TAJ MAHAL, Agra, India

This is after a 12 hour train ride to Agra!

What an amazing love story! The Emperor marries the love of his life, Mahal, when she is 20. She has 14 kids in the next 19 years and dies at 39 giving birth to her last child. His love for her was so great that he built an amazing and beautiful monument for her. He put such love, workmanship and beauty into this marble monument of love. It took 20,000 people and 22 years to build. It is one of the seven wonders of the world!

The Emperors third son, after killing his older two brothers, became the last of the Great Mogul Emperors. He was a bad ruler. He imprisoned his father in Fort Agra for the last 7 years of his life. His prison window had a beautiful view of the Taj Mahal.

After the Taj Mahal, I visited Mother Teresa's Orphanage. 

After the Taj Mahal, we visited Mother Teresa's Orphanage.  It was a very good day...

More Days in Dehradun, India

Peaceful protests are all over India in support of Anna's fasting against government corruption. 

My days are flying by in Dehradun. We stay busy everyday! India made national news in August. Anna, a spiritual leader, started a fast against government corruption. He fasted for 12 days. Every city in India, including Dehradun had peaceful protests and marches. The people love him so much and they were glued to their TV each day to watch the progress of Anna versus Congress. It’s over now. Anna is back in his village and things are quiet. Let’s see if Congress will stop their corruption.

Anila's neighbor got a new wheelchair.  A new TV is next. 

Anila’s neighbor has been paralyzed and bedridden. One of the Rotarians bought her a wheel chair. Here we are giving it to her. She was so happy! Anila will buy her a TV so that she will be connected to the world and will have a source of entertainment to keep from getting depressed. She is a very nice lady.

Getting finger printed for the Peace Corp.  

I got my first red dot on my forehead at this temple, then we ate lunch here.

I went to town last week to get fingerprinted for the Peace Corp. What an adventure that was! Anju, a lawyer, helped me find someone to do it. We were sent from place to place. Nobody seemed to have authority to finger print me. At last, though, after many hours, we found a man who would do it professionally. I saw the court house, the prosecutor’s office, and all of the lawyer offices. It is mighty more humble than the court houses and lawyer offices of the US! After fingerprinting, we had lunch at a temple. The whole day was a very cultural experience!

Rotary Membership Development Seminar. DG and Ashok.  

We had a very big Rotary District Membership Development Seminar hosted by the Rotary Club of Dehradun Central. The club put a lot of work into it, and it was very successful. It was a full day of fellowship, food and fun. I met and had dinner with the DG the previous night. This is a VERY active Rotary Club!

Other than the above things, I just go to the school in the mornings. One morning we distributed clothes. One day we had a drawing for tennis balls and a football and packages of gum. After a couple of days teaching letters and numbers to such a wide age group, I decided to change my plan. I wanted to show the kids the world outside of India. So we watched video and pictures of hippopotamus, rhinoceros, zebra, and giraffe of Kenya. I can show them Uganda, China, Ethiopia, Chile, Argentina, Peru….

Asho and Saket Ahuja, father and son, Rotarian and Rotaractor 

More Rotary Seminar pictures. 

My 100th Blog!

This is the school I will be teaching English. We had a Rotary Service Project here. 

The children are holding up their new back packs. 

Rotary Club of Dehradun Central and me

I am very excited to announce that today’s blog is my 100th blog! That is a lot of adventures, travels and service! So today I am going to write about two very exciting projects I participated in with the Rotary Club of Dehradun Central. First, I need to update you on my living situation.

We can't speak the same language, but we can definitely communicate! 

I made a HUGE change! I moved from the Yoga Ashram into the home of a fellow Rotarian. Life at the Ashram was just too solitary and dreary in many ways for me, and actually quite expensive. I needed a safer place and I wanted a more social environment and interaction with others. I am very comfortable in this new home and I have great new friends to be with and share with. I am living in the country side North of Dehradun in a place called Sehestradhara. It is not uncommon to site a leopard here, so I will keep watching. It is monsoon season in Northern India, so we have rain almost all day every day!

Rotary Club President Kailesh 

By moving, I also changed my place of volunteering, which is sad, but necessary. I will miss my little friends at Karuna Vihar and I need to go back to say farewell, but I live too far away now. I am going to be teaching English at this little country primary school near Ashok and Anila’s home. I went here on Friday with the Rotary Club of Dehradun Central. We brought the children paper notebooks, pencils, an eraser and a brand new back pack! It was a wonderful day; a wonderful Rotary project. These children live in such poverty, and I really look forward to working with them. Anila has collected clothes, through Rotary and Rotaract, for the children, and I will distribute them after getting to know the kids.

This young man does not attend school regularly, so we gave him his back pack on the road.

This is where I am living now...Sahastradhara, Dehradun, India

I have seen more of India in the past four days than I had in the 3 weeks at the Ashram. Wal-Mart stores are in Dehradun in the name of “Easy Day”. They sell the Great Value brand there. It was my first time in a big grocery store here; I only knew of the small little shacks along the road. Dehradun has a population of about 2,000,000 people; India calls that 20 lahks. India uses a different name for their big numbers; one lahk is 100,000 and one crore is 10 million.

Anila is thanking her brother for his love and protection on Brother-Sister Day Aug 13th. 

Cousins are doing the same and celebrating their relationship in absence of a sibling. 

Anila's brother has 6 sisters, so he got six bracelets.  Now he gives 6 gifts to his sisters :)

Saturday was Brother-Sister Day; a day that a sister thanks her brother for his protection and love by tying a red bracelet on his wrist, and the brother gives her gifts. I celebrated the day with Anila’s family as they celebrated their siblings.

The kids of the Kusht (Leprosy) Ashram. 

An Independence Day Ceremony 

My new friends :)

Monday, August 15th, is Independence Day for India. The Rotary Club met at the Kusht Ashram, a leprosy ashram that they support throughout the year. We gave them fruit, samosas, and clothes. We had a small flag ceremony in honor of Independence Day. I had never seen leprosy before, but I had read a lot about it because leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, has a famed history in Hawaii. My heart was truly touched there. When I occasionally get to feeling that my life has become difficult, God gives me an experience like this to bring me joy and to remind me that He is with me.

Rotarians handing out fruit and samosas. 

The hand of a Rotarian in the hand of a leper...my favorite picture! 

In India, "kusht" means leprosy. It is called Hansen's Disease in the US.

The children were so happy to be touched and talked to! They held my hand, talked to me in Hindi, asked me to take their picture and laughed with joy when they saw it! I had a truly wonderful day, and you can see by the pictures how happy everyone is. I have said it before, but in a different blog, so I must say it again: Rotary is doing amazing things all over the world, and I am proud to be a Rotarian!

One of the patients with Hansen's Disease (leprosy). 

We are distributing clothes to the men and women of the Kusht Ashram.  We will return another day for the children.  We had childrens clothes, but not enough for all of them.

My Volunteer Work in India

                        

Karuna Vihar School for Children with Special Needs

I want to share with you the reason I am here, so far from home, in Northern India.  I love working with these kids.  They are so precious.  Every day, I go to Karuna Vihar School for Handicapped Children and assist the teachers and just play with the kids.  Am I indispensable or important? No, but the children love me and the teachers are grateful that I am there. There is no such thing as too many hands in a classroom of children with varying degrees of handicaps. I am coming away the winner because at the end of the day, I feel really happy. Every day I marvel at the wonderful teachers that they have and how they manage the occasional unruly child with such love and patience. The lessons are taught in Hindi, but I can understand with clarity what they are teaching and the stories they are telling.  My mornings at the school are the best part of my day.

We play music, 

We dance, 

We sit for stories,

And we play with toys.

I spoke at the Rotary Club of Dehradun Central and I attend the weekly meetings at the Doon Club. The members are kind to me and provide transportation to and from the meetings. Everyone here is so busy with their careers and family that there isn't time for social outings with me.  Rotarian Ashok's wife, Anila and I spent an afternoon in town and ate lunch at SUBWAY (Yes!!) and then I got a much needed haircut.  I have also been to dinner at their beautiful home.

Speaking at the Rotary Club of Dehradun Central.

Anila, her mother and father and I after a Rotary Meeting.

India has a lot of tensions with Pakistan right now.  They just had a large bombing in Mumbai last month. Some people are upset with the US for providing Pakistan the weapons that they turn around and use on India. An American man living in Pakistan was just kidnapped. It's not the safest place in the world for a woman to be: An article in the Delhi newspaper said India is the 4th most dangerous place for a woman to live.  #1 is Pakistan, #2 is the Democratic Republic of Congo, #3 is Afghanistan, #4 is India, and #5 is Somalia.  India is a male dominant society.

Chottie, the Ashram's dog, has become my best friend. She follows me everywhere; to school in the morning, to the market and on my evening walks!

This is the mail truck!

Other than the few hours of volunteering every morning, the rest of my day is restful.  Life in an Ashram is very solitary.  I have yoga for two hours and I walk one hour a day, but the rest of my time is spent reading, working on my computer, napping and meditating.  Even my meals are eaten alone. I am still strugging with my diet of Indian spicy food.  India is doing for me what I knew it would do.  The quiet time has helped me get back in touch with my spiritual side.  I am praying, reading the scriptures and getting in tune with the Spirit again.  I have lost many things in my life the past two years. But I still have my health and I still have my faith in God, and nobody can take those away from me. There is no doubt in my mind that God is guiding me and keeping me safe on this one year trip of service around the world.