Kanchipuram

This past Saturday we visited the temple city of Kanchipuram. The city is located about an hour and a half northwest of the college. Dr. Jay's nephews Pradeep had arranged for us to see as much as we could in this city. Our first stop in the village was a temple out of the entire city they had chosen one for us to go to. We walked up to the gates of the Ekambareswarar Temple and it was bigger than any of the temples that we had seen so far. We walked through the gates and made our way to the main temple within. Once we got to that point we walked around the inner temple since we are not Hindu so we cannot go in to the inner parts. Walking around the it was still amazing there are many statues of gods all around. I was also fascinated by the stone work as all of the pillars where almost but all carved from stone. We were hoping to find an elephant somewhere inside but there was not one there that day. So we asked our guides if they knew of a temple that would have an elephant so we could get blessed. We jumped back in the cars and soon arrived at another temple that we ran into and there was our elephant. We each took 2 rupees and gave it to him in his trunk and then he proceeded to "bop" us on the head. There was a challenge of getting a picture because the elephant man said no pics so we had to hide behind one another and try to get the picture.

After our temple visits next on the list was the silk saree factories. We drove down many back streets to get to the place. We arrived at a house and just thought that we were lost but they told us to get out and come in. To our surprise there were four big looms that they use to make the sarees. They started to show us what they do and how they do it, that's when the next surprise came. This factory was making gold sarees and doing it all by hand, the shuttles were thrown across by hand and everything was done by hand. It takes them about 10 days to complete on saree, depending how fast the maker wants to work. But in the end they come out looking beautiful.

To finalize our trip in Kanchipuram we did a little shopping. Our first stop was a saree store to buy some scarves and other things. They had so many to choose from it was very hard but we were all able to pick a few out to bring home as presents. After that we just had to get some food at a super market and then go back to the college.

Cardboard Boat and Mindtrekkers Demonstrations

. Our projects came to an end this past week with four days of science lessons at Panchayat Union Middle School and Government High School.

The lessons started at Panchayat on Tuesday with the cardboard boat lesson. Kasthuri helped us to translate the lesson into Tamil so that the children would understand the points that we were trying to stress. We've found throughout our time here that the language barrier is a lot more difficult to overcome than we initially expected. We tried to compensate for this by using visuals in our lessons. We asked the children what a boat/ship is, what they are made of, and what they are used for to start off the lesson. Then we proceeded to explain the physics of a boat and how much weight it can carry (in the most basic sense). After the lesson, it was time to build some cardboard boats. We broke the classes up into groups of 4-6 and provided each group with a medium-sized piece of cardboard and an 8 inch segment of tape and gave them about 10 minutes to build a boat. The testing became the most exciting part of the lesson as everyone huddled around the bucket and counted the stones that we dropped into the boats. Many of the students had tried to copy our example by making a square boat, but some got a little more creative. The strongest boat held 222 stones! We were pretty impressed. It took us two days to do the cardboard boat lesson with each of the classes at Panchayat.

On Thursday we went to Panchayat (yet again), but this time we had supplies for our Mindtrekkers demonstrations in hand rather than cardboard. We performed two demonstrations for each class: the CO2 balloon and Oobleck. Madelyn was appointed master of baking soda and vinegar, performing the CO2 balloon demonstration for the day. The demonstration was well received (especially because they got to play with the balloon afterward), but it was nothing compared to the excitement over the Oobleck. We had to make adjustments to the demonstrations so that the teachers understood well enough to be able to explain the concepts to the students, but in the end everything translated well and the teachers had some fun with it too. Each of the students got an opportunity to play with the Oobleck and observe its properties.

On Friday we took the Mindtrekkers demonstrations to Governement high school. Since the students at the high school were older and a bit more mature than the middle school students, the demonstrations went even more smoothly than they had the day before. There was a lot of smiling and laughing as the students got a chance to get involved with the demonstratinos hands-on. At the end of the day, their main science teacher requested that we send him the lesson plan that we used so that he could continue the Oobleck demonstration. We were glad that they found the lesson so worthwhile.

We brought MTU husky tattoos for the kids, which were a great hit!

The last little project-related task that we completed yesterday was purchasing and delivering a few  much-needed cooking vessels to the very grateful headmistress at the Panchayat school.

After working at the college and in the villages for the past 5 weeks, it's a little odd to be done with all of our project work. Our last few days here will be spent packing and saying goodbyes to our contacts at KVCET.

Mamallapuram

On Friday we drove into Mamallapuram (or Mahabalipuram), where we spent the day exploring many different sites of ancient stone carvings. We weren't able to make it to all of the famous sites, but we did visit Five Rathas, The Lighthouse, and Shore Temple. The statues were amazing, and the unique part was that they were each carved from a single enormous rock. In the afternoon we checked in to our hotel, which was a very nice resort on the ocean. The single best part of the hotel stay was the food, which was served buffet-style. After struggling to find safe things to eat earlier in the trip, we ate enough at Mamallapuram to gain back any of the weight we lost in the first 3 weeks. We even got to see part of the opening ceremony of the Olympics! Dr. Jay and his wife stayed with us at the hotel and were of great help. They took us shopping for stone carvings (something Mamallapuram is famous for) and Gandhi t-shirts. We spent a lot of time just sitting and talking with them at dinner, and heard all about Dr. Jay's first visit to America in the 1960's.
The trip to Mamallapuram was a great relaxing weekend, and we very much enjoyed seeing the historical sights and carvings and learning about that part of Indian culture.

Handwashing Lessons

Time to catch up on blog posts from before we got sick!

One of our planned lessons was to use Glo-germ to teach kids about proper handwashing techniques. Glo-germ, for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of playing with it, is a bright pink oil that shows up neon orange under UV light. So we gave each of the kids a few drops to rub all over their hands, had them wash their hands with soap and water, then we shined a UV flashlight on their hands to show them the spots they missed and where they should be concentrating on when washing. The Glo-germ is supposed to mimic germs, to show where dirt and bacteria stick the most, like on your knuckles and under your fingernails. One of our contacts helped us translate, since Vaiyavoor's school is a Tamil medium school and none of the kids speak English (more than "hi!" or "super!"). We also taught the kids a little about common bacterial species, like e. Coli, Salmonella, Staph, and and Streptococcus.

Updates from the Past Week

Hello and sorry for not posting in so long!
We're all back at the college now after spending a week in the hospital with Nicole and Abe. Both are doing much better now. The doctors say they either had a case of severe food poisoning or a stomach virus, but we're just glad they're both healthy again. We have been instructed that it's probably not a good idea for us to eat the food here at all, since it could have been prepared with water that could make us sick. We went to Chengalpet yesterday to pick out a small refrigerator and hot plate so that from now on we can do our own cooking. We're happy to be back to normal and we're scrambling to schedule our remaining meetings and trips to the schools. We're travelling to Mahabalipuram this weekend (google it!) and next week we plan on fitting in both the cardboard boat demonstrations and other MindTrekkers science demos at the Vaiyavoor school and the Government High School.

Struggles

The past day or two has been a little rough for us. We took Nicole to the doctor yesterday morning for food poisoning, and she's been in bed resting since then. Abe stayed in bed this morning too to rest. The food we've been eating seems to have caught up to us and we're all experiencing some digestive issues, to say the least. We're thankful that we've had some down time yesterday and today and the group can rest and take things slowly.
Our phones stopped working yesterday and we're trying to get them turned back on. Apparently there was some issue with our passports as ID and the parent phone company has barred us from making calls or sending text messages.
We figured out what's causing the little red bites on our legs and arms...bed bugs. We did some internet research and found a product that is supposed to help fend them off so we'll be on the lookout for a can of that this weekend.
We're still trying to get our trip to Mahabalipuram this weekend arranged, and hopefully everything works out and we're all feeling up to a trip. The beach (and possibly some western food) is sounding pretty good right now.
On the upside, we've been doing a lot of reading and resting and we think we might even be getting used to the heat (a little bit.) 
Also, we got most of the supplies for our MindTrekkers demonstrations, so be on the lookout for a blog post in the next week or so about our demo day at the Vaiyavoor school!

Hospitals and Temples and Bird Sanctuaries, Oh My!

Yesterday we toured the hospital / medical school on the campus of KVCET, which offers free care to people in the nearby villages. We dropped off 250lbs of medical supplies donated by hospitals and health departments back home. The biggest difference we saw between this hospital and the ones in the US was the lack of privacy. People wait for doctors in the large, main hallway, and patients are not hidden behind walls or even curtains most of the time. At one point we were called over to see a brand new baby, maybe 10 minutes old, while they wheeled her exhausted mother out of the delivery room. We were invited to talk to any of the patients and ask them why they were in the hospital.

After visiting the hospital we met with the superintendent of the medical school who told us about braces for post-polio sufferers and people with clubbed feet. Right now, the braces are available and not too expensive, but they're very heavy. We're meeting with someone else on Monday to talk more about a possible International Senior Design project from MTU to design a lighter brace.

Today we went to see the local high school, which educates 300 students in grades 6-10. We were surprised to learn that 80% of these students go on to college. The high school is located in a rural area but it seems very well equipped, and we are hoping to visit again and do some of our science demos there. The students were very enthusiastic about our visit and we're hoping that enthusiasm will help overcome the language barrier if we come back to show them the demonstrations we've prepared.

We also visited a bird sanctuary today, which was a beautiful place with a large population of cranes, ibises, and other tropical birds. We also saw our first wild monkeys, who were very friendly and even tried to take a swipe at Nicole's water bottle. After the bird sanctuary we visited a local temple, a beautiful place that we're told is about 200 years old. There are statues of Hindu gods made of solid gold and we witnessed some sort of ceremony with the temple keeper. It was very, very hot in the temple and we weren't sure what was happening but we experienced a vital part of Tamil Nadu culture.
Tomorrow we're venturing to Chennai to do some shopping and sightseeing.