keep looking at them to get them to come back to the table, they all just stand there.  Finally, after I talked to this guy for a couple of minutes, whose name is George, by the way, I waved the bill in the air so the girls finally came back over (they told me later that they thought if they stayed away the guy might pay our bill--right).  At this point, all of George’s friends also came over.  The lights keep getting turned down because it was 11:30, which made it extraordinarily difficult to sort out all the money, but somehow between the nearly pitch black and the five guys trying to get our numbers, we were able to figure it out and get home by midnight.  We sat up for a couple more hours and then finally went to bed around 2.  Another good night.

Today was much tamer- we had to go to a Rotary event today because Cathy is affiliated with Rotary in Wooster, and Wooster’s branch partnered with Bangalore’s Rotary to establish an autism resource library in the Rotary hospital here in Bangalore.  We went and met some of the Rotarians, were able to see the opening of the resource library, and had a nice South Indian lunch before coming back to the apartments around 2:30.  When we got back Navee and I ran a couple more errands and then we had a quiet afternoon.  At about five, however, Amanda and Kristen reminded me that it is my night to cook dinner- oops! I’d totally forgotten, so then we quickly ran back out to the store and I got ingredients to make dal curry, which I am just about to get up and go make!

None of us can believe that we only have two weeks left, but we are getting to crunch time here, and I think we are all starting to worry about having to leave so soon!  But I’m sure the last two weeks will be a lot of fun, we’ll accumulate even more great stories, and we will finish our projects.  Two weeks- ready, set, go!!