Time for a mid-week update!

Monday was about as ho-hum as it gets- I went to work, worked all day on two different sections of our final report, and then came home, had leftover dal for dinner, skyped for two hours, and then went to bed.

Tuesday.  Instead of going to work, Matt, Varun and I went to the All India Management Association (AIMA) Conclave on Management Education.  We took the bus to where (we thought) the hotel was that event was at... but we overshot a little.  After wandering through a neighborhood and passing by a funeral (the body was in a class case on the street....) we finally caught an auto to where the hotel actually was and arrived just a few minutes late.  Whoops!  We didn't miss much, and once we got there, we spent the rest of the day learning about management in the Indian context, management education, and- most interestingly- the way Indians conduct themselves in formal professional environments.  It was fascinating to see that during the presentations, everyone was quiet, and listened attentively.  As soon as the floor was opened up for Q&A though, holy cow.  People were talking over each other, interrupting each other, and jumping into conversations with completely irrelevant points just to seem like they were contributing- or just to hear their own voice.  It was definitely different from any other conference I've ever been to!  After a long day of listening to speakers (including Professor Moledina who spoke about social entrepreneurship), we came home for the evening and had a quiet night in.

Today was also an interesting and disjointed day.  Yoshi is still under the weather, so Maria, Amanda and I went in to work, and I worked until about noon.  And then the internet gave out and wouldn't connect, and I really needed to be looking at the facebook analytics for the section of the final report I was working on.  So I gathered up all of my stuff and came back to the apartments, where amazingly enough, the internet was working.  Along the way I had to stop quickly at the grocery store and at a travel agent.  Kat and I are planning a weekend trip to Hampi (north from Bangalore- google image it, it looks amazing!) and I was responsible for stopping to look for bus tickets, but the travel agent that I stopped at only hired out cars.  Oops!  I decided to run back to the apartments to do a little work and eat lunch. When I got back I quickly cooked some maggi (the Indian equivalent of ramen), and did a little bit of work.  Around 1:30 I left the apartment again and quickly stopped by the Shanthi Nagar Bus Stand and bought our bus tickets to Hampi (yay!!) and then met Maria and Amanda at another bus stop.  From there we walked to Lily's house because Lily couldn't come in to work today, so we worked from her house instead.  We spent a very pleasant couple of hours at Lily's outlining the last few bits of our projects and then came home at about 6pm.  I did a little more work tonight since I took a little interlude from work this afternoon and then, apparently the Hippocampus group and Kat were the only ones that didn't have dinner plans tonight, so we all ordered delivery from the biryani place around the corner.  After waiting more than three times as long as it was supposed to take and calling three times, our food finally came.  We won't make the mistake of asking for delivery from there again....

And now its time for bed!  I'll upload a bunch of pictures after Kat and I get back from Hampi!

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!!

Well, yesterday was just not all that exciting, so here’s the one sentence summary: we woke up, went to work, had a meeting with Professor Moledina, left work, had a group dinner with all of GSE, and then went to bed.

Now for today.  Much more fun.  Amanda, Yoshi, Maria and I had to wake up early because we went out to the villages today to see Hippocampus Kindergarten Centers in action.  We left our apartments at about 7:30am and then had to pick up Venkatesh, the Regional manager for Mandya District, which is where we went today.  We were on the road by about 8am, and after we drove for about an hour, we stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall place for breakfast.  Venkatesh told us that they had excellent masala dosas, so that’s what we all ordered.  He didn’t lie, it was a good way to start the day; we all walked into the restaurant slightly comatose, and walked out nice and awake and excited for the day.

We reached the first village, Hodahalli (which has 1500 households), at about 10:30am.  The building that the school is in is owned by a woman in the village and HLC pays about 800 rupees (about $15) a month for the use of the building.  We took our shoes off and walked inside to see about 20 4-year olds sitting in a big circle.  This room hosted the pre-kindergarten class, which means that these kids entered a school-type environment for the first time last week.  A few of them are still adjusting to being away from their parents for a good chunk of the day, and so were in tears or clinging to their backpacks for much of the time we were there.  Anyway, we walked in and sat down on the floor, joining the circle with the 4-year olds.  They were singing songs, practicing counting, and reciting their abc’s.  Maria and I were supposed to be recording our day by taking pictures and talking to the teachers, so we did just that. 

We met several teachers, and with the help of Venkatesh’s translations, we were able to ask them about how they liked working for Hippocampus, what their favorite part of their job is, and about their families.  Throughout the conversations, the children were eating snacks and playing, which was a blast to watch.  At one point, we all learned the “making melodies” song, which the kids sang for the next hour- the four-line song will be forever imprinted in my brain. 

As we gathered up our belongings to leave, one of the teachers, Usha, invited us to walk to her home.  The village is small, so it wasn’t more than a five-minute walk, and along the way, we also met Usha’s mother, who was an integral part in bringing Hippocampus to the village and getting the kindergarten center set up.  Usha’s home was a modest, beautiful blue cement building, and as soon as we walked in, she pulled up four plastic chairs for us and we sat down.  Several other women from the school came with us as well, and we all sat and had coffee.  We met Usha’s sister and her baby, who hung in the center of the room in a scarf that was tied to a beam in the ceiling.  We sat for a while, and Usha also brought us the most delicious bananas I’d ever had, but then we had to leave to make our way to the second village we were supposed to see.  We took a huge series of photos with everyone in Usha’s home, said our goodbyes, and then we got in the car and left. 

Mullahalli is only 9km away from Hodahalli, so we arrived fairly quickly.  This kindergarten center is brand new: it opened this year and classes only started last week, so there are still only a few children enrolled.  The class was much quieter, they were playing with legos when we came.  We sat down on the floor with the kids, and we played with the ones that weren’t scared of us.  We asked the teacher a few basic questions, but her English was a little more limited than the teachers from Hodahalli, so we spent most of our time playing with the kids and seeing how tall of a lego tower we could build.  We stayed for close to an hour, and then we said our goodbyes and once again got back in the car.

When we were driving, Venkatesh said he had gotten a call from Usha, saying that her son, who is 6, was very upset that he didn’t get to meet us.  We ended up driving back to Hodahalli to meet her son and have another brief visit.  We drove to the school, but once again ended up walking to Usha’s house, because apparently Usha’s sister liked us so much that she made us sweets.  We sat again and talked and enjoyed the payesa (I think that’s how its spelled…) which is basically like sweet macaroni with raisins.  It might sound weird, but it was actually pretty yummy.  It was about 4pm, and we had to drive back to Bangalore still, so we had to say goodbye to Usha, her family, and the other teachers once again, and hit the road.  I wish we had more time to spend in the village, everyone was so kind and welcoming, I am sure that with more time we could have learned a lot more about them and immensely enjoyed getting to know them. 

We had a nice drive back to Bangalore and actually made it back to the apartments before we normally would after a day at the HLC offices.  I, however, had to immediately run back out.  Last weekend when I went shopping I ordered two salwar suits for my lovely mama, and I had to go pick them up today.  I took an auto down to Commercial Street and walked to the shop only to find out that the salesman had told me today but told the tailor tomorrow, so the suits weren’t ready.  Shoot.  So now I get to go back later to pick them up- oh well!!  I took an auto back to the apartments, and after a long and exciting day, it’s now time for bed! 

Since our four day weekend is coming to a close, it seems fit to sum it up with post.

Yesterday I didn't set an alarm (best way to start the day!), and slept in a bit.  After I finally got up and moving, I headed out to Commercial Street to do some souvenir/gift shopping and to pick up Kristen and I's sarees.  This was a semi-momentous occasion because it was the first time I went out on an outing by myself- I had taken an auto alone before, but never gone out for the day on my own.  I'm glad to say, there weren't any issues, and I was even able to successfully navigate as I needed to (any of you who have ever had the misfortune of trying to get around with me know that this is quite an accomplishment).  Anyhoo, I spent nearly five hours out shopping, which was enjoyable, but still tiring!  I found lots of goodies to bring home, and picked up both Kristen and I's sarees, which was also exciting!  I had my auto drop me off near the grocery store on the way home- then I proceeded to make a little bit of a scene in the grocery store with all the shopping bags (the grocery store is about 150 square feet... and I had like 6 bags) but I managed to get a few things to fix myself dinner.

I came back to the apartment and then tried to learn how to tie my saree by watching multiple youtube videos.  Major fail, right there.  There are three parts to the saree, the blouse (which is the half-shirt type thing that is skin tight), the petticoat (the floor-length skirt that is never actually seen) and then the saree itself, which is god-knows how many yards of fabric that gets tied in a particular way, which the saree gods have decided I am not worthy to comprehend, apparently.  Oh well.  After I surrendered to the saree gods, I went and made a simple dinner and then got to skype with some of my favorite Woosterites for the first time since I've been here, which was wonderful.  It was a skype-filled evening, because then I skyped my mom and showed her some of the kurtas I bought her while out shopping and we caught up on the goings-on for each of us over the last week.  I turned in early last night, since we all agreed we would get up nice and early to start the process of getting dressed for the wedding!

I woke up this morning, showered and all that jazz, and then was ready to figure out how to tie the saree by 8am (the wedding was at 10am).  I had gotten on the blouse and petticoat and then went up to Amanda's room so we could try and figure out how to tie our sarees together.  Once again, it was a fail.  We went and asked Ratna, one of the staff here at the apartments, if she could help us, which she was kind enough to do.  It took about 10 minutes to get each of us tied, and it is safe to say that I could have never figured it out on my own, at least not in one day.  There is so much wrapping, pleating, tucking, pinning, undoing and redoing that it would have been waaaay too much for us, rookies, to try and tie our own sarees this morning.  After we were all tied up, we donned our bangles and bindis, had a bite of breakfast, and then all four of us went up to the roof to take pictures.  We were running a little late, so we took a few pictures (I uploaded one below) and then ran out the door.  Let me tell you, we had a heck of a time finding an auto that wanted to take four obviously non-Indians in full Indian attire to a wedding.  But we finally did find one, and after carefully piling into the auto, we headed off to Rams' an Sujit's ceremony.

We got there just a couple of minutes late, but that was not an issue at all, because, as we quickly learned, Indian weddings are very casual.  The ceremony was taking place on a slightly raised platform in the middle of the room but people were sitting and walking around the room (which was beautifully decorated with orange and yellow flowers) talking to everyone, watching the ceremony, drinking some juice, and whatever else they felt like doing.  When we walked in, we immediately saw everyone from our office there, who we talked to for a few minutes, and they complimented us on our Indian clothing, which was funny since they still all looked much nicer than we did!  Then we saw Aruna Ji and Pani Uncle, who facilitate all the CSIM lectures that we attend on Thursday afternoons, because apparently, Rams and Sujit met at CSIM when they were both working there.  It was surprising that we actually knew so many of the people at the ceremony, but it was definitely comforting; there were people there watching us to make sure we didn't accidentally do anything inappropriate.  Aruna Ji explained a lot of what was going on during the ceremony, which was very interesting.

For a majority of the ceremony, Rams and Sujit were sitting on the platform, and they were surrounded by family and others, as well as a fire and incense.  They were completely decked out in flowers and jewelry, and throughout the whole event there were multiple photographers taking hundreds of photos. At one point, everyone from Hippocampus got up on the platform and took a picture with Rams and Sujit- I hope we can get our hands on that photo somehow!  We watched the ceremony for a bit longer, and then Manmohan, who sits at the desk across from Maria and I at work, told us we should go and eat.  Everyone was leaving the room where the ceremony was finishing up (they were mostly at the photo-taking stage) and walking to the neighboring room that had many long tables set up.  At each seat was a large banana leaf, and Manmohan told us that at weddings you don't use plates or silverware (which we are getting used to), and that the leaf served as our plate.  We each had a glass of water at our seat which we used to wash the leaf with, and then a huge line of men walked by, each with a pail of a different kind of food- there was soooo much food.  Apparently we were so slow to finish our food that everyone assumed it was our first time eating with our hands, which it wasn't, but oh well!  We met Sujit's mom, who was so kind and welcoming, she even knew we were working at Hippocampus!  After the meal, we washed our hands and then there was a small table which had breath fresheners (of sorts) on it.  There were two different kinds of breath fresheners, one looked a lot like sprinkles you would put on ice cream and the other looked a lot like whole spices.  On the table there were also leaves, so you took a leaf, spread a bit of a paste on it, and then sprinkled either the sprinkles or spice looking mixture on the leaf, folded it up, and chewed it for several minutes- it was very chewy and tasted very strong, but it was interesting!!  Then we were able to quickly say hi to Rams, and then the event was basically over.  On our way out, Rams' mom was handing out coconuts as gifts to all the attendees, and she also thanked us for coming- again, she was so friendly and gracious, it was wonderful.  Then Lily offered to take us back to the apartment since it was on her way home, and so the four of us once again piled into a vehicle, oh-so-carefully so as not to unravel the sarees, and before we knew it, we were home!

L to R: Maria, me, Amanda, and Yoshi before the wedding

The rest of the day has just been taking it easy- I even took a nap, which I haven't done since I've been here.  And tomorrow it is back to work, after a very pleasant four day weekend! 

Well, it was a short trip, but I am back safely from Mysore!  Kristen, Navee, Maddy, Kasie, Matt and I were up bright and early yesterday (Friday) morning to meet the car that was supposed to take us to Mysore at 6am.  Professor Moledina arranged this trip, so unfortunately, there was a miscommunication- we thought we were leaving at 6am, but the driver thought it was 7am.  Whoops.  So after we waited outside for an hour, we met our driver who loaded up our bags and helped us pile into the car.  We began driving, and then we actually had to switch cars on the outskirts of Bangalore.  When we met our new driver and began driving, we didn't go very far before our driver stopped and bought flowers to offer to Ganesh, the Indian god whose figurine was residing on the dashboard- Ganesh is the god of travel (among other things)- so this was quite suitable as we headed out of Bangalore.  About an hour out of town we stopped at a kamat for breakfast.  The place was an open air restaurant where we all had a good breakfast and were lucky enough to see several monkeys while we ate.  Two of the monkeys even had babies clinging to their stomachs- they were adorable until one of the moms hissed at us a little- then we quickly went on our way.

We drove on for a little while, seeing the beautiful countryside the whole way.  I hadn't been out of Bangalore until yesterday, so it was nice to see some open spaces and hills.  At about 1pm we reached the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM) Tribal School.  This school is a rural center that is only for the tribal children of the area.  The residential school is free for students and families, although they do accept donations as families can afford it, and there are about 400 students that are from the 1st standard to the 10th standard.  We toured the school facilities- it is a very impressive campus.  There are open air classrooms for the first few grades, and then there are enclosed classrooms for the upper grades.  There are biology and chemistry labs, a computer lab, a library, and they also learn Kannada, Hindi, English, math, social sciences, and drawing.  The students are expected to be self-sufficient: they do their academic work, clean their rooms, take care of their own dishes after meal times, etc.  Our tour was lovely, but at one point, some children- I believe they were 2nd standard- waved us into their classroom, so with their teacher's permission, we walked in.  I still can't quite pinpoint why, but I felt extraordinarily awkward, out of place, and like we were imposing the second we walked in.  I had my camera, but it seemed unthinkable to take photos of the kids.  I didn't feel like I should be there, it seemed that we were doing more than disturbing their lesson, it seemed undeniably strange that we were touring these children's lives; that we were observing them and their environment and then just driving off in our air-conditioned car to our next stop.  Don't get me wrong, the facility was wonderful, as were the children.  All the kids clearly knew a little English, they all asked, "What is your name?" and when I told them Sam, I would ask them their name and they would shyly say a name that I could never hope to remember, which made me feel extremely guilty.  I don't know, something about walking into the classroom made me question our purpose there and the place we had there, if we had any place at all.

Before we left the campus, we also toured the teachers training college that is on the same grounds, and they were kind enough to serve us lunch.  After we thanked our hosts, we got back into the car and drove just a few kms to our next stop- the SVYM Ayurvedic Hospital.  It is a small hospital in the same rural area as the tribal school, which also works mostly with the tribal populations.  They don't only do ayurvedic treatments, however, they take a holistic approach to treating all ailments, and their treatments  usually include western medicine, ayurvedic medicines, and yoga.  It was a very neat facility to see, although we had a short visit.

Then we headed out of that more removed rural area and headed to the larger SVYM hospital.  We had a tour there that took us through every ward of the hospital- certainly something that would never fly in the states.  We walked through the mens and womens wards, the labor and delivery room, the dentistry ward, the lab, etc.  On the same campus there is also a school, which we saw one wing of.  After we finished our tour, we were about to walk back to the car when someone came out and asked us if we would like to meet the CEO of SVYM.  We said of course, and so she showed us upstairs where we waited for a few minutes.  We were then called in to Dr. Bala's (the CEO's) office, and although we were expecting to just shake his hand and leave, we sat for a good 15 minutes or so discussing our day touring the SVYM facilities and what work we are doing in Bangalore.  It was a great opportunity to meet someone involved in a prominent social enterprise.

After we thanked Dr. Bala, we got back in the car and drove into Mysore city to spend the night in the SVYM hostel.  When we arrived at the hostel it was about 8:30pm, so we immediately went down and had dinner.  After dinner, we were all pretty tired because we had gotten up so early, so I went to bed at about 10:15.

After sleeping very well on the hardest mattress I've ever slept on (it made a thudding noise when I sat down on it), we all woke up this morning, had breakfast, and were on the road by about 9am.  We decided that with our free morning we wanted to go to Mysore Palace, but along the way, our driver pointed out a Catholic church, Saint Philomena's, so we stopped there on our way.  It was a beautiful church that we were able to look through quickly and then get back on the road to the Palace.  We had about an hour to tour the Palace, which was absolutely incredible.  It used to be the home of the King of Mysore, and it was built right around 1900.  The grounds are beautiful and covered with gardens (and a few extraordinary trees which provided some much appreciated shade), and the Palace itself was exquisite.  I'll post pictures later, any description I give won't do it justice.

After the Palace visit, we all stopped for a quick lunch, and then we dropped off Kristen, Maddy, Navee and Kasie at the Mysore bus station because they are heading off to Ooty for the rest of the weekend.  Because of the wedding that my group was invited to, I had to come back to Bangalore this afternoon, and so did Matt because he has some work to catch up on.  We had a pleasant ride back to Bangalore, and after long last, it finally started raining here!  The monsoons are now more than two weeks late, and a lot of people were getting worried because without rain, obviously the agricultural areas would struggle.  Now I am settled back into the apartments for the evening and will be heading out tomorrow to pick up my sari (hopefully!) and have a nice quiet day in Bangalore!

Yikes, sorry I haven't written in so long! To spare all the unimportant details, I'll just lump the last few days together and give the highlights.

This week at work we definitely started working a little more independently.  Maria and I have spent the week meeting with Professor Moledina and Lily, reading a ton of articles about social media, and compiling the best findings into a draft social media strategy- its more like a few general pointers that we've compiled, but its a start!  We actually worked from home on Wednesday because none of our supervisors were going to be in the office, so that was definitely a nice break from the lovely Bangalore public transit system.

Anyway, outside of work we also had a fun week- one of our supervisors is getting married on Monday, and she invited Amanda, Yoshi, Maria and I! Oh my goodness- an Indian wedding.  :)  However... I had nothing appropriate to wear.  So, in typical stressed-out-crazy-me style, I drug Kristen and Amanda sari shopping with me Thursday after work hoping that I could get something fitted by Sunday (Amanda and Maria are borrowing saris of Laura's).  Yoshi and Maria came as well so Yoshi could find some appropriate men's clothing, too.  In the second shop that Kristen and I went into, they started pulling out beautiful sari fabric, and it didn't take me too long to pick a bright pink and purple pattern with gold on the edges.  Sooo pretty.  And they promised that I can pick it up Sunday at 2pm, so hopefully that will actually happen!  And Kristen also decided she wanted to get a sari, and she picked out a gorgeous blue and gold fabric.  After we came back from shopping, Amanda, Maria and Yoshi all tried on their respective Indian clothing selections- I think we are all going to have a lot of fun trying to tie saris on Monday morning- oh boy.  But we are all pretty darn excited, I'll be sure to post lots of pictures!

The other fun news, besides saris and Indian weddings, is that today after work Amanda and I went and got our noses pierced!  She got a hoop and I got a stud- and the best part- it was less than $2 for the piercing and jewelry.  Happy day.  It was quite the process: we walked into the tiny shop in an alley, chose our jewelry, sat on a stool while the guy sharpened the jewelry with a knife against his table, he drew a dot on our noses, and then just stabbed the jewelry through our noses and bent the ends so it wouldn't fall out.  And it was over!  It really didn't hurt at all and it was quite a fun little experience.  :)

And now we are all headed off for our four day weekend- I'll let you know how the weekend and the wedding are!!

So sorry its been so long since I've written, I kind of lost track of time!
Anyway, I believe I left off on Thursday.  At work, Maria and I were messing with a bunch of data that we were asked to help manage, as well as reading up on the uses of social media in business.  We spent all morning on this, and because Thursday's are our half-days, we left at about 2pm and headed to a different area of Koramangala to our lecture for the week.  We grabbed lunch at a biryani place around the corner, and then got to listen to someone from RuralShores speak.  RuralShores is an organization that promotes the development of outsourcing centers in rural areas of India as opposed to urban centers.  This allows for slowed migration to urban areas while bringing jobs to those individuals in rural areas who need them.  It was an interesting lecture, and especially neat after hearing about Ashoka last week.  After the lecture, the whole GSE group and our advisors went to dinner at a Tibetan restaurant.  YUM.  I'm not totally sure what exactly I ate, but I know it was good.  Apparently we had things called "crispy veggies", "momos", and a desert made with sesame seeds and honey, among other things.  After that dinner, we all made it back to our apartments by about 9:30, and we were in for the night.

Friday was another day at work, although it was strange, because there was virtually no one in our office. Maybe Friday is an unofficial work from home day that we didn't know about.  Anyway, Maria and I briefly met with Lily in the morning (who came in for a couple of hours just for two meetings) and then we kept working on the data and research parts of our project.  We went to lunch at about 2pm with Yoshi and Amanda, and after another two hours of work or so, we all realized we were pretty burned out and needed a breather, so we all left the office at about 4:45 and went and got ice cream on our way to the bus stop.  After a little bit of a relax time, we got on the bus and came home home.  A bunch of us decided that we so enjoyed the Tibetan meal from Thursday night that we would try the Tibetan place here in our neighborhood, so we went and again had a great meal.  Maybe Tibetan food will be our new staple here.... in India.  It had been a long week, so we pretty much all settled in after dinner.

Saturday morning, Kristen, Navee, Maddy and I ventured off to Garuda Mall to meet Naman, another Wooster student who happens to live here in Bangalore.  We spent a few hours looking through stores (including a great bookstore) and trying cold coffee (which is more or less a coffee milkshake- yummy), and visiting.  At about 2:30, Kristen and Navee had to go somewhere, so Maddy and I caught the bus back to the apartments.  We sat around visiting for about an hour with the girls that were still here, and then Maddy and I went out on an extensive shopping trip.  We decided that on Sunday night we wanted to make a big Indian dinner and try and make several different things, so we had to go get a bunch of stuff from multiple grocery stores.  After the shopping trip, I did a little bit of work back at the apartments, and then a big group of us went out to celebrate Matt's 21st birthday.  We had a nice time out, but we had trouble meeting up with the rest of the group, so we came back to the apartments at about 11 to see everybody else.  After a fun night, we all headed to bed because we had to get up for a lecture this morning...

But it was really enjoyable!  From her time living in Rajasthan, Laura knows someone who worked with the Ashoka foundation early in its life, in the 1980's, and who is a Gandhian economist.  He talked to us for a couple of hours in a pleasant yoga studio about a variety of topics related to India, economics, social entrepreneurship and more.  When that was over, Navee and I stopped by the store on our way home because there were just a couple more things Maddy and I needed for our cooking extravaganza tonight.  When we got back from the store, we made Maggi noodles (basically spicier ramen) for lunch and then I spent a couple of hours doing some work on my laptop.  At 5pm, Maddy and I started cooking.  Who knew we were in so far over our heads!  We started chopping an entire grocery-store's worth of vegetables (picture 20 cups of potatoes and not enough bowls and pans to put them all in), and mixing up a bunch of spices.  Our kitchen isn't bad but it isn't great, and its biggest fault is that it doesn't have a fan.  So, when you get a couple of burners going on the stove, it gets pretty toasty in there pretty quickly.  And then (and this is a completely hypothetical situation, of course), when there is a little sweat on your upper lip and you have been chopping green chili peppers and you wipe the sweat away only to set fire to your lip because of the chilis, that just adds to the charm.  But we had fun making aloo gobi (potatoes and cauliflower), paneer and some sort of sauce, sweet and sour potatoes, roti, gulab jamoon (a dessert) and also mango lassi and mango mojitos.  We finally sat down to eat (out of pots and pans, glass lids, and of course, newspapers) at about 9:30, after four and a half hours of running around the kitchen.  But the food wasn't bad, even if it was a little rough around the edges.  For example, the dessert which should have looked like little donut holes in syrup dissolved into a doughy syrupy mess- that still tasted fine.  And making both of the mango drinks was interesting because we were supposed to puree the mango except we didn't have a blender.  So we smooshed it around for a while with our hands.  The drinks were still a little chunky, but I think more authentic, too.  Anyway, after a lot of cooking and cleaning, (and skyping with my parents for the first time since I've been here!), its now off to bed to get ready for another week!