February 15, 2023
Accepting Ambiguity
This week we submitted our initial reports and sent our babies off to the mentors for feedback. As we wait in anticipation to hear if our ideas have merit or will be torn apart, I’ve been reflecting a lot about the whole process we’ve gone through for our GCIL project. The process I’m referring to…
February 14, 2023
Trust the Process
With 3.5 weeks left to come up with a viable plan and solution, this week our group spent the first half finalizing our initial report. In hopes to help with the trash problem in Bangalore, we decided to focus our attention on black spots and beautifying them. With more than 1,200 illegal dumping sites in…
February 13, 2023
Monkeys are Mean, Ruins are Pretty (Hampi)
We woke up in the wee hours of the morning and hopped on a bus. I slipped on an eye mask as I hoped to bank a few more hours of sleep on top of the two or so I had gotten that morning in anticipation of our magical journey. As we moseyed along the…
February 10, 2023
Presence in the Present
As I jam to bluegrass music and write my blog, I am amused by the reality of my situation. I’m in India; I have been for some time now. How’d that happen? And yet, I feel like our group’s vocabulary changed overnight from, “We just got here,” to, “The end is near.” In a regular…
February 9, 2023
Get your kicks on week 6
And so here we find ourselves, approaching the end of week six, and the band marches on. The halfway mark has come and gone, and every day we come closer to our final deliverables. Unfortunately, one of our crew is down with ‘Rona but they seem to be managing well. Or at the very least,…
February 8, 2023
Learning to be OK with failure
The first time I heard about GCIL was at the UW Civil Engineering meet-and-greet a year ago during fall quarter. There were several student clubs that had tables set up around the perimeter of the room, and I’d spent most of my time visiting the table where my friend was promoting his club, discussing our…
February 7, 2023
Drumming my worries away
The past five weeks have filled me with a wide range of emotions. When I first landed here, I was filled to the brim with excitement and anticipation for the opportunity to not just learn as much as I could during my time here in Bangalore, but to also leave here with some sense of…
February 6, 2023
Humans Helping Humans
Friday morning started like most mornings these days, waking up and pulling out my earbuds. I can only get a proper night’s sleep with them in at night due to the hustle and bustle of Bangalore constantly swishing outside my hostel window. I down a bottle of water and make my way to our common…
February 4, 2023
Small Talk
As we get further into the program and gain more knowledge of India, the blogs are getting more difficult to write for myself. Mainly because the problems we’re dealing with are so large that I can’t help but feel like what I write has little to no impact, and/or might not reflect my true experience….
February 3, 2023
You have so much to offer
We’re about halfway through the GCIL program, and to be honest, these past four weeks have felt more like four months. We have met so many amazing people and experienced vivid snapshots of Bangalore that I am still trying to process. Transitioning from speaking to organizations in the first three weeks to actually working with…
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