So, this week, huh? Well things are a little crazy these days. We are
getting ready for our accreditation visit in a couple of weeks. In addition to
that, we have our annual convocation on Friday of the same week; the same day
as our annual Joint Venture Board Meeting. Then if that’s not enough we have
our usual board meeting the following week. Yeah, I know, that wasn’t very
bright. But work has been crazy busy. Things are normally busy but now they are
crazy busy. Every day when I crawl into bed, I feel like I have slipped further
behind. I can’t tell you the number of times I have said to myself in the last
week, “I need to find a way to add more hours to every day;” and “if I can just
make it through the 15th everything will be okay.” The first
statement is a true need; the second is foolish hope. I know there will be
something else coming down the pike. I could use a few days to breathe however.
Monday the13th was another festival, Lohri. As it was described to me,
Lohri is a primarily Punjabi celebration of the end of winter. However, there
is a festival by some name on the same day all over India, mostly with the same
meaning and many of the same or similar practices. Interestingly, it is one of
the few festivals that is not tied to an astronomical occurrence – it is always
on the 13th of January. The purpose of Lohri is to rid one’s self of
the evils that have happened during the year. At the end of the day, a bonfire
is set. Once it is going well, people throw hands full of popped corn or sesame
seeds into the fire. The popcorn and seeds represents the evils that have
occurred. Then, everyone circles around the fire, while a traditional song is
sung. Of course there are also traditional sweet crackers.
For the Lohri fire at the campus (pictures below) about half the people
knew exactly what was to happen at every step and for about half, it was the
first Lohri they had experienced. It was fun participating but even more fun to
observe all of the international students taking it all in. I had someone
explaining to me what was going on and the meaning. I am not sure all of the
international students had that same advantage. Still, they did seem to enjoy
it.
Speaking of international students, it occurs to me that I may not have
told you about a development that has occurred over the past nine months. We
have always had quite a few international students but we have become the #1
international college in India (we have the highest percentage of international
students of any other college). We have just under 60% of our students from 39
different countries. We have the greatest number from Nepal, Afghanistan,
Nigeria, Congo, and Ghana. Afghanistan and Nepal are traditional trading
partners with India and historically many students have come from there to
India for college. Africa is a more recent phenomena. Some of the more exotic
countries from which we have students are; Mongolia, China, South and North
Korea, and a little place called America. OK, our American student is Indian
but his family does live in Houston so it counts.
Our repatriated Indian student has led to our most recent strategy.
There are millions of PIO (persons of Indian origin) and NRI (non-resident
Indians) all over the world. In fact the Indian diaspora is of great interest
and concern both to the Indian government and families affected thereby. The
Indian government looks at the brain drain from all of those who have left and
wonders what impact those skills would have on its own economy and society.
Many families are concerned that dis-located Indians are losing their
Indian-ness.
So, I had the thought, let’s ride this horse in the direction it is
going. So, we are going to market our college to expatriated Indian parents:
send your children back to India for college. They can re-establish their
Indian roots and get a US degree. Or, they can come for a semester or two, have
their Indian experience and have credits that can transfer back to the US, or
Canada, or wherever home is located. Getting the contact information for these
people is the challenge but this is where the government comes in. They are so
keen to re-establish relationships with these folks they are spending millions
to identify and make contact with them. Hence the source of our information. I
am pretty excited about this strategy. I think it will be a big winner. I hope
so. I could really use a nice, solid win.
Well enough about work. Here’s Rae to tell you more about what’s going
on in our social life.
Hi all,
The last couple of weeks have been busy with church work, consulting at
the campus, trying to figure out clothing for upcoming weddings and a few other
things.
I am currently serving in the District Young Women’s presidency and as
a result of that I have had several meetings and things to be at and prepare
for over the last couple of weeks. That
doesn’t sound like it should be that big of a deal, but all these things take
place at the Vasant Vihar building and the Vasant Vihar building typically
takes about an hour to get to, so that just adds to the time commitment.
I had District council meeting on a Tuesday night, then Leadership Training
the following Saturday, and New Beginnings yesterday. Oh, and we started teaching seminary/institute
again this week.
For New Beginnings, one of the things we decided to give the girls were
socks. The socks were to say “Come Unto Christ”, our 2014 theme, on one foot
and have a set of footprints on the other foot. Sounds simple enough, right? If we were doing these in the US I would have
known exactly where to go for the materials to get this project done, but it’s
not quite as simple here. We had to go
to the market to try to find the socks, then someplace to find fabric paints
for writing the words. We were hoping to
find a foot print stamp to make the footprints. We couldn’t find stamps, so I
bought a cheap doll hoping to use its feet as a stamp. I was shocked when I
took the doll out of the package and found that it was a boy doll. How do I
know that you may wonder? Well, it turns
out that boy dolls here come with boy parts, WHAT!!!!!
Shopping for the socks took us to Saroijni Nagar Market, where we were
hoping to find 50 pairs of socks at good prices. Christina said we should be able to get 5 pair
for 100 rupees ($1.60). After checking
several little cart vendors we found one that would give us that price, in the
colors we wanted. We just needed to
give them about half an hour to get additional socks brought over. I’m always amazed at their resourcefulness.
So, we wandered and looked at other things for a while. It’s always interesting making your way through
these markets because you are bombarded by people trying to sell you any number
of things. The items being peddled by
people who walk up to you and shove them in front of you wanting you to buy
them are pretty common from one market to the next. There are washing machine
coves, (I always wonder why they think a tourist would need a washing machine
cover), plastic aprons, fabric tote bags, lace table clothes, handkerchiefs,
sunglasses, jewellery, and a number of other things. One that I particularly like are the guys who
walk up to you carrying a handkerchief which they secretly open to reveal 3 or
4 watches. Now these obviously aren’t
just any watches, but great watches at great prices that they can only secretly
sell you.
Back to the socks. After a while
we returned to the cart to get the socks.
I probably don’t need to mention that at this price these are not the
highest quality socks, so we needed to look thru each pair to make sure they
were okay. As we were doing this, all of
a sudden the cart guys start grabbing all the socks and start moving their cart
over and behind a more permanent booth.
I soon realized that all the cart vendors were doing this. Things were being moved and pulled back into
the permanent booths and out of the center of the walkways. Someone had “spotted” some authority who
would fine them if they caught them selling from these carts, which I’m
guessing aren’t licensed and they are selling illegally. It is amazing to see how quickly the word
goes out and how quickly these people disappear. After a brief disappearing act, carts began
to come back out and business goes on as usual.
A false alarm I guess. I’ve seen
this happen a couple of times now; it’s crazy!!!
Socks purchased, let the painting begin. It turns out that footprint stamps are not
easily found here so after some experimenting, I ended up just painting
footprints on 50 socks. They’re all done, and handed out to the girls last night. Done.
In the middle of church assignments I’ve been trying to buy some fabric
to make some things to wear to weddings that we are invited to. Weddings here are a big deal and so is
wedding attire. Guests are dressed in
elaborated outfits. Think formals that are
ornately decorated with metallic braids, jewelled bead work, you name it. The more colourful and bejewelled the better.
Typically the bride is dressed in red
and both bride and groom very ornately attired.
I can’t bring myself to be that glamorous, so I am trying to strike a
happy medium (for me) between western and Indian wear. Something that I would possibly wear other
than to the occasional wedding.
I know I have mentioned this one small trim booth before, I use the
term “booth” loosely. It is located by
some of the fabric stalls I go to. It is
located on a stairway that is barely wide enough for two people to pass each
other on and you stand on the stairs to shop for trims. I’ve been able to get a
picture of it so maybe that will help explain.
It is so narrow that it is hard to get a good picture, but hopefully you
get the idea. Oh, just a reminder that
this booth is only about 4 feet tall if that. You’ll notice that the young man
is kneeling because he can’t stand.
Imagine spending you day in there.
Hope the pictures help explain this better than I have.
Coming home from fabric shopping the other day there were two stray
donkeys roaming our neighbourhood so I was able to snap a couple of pictures of
them. If you look you will see that one
of them has a tether and rope tied to its foot and is dragging it along. Phil said they were still there at the end of
the day when he came home. They were
gone the next day so hopefully their owner found them. You just never know what you might see.
Phil mentioned that he is very busy preparing for the accreditation
that is coming up. Part of getting ready
is preparing the campus and I’ve been able to spend some time consulting with
them on some things that could be done to help things look more presentable. I’ve been advising them on some paint colors,
helping to select some pictures that will be used as art work for different
spaces and making some other recommendations to help make the place look
fresher and nicer. It’s been fun and I
always welcome getting to do those kind of things.
This coming weekend we have a wedding to attend. We are invited to three different days of the
celebrations. We’ll share about that
later.
Namaste.
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