January 17, 2024
Community Power
Merriam-Webster defines a community as “a unified body of individuals;” yet in the United States, a deeply individualistic country, the concept of having and supporting a community is often misunderstood. Many people talk about supporting communities without truly understanding what it entails or how to go about it. In India, a distinctive culture of communal…
January 16, 2024
The Last Ones Standing
For most of our program, the first “solo” weekend trip in Mysore ended with a lot less pool time and sightseeing than planned. Felled by an unknown cause, perhaps the sticks of jaggery molded and cooled in the suspiciously old gray paint bucket filled with rural river water, only 6 “healthy” GCILers remained on Sunday…
Keep Going
“Keep going”, I mutter under my breath as I trudge to the bus at 6:50 in the morning. Less than half of us are left I notice as we take our seats. While the extra legroom is nice I feel bad for the majority of class experiencing various stages of a stomach virus picked up…
January 15, 2024
Dumb Tourists in a Small World
Today is my birthday. Birthdays have always felt really big to me. I never could have imagined spending my 22nd birthday on the side of the road on the outskirts of Bangalore, India throwing up from food poisoning. When I left two weeks ago for India, I blew out candles on a mini cake with…
January 13, 2024
To Fully Understand
To be honest, I think I was half asleep the whole day. However, the few moments that I was truly awake for was at the small-scale jaggery factory where a humble group of workers crafted some of the tastiest sugary treats I’ve ever had. Jaggery, a concentrated product of cane juice, represented the source-to-product processing…
Straight From The Source
Over the past few days, we’ve been fortunate enough to explore the heart of Srirangapatna, delving into the intricate production processes that give life to some of India’s everyday staples. Today we headed to a small jaggery factory, on a humble family farm. For those like myself who didn’t know what Jaggery was before today,…
January 12, 2024
A Long Journey
I jolted awake at the sound of my alarm at 6 am, marking yet another early morning for the GCIL crew. As I reflected on the day and this program as a whole so far, I was first greeted by thoughts of how intense the heat had been and how long the hours of each…
Experts in the Field
When I was in high school, I took a class where I had to write a large research paper. I still remember it was drilled into us that we needed a thorough literature review with input from ‘experts in the field’. This is how I have always viewed expertise; a word to describe a mysterious…
January 11, 2024
Contrast
Good morning. I wake up just in time for breakfast; we have chow-chow bath, a dish that is a combination of sweet Kesari bath and savory Khara bath. We’ve had this dish a couple times now and most of us have been curious as to what exactly we are eating, a feeling I encounter at…
Silent Moments
Today marks a week since I’ve landed in Bangalore and nine days since I said a tearful [sobbing] goodbye to my family. Fortunately the days are filled to the brim with activities that I never have the chance to feel homesick. Any free time I do have is spent either getting to know my classmates,…
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