Places I can't pronounce (or spell).

Greetings from Sitla!

I didn’t have any sort of expectations coming to India, but my first impression was not at all the destitute, crowded place you hear about. It’s chaotic, dusty, loud, and full of people who don’t know the meaning of personal space, but it seemed…normal. It wasn’t until we took the metro (very modern) to Old Delhi that it seemed like another world. 

 After spending 2 days in Delhi, Pulkit and I took the Ranikhet Express overnight to Kathgodam. We underestimated the time it would take to get there, and just barely made it on the train - one minute later and it would have been gone. In Kathgodam, we were received by Shafik (note: my spellings of Indian names and places will probably completely off), who picked us up and drove us to the Chirag office in Simayal. On the way, we stopped for some breakfast (aloo paratha and chai –I love chai, which is probably good since we have it 6+ times a day). The view driving along the mountain roads is AMAZING, and there’s a place close to where I’m staying that has the greatest panoramic view of the Himalayas. It was still early when we got to the office, so there was second breakfast, with chai of course.

 After meeting with Kuldeep and Bipin (Madhavan won’t be here til Monday), we got to sit in on a balshikshak training session. The topic of the day was the importance of language and learning outside of the classroom. Most Indian classes are taught in a traditional rote memorization style, and there’s no overlap between classes and practical application in life, so Chirag is trying to integrate the two.  Everything is taught in Hindi (obviously), and even many of Chirag’s staff don’t speak much English, so it was extremely helpful to have Pulkit there to translate. I’m definitely going to have to learn quickly if I want to get anything done by May.

Towards the end of the day, we met Gaurav, who graduated from college in 2007 and is doing Indicorps (highly highly recommends it). He’s been here since September and is staying until the end of July. He’s working on preventative health care and it’s been good to have someone our age  (and more importantly, speaks English) to talk to.

Tomorrow we'll be going to the nearby village of Mona for a meeting with 2 swastha samitis (health committees)  about their purpose/responsibilities and problems or issues they are having with fulfilling these responsibilities.  

Pictures later, maybe. The internet here has a download limit of 1GB/month so I don't want to strain it. But it's broadband, which is quite a luxury :)