We are doing great! I am so happy to be out of Delhi and in a smaller less crowded town.  Jaipur was a little intense yesterday: the tour guide took us to a carpet factory and expected us to buy fine carpets, we spent a lot of time on the bus, and it was hot.  The forts and palace were beautiful but unfortunately we were not able to take an elephant ride up to the fort because our bus arrived too late in the day. Some of the students were disappointed but they all seem to be able to handle things extremely well.  Overall it was a fun but tiring day.  The train ride at the end of the day was exciting. Caitlin said it was her favorite part of the trip so far. 

We are now staying at a pretty swank hotel in Udaipur and have had our orientation to Seva Mandir.  Anita, our host is awesome, and introduced us to the organization and what they do.  During our orientation, 2 women from the Netherlands wanted our students’ advice about fundraising in the US, and it was very empowering for them to be taken so seriously.  We are going to a cultural event tonight and dinner on the lake, then a tour of the fort tomorrow.  We’ll try to make another Internet stop tomorrow night before we leave for the village for 4 days. 

We are all doing well and looking forward to the next leg of our adventure!

Laura

Today, we visited two temples. The first one we went to was dedicated to Krishna. The second was dedicated to a goddess…i dont remember her name. When we were standing there at the second temple, i saw a lot of bats flying around. It freaked me out.

In my face painting class, me and shannon got our faces done as the hunter. IT looked really cool. And in our music class, we started off by singing the key notes.

Well, thats about it for today!!! Bye!!

    Hello all. it is Thursday here in India and we are nearing the end of our week at VKV. Each of us has learned a lot and , for there most part, enjoying our classes. I myself am taking wood carving and mural painting. I love art in general so these classes are perfectfor me. If it has not been said already VKV offers yoga and a martial arts class called Kalari. Jake and I are the only ones that go. Kalari is very intense and even the most simple moves require strong focus and effort. I have found it to be very helpful, but now after doing it for four days I’m finally begining to feel the pain in my legs.

Other than the usual classes  the group took a brief trip to a metal mirror facility and an art gallery. There are many stages to the creation of these mirrors. I won’t go into detail becuase I’ll put you all to sleep. The creations in the art gallery were mural paintings. It was cool to take a class on something and then to see haw far thos skills can go . Every painting in the gallery took a haug amount of time to create. They all very well drawn and painted. The last

Bangalore Vista

Kolam Patterns

New Threads in Bangalore

Chris Drawing in Temple
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David in Limbo at the Orphanage School

Marcie in Disguise

Hey! Its Avery!
First off I’d like to give a shout out to my lovely dears: Dearest MEAGAN Dearest KATIE Dearest ALICE Dearest..Haley..dearest Dearest..uhh alright, Austin..
Sooo the flight here was long and tiresome and for the first day everyone felt pretty miserable. We were fed literally every few hours till we were completely stuffed. Ive tried quite a variety of food…ending today with a fast trip to a local sweet shop. It was beautiful.
The traffic here is INSANE. I think ive already become immune to the fear of being ran over. The majority of the road is dominated by bikes, cars, buses and rickshaws -which weve been riding; AWESOME- and the occasional cow. There is a lot of honking, of course. There is also a lot of stray dogs, a few monkeys and many many beggars. It’s hard not to give in the the children beggars . The girls follow you around doing insane gymnastics and the boys drum. I feel very snobbish and touristy most of the time -especially with them. Coping seems to be one of the major challenges among us all.
Anyways, Id write more but its almost 11:30 and I am wiped and covered in a layer of sweat so I’d better not.
We are all doing fine and getting along well. Caitlin and Carolyn lost their bags but are dealing with it and hopefully will get theirs soon. We will be here a few more days before taking the bus to Jaipur. I can’t wait!!

Night! I miss everyone.
Oh, and Austin, I only stole a bag of candy. That’s it. I swear

today was our second day here at the vijnana kala vedi center in kerala. today we were assigned a treasure hunt!! woo hoo! so far, my partner, amber, and i have not found anything on it. shannon has found a carving of the mahabharata, and david bought soap and candy!! david also found some chaapals– sandals. his feet thank him….anyway. my dance class this morning was SWEATY and smelly. shannon switched to singing and aashika also decided to go with shannon, so i have private dance lessons with the strict teacher. it is very hard on my feet!

other than dancing, today we ate parle-g…i have been living on these biscuits for the past week because they taste very good and i love to snack. meals are…ok…sarah had a stomach problem today, however.

shannon and i had aurovedic massages today. that was a very interesting experience, because it is basically an oily, naked rubdown. amber had one yesterday and didnt like it, but shannon and i quite enjoyed them.

just now, we all had individual appointments with an astrologer. he did a reading similar to runes, but with cowry shells. i am apparantly blessed by god in everything i do, but must pray to god. also i will be famous all over the world later in life because of my studies.

shannon has had some…trouble..with her name here. all of the indian staffers have a different nickname for her because they cannot pronounce the exotic name “shannon”. instead, she is reffered to as “shan” or, more recently “mica”. why this is, no one exactly knows….

yesterday, a couple interesting things happened:

chris mistakenly [we hope…] locked david into their room for an hour in the middle of the day yesterday. megan was around, but didnt know that david was stuck in his room, so david waited until chris returned to escape.

also, some of us had a very scary encounter with an insect. megan, sarah, amber, and i were in megan and sarah’s room last night, hiding from the plethora of moths in sarah and megan’s bug nets. megan was alone on her bed inside her net, and amber sarah and i were on sarah’s bed. we were discussing the giant moth near the door when amber suddenly looked above her head and shrieked. i looked up, expecting to see another moth or another firefly or something dumb but was instead horrified to see a GIANT black, hairy spider with huge menacing legs. i screamed and jumped onto sarah’s lap, where i was immediately joined by amber. we shrieked and floundered about for about five minutes, then finally mustered up the courage to run behind megan past the huge fluttering moth and out the door. marcie luckily did something with the enourmous spider, but it was an unforgettable experience. evidently everyone downstairs heard our commotion loud and clear.

everything else here is fine, but we all will be glad to be on the road again, and we all really miss Imo!!

anyway, hello to all at home and we hope things are going well back in the states.

ps. if anyone reading this wants to send us popsicles, it would be greatly appreciated.

lovelovelove,

sonali

shannon

&

daveed