Becoming Nerdy

Microsoft for Mac 2011 finally installed. I thought my computer might melt.

I didn't come to India expecting to get nerdier. I thought that I would be going into the rural areas and interviewing villagers on their lives and working conditions in order to write reports that would influence government policy and action towards their desperate situations. This goal was noble, but that sentence is almost laughable now. My first week of my internship I researched fundraising for HEDCON and wrote a grant proposal that ended up being completely worthless because I found out 2 weeks later that HEDCON had applied for it two months before. The second week I travelled with Rachel, which was no problem because though I arrived on June 16 my work didn't think I was starting until July 1. Most of July was spent learning the nuances of facebook, organizing photos and writing this blog. In between I would get some sparse editing assignments or writing an introduction for a report. A high of this time was writing the concept note for the human rights newsletter. The last two weeks have been better as I have been working on writing a report for the conference that I attended around a week and half ago which I finally finished yesterday. I've now been assigned a huge spreadsheet of over 200 families in villages in the area surrounding Jodhpur and been told to analyze and write a report. This is largely over my head and I have little instruction, but I managed to find the results that the report is looking for and my oldest brother, Aaron, suggested that I should use Pivot Tables to organize and sort some of the data. So I downloaded a trial of Microsoft for Mac and am learning how to use excel. Today I even figured out how to use pivot tables which is saving me extraordinary amounts of time. I'm trying to keep my expectations low on the value of this report or that it'll be worth anything to my bosses but I'm learning a lot just by fiddling around with excel. I have concluded that I enjoy being a nerd.

Today, August 5th, is significant for three reasons. First off it is my Grandpa's birthday!!! I'm sad to say I don't remember exactly how old he is but I think he'll be somewhere around 84 or 85. He and my grandma live on a farm only 30 minutes from my house in Bellingham, WA and since my birthday is on the 6th we would often go over on the 5th and have a joint celebration. This will be only the second summer of my life that I can remember that I missed this tradition and it's pretty bittersweet. Nonetheless Happy Birthday Grandpa Chuck! The second reason today is important is that it marks exactly 4 weeks until I board a plane back to the United States. I will get to have about one week off from work because I'm finally going on a field visit to Jodhpur and then I'll travel with Mennat for another 4 days (which hopefully involve an overnight camel safari and desert stars). This means that I really only have 2 more weeks left of sitting down office work since I won't be working my last week here. I'm really getting excited for the next few weeks of the time I spend here. I will learn a lot more about excel, see the people and mines that I have read about for the last 7 weeks and travel into the desert. The third reason is that today marks the longest that I will have ever been away from my hometown of Bellingham. Last year the longest time was from Spring Break until I came home August 5th, but now it will end up being from Spring Break to September 6th totaling over 5 months. It would have been difficult as a senior (4th year for you non-American readers) in high school to imagine that I would spend 5 months away from my home and that over half that time in India. A country that has always fascinated and terrified me. This summer has been nothing like what I had expected and taught me more than I could have ever imagined.

Some sort of religious festival of free food everywhere. Not safe for us to eat but smelled delicious.

The trash disposal

Menna and I probably saw over 60 women in these bright colored saris walking down the street this morning on our way to the bus. For as much as I hate my picture being taken without being asked I thought this was too beautiful to pass up.

Menna and I posing with a blinged out truck on our walk back to work. The swastika on the front means good luck in India.