February 20, 2024

The Beginning of the End

Alright, here we go. We are in the last stretch of the quarter. As the sun rose this morning, half-asleep students of GCIL got off the train from Pondicherry, stumbled into cars and rickshaws, and made our way back to UTC. Home sweet home. I was disorientated in the morning and only managed to unpack my bag before breakfast.

After a breakfast of champions, toast and jam, we had our morning blog readings and reflections on the weekend. I spent a lot of my weekend either learning how to surf, walking around town enjoying the sites, or shopping for gifts and souvenirs. Now, my head was pounding, my nose was congested, and I desperately needed a shower, but first, presentation time! We had an informal presentation to the rest of the class on our project and how it’s going. I had a hard time focusing, but tried my best to pay attention.

My team and I then spent some time brainstorming how we want to structure our 2-minute elevator pitch video and confirmed ordering some supplies to build our prototype. We watched previous GCIL videos for inspiration, and noted down some do’s and don’ts. I hope that our final video submission will be chock full of “do’s” for future GCILers to use as inspiration.

Next thing I know, I woke up on the UTC couch and our lunch order had magically arrived. I heard that it came an hour late, but to my sleepy brain it didn’t matter one bit.

The last parts of the day consisted of mentor meetings and a group call to make plans with Hasiru Dala for tomorrow. All the while, my sinuses became more and more congested, and I just wanted to lay down and catch up on sleep so I could fight off whatever it is that got passed to me from my sick peers.

Oh dear, I still have to write a blog. This one wasn’t as reflective as my previous ones have been, mostly because I was just trying to get through the day, and my head is pounding more and more every second. I hope that the last three weeks go a bit smoother than today did, but with all the deadlines in the next couple weeks, and seeing how long this illness has wiped out other people, I’m not so sure that it will.

By Monika

Image: Group surfing lesson in Pondicherry