Half of a Thousand

It's fun to play dress up sometimes :)

I've definitely been keeping myself busy for sure these last two days, and really enjoying the classes. I have now officially memorized everyone's name and we all get along really well dispite age and experience gaps. Well this one participant Deo - a professor back in Nepal - is an oddball, going off on long tangents about nothing and making us listen. The last two days we have been studying asset-based community development, taught by the executive director of the Centre (Bala Vikasa), and it was pretty inspiring. And we've been doing pretty practical activities utilizing the ideas and experiences of the other participants.

And last night we had our first cultural night, where each country had to present at least one or two songs, dances or acts. Of course we felt lame and since none of us had much performing talents, we sang Oh Canada, gave out pins and flags, and sang a First Nations chant. And we performed first so that people mostly forgot our act after the others. The Sri Lankans somehow transported a traditional drum with them and my Nepalese friend Sushila had a beautiful dress and gold jewlerey to go with her wonderful dance.



And so we danced the night away last night to Tollywood (Telagu bollywood) hits and even taught everyone how to do the limbo, which they loved courtesy of the macarena to accompany it.

Today we visited a model village called Gangadevipally, which has successfully motived its community to use their own funds to have borewells drilled, a health centre built, toilets (actually utilized) in all houses, a temple and have cleaned up all the garbage as well. And now visitors come from all over the country and world to check this place out and learn from their success.

From there we visited a Hindu temple, the Warangal fort and the Temple of a Thousand Pillars (of which 500 are under renovation). I'm pretty exhausted and we're leaving here at 6am tomorrow morning to heard to Hyderabad to do some shopping, which is 3 hours away.

Sending love to everyone, especially the people of Haiti.


Also here is some jargon that Chuck typed while I wrote this:

I'm lost in india because i talk to chuck to much and he makes little sense. bananas are tasty (matt) WHERES DAN! ( anchor) jelly beans are too sweet!! Makka!! get down from there!! (sushila) Don't forget about the toilets! (Sagar Sanitary advisor) " can i just have 1 or 5 minutes." hand in your face (Professor DEO)