My last post

Okay so I haven’t posted in 3 months. I kept meaning too but I didn’t. So what happened over the past three months? In mid December all of the fellows got together in Navi Mumbai (read not the real Mumbai) to see how everyone was and what everyone was doing. I discovered from this that I wasn’t achieving what I could and also that maybe I wasn’t at the right NGO for me. After our 4-day conference many of the fellows headed to Jaipur so see a fellow fellow get married. It was a pretty amazing wedding, it being in Jaipur, and in a palace, and the groom coming in on an elephant. You can check out pictures here.

After midpoint I took some time to think about what I wanted to do. Should I stay or should I go. I decided I would give it 3 more months and work on the Panchayat Raj project.

In that amount of time I did some travel. I was able to visit Ahmedabad, Bhuj, Bangalore (again), Mysore, Coorg, Kannur, Cochin, Kumily, Madurai, Pondicherry, Chennai, a pilgrimage to Triputi, Hampi, Pune (again), the Ellora caves, and Hyderabad. Below are some of pictures. Unfortunately my camera went missing for some of my travels so I posted what I could.

Between my travels I was able to spend some time in the villages in northern Karnataka. Two things I learned from the village: I need a translator to understand anything, and I don’t really like the village. Second item has a lot to do with the first. It’s hard to sit through many meetings without any translation. I was also getting sick.

Between the traveling and the village visits I realized that I was ready to go home. I think that this wasn’t the time for me to be in India. I really wanted it to be since it fit into my life, but I just wasn’t ready. The work I was doing in the US was quite different than what I was able to do in India, and I liked what I was doing in the US. So that being said, I’m headed back to the good old of USA in a couple of days. That’s not to say I didn’t love India, I did and I know that I will always come back here.