Back to Vaiyavoor...Notebooks in Hand

Today we went back to Vaiyavoor with a plan to gather more information about the needs of the school and village. We met with the headmistress of Panchayat Government School to ask her about the role of the school in the children's lives and its facilities. They expressed a desire for basic amenities (chalk, pencils, soap, etc.) and new bathroom and kitchen facilities. Basically, they are hoping for a commitment to their school from us and continued support throughout the years. We couldn't promise anything to them at this point, but our hope is to build a connection with the school that will be sustained for years to come. We then went to the village president's home to ask her a bit more about the village. She was able to give us a better picture of the type of people that live in the village and the basic needs that they have. We're very pleased with the amount of information that we gathered today, as gathering information is our biggest goal for the trip, and are now working on applying that information to out current projects and projects for future cohorts.

Chennai

Yesterday morning we traveled into Chennai to spend the day with Mary and Andrew (our professors from home) before their plane left at 7pm to take them back to the USA. Our car ride into the city took about an hour and a half and was quite an exciting journey. When we got to Chennai we quickly discovered that Dr. Andrew Storer is quite the master negotiator, bartering with the sellers for everything from towels to toy helicopters. We bought some much needed supplies (soap, towels, pesticide) from a store that caters to Americans, and had lunch at an upscale Chinese restaurant. The food was delicious and a welcome change from sambar and rice. After lunch we found a grocery store and stocked up on fresh fruit, juice, and other small snacks for our room. Under the advice of Mary's sister (a doctor) we bought some peanut butter, "the perfect traveler's food," she says. We're writing this blog post from the college's internet lab, which has about 60 computers running Windows XP. We're hoping to get our data cards for the internet today so we can use our laptops in our rooms and Skype home.

Tamil phrase of the day: Evalo kass? => How much?

What is day? What is night?

We arrived in Chennai at about 1:30am local time, or 4pm EST. By this point, not only were our bodies thoroughly confused about whether it was day or night, we were exhausted from the travel. After waiting for our checked baggage to get unloaded from the plane, we met up with Dr. Jay and a few representatives from our host university KVCET. We got a full-on sense of Chennai once we left the confines of the airport; the amount of people milling about around the airport, the amount of cars (and accompanying horns) were a little overwhelming. We promptly loaded our luggage and made the 70km trip to the college. The driving style is much more exciting than what we are used to in the U.S., but we made it after about 45 minutes on the highway. We promptly found our rooms and fell asleep.

The following morning we were acquainted with the Director of KVCET. She, along with everyone else we meet, has been extremely accommodating to our needs. After our meeting we went to visit Panchayat Government School in the village of Vaiyavoor., where we will be implementing some of our projects. Panchayat is a small school with about 150 students in grades 1 though 8. All of the teachers and students were very excited for us to be there; each class recited a Tamil rhyme or poem for us as we went from classroom to classroom (we even heard the Indian version of the ABC's in one class).
After visiting the school we made adjustments to our lesson plans and plan to return next week to begin teaching.

We are Off!

We left this morning at 6:00am from Houghton County Airport. 

Introduction & Final Preparations

Elorukum vanakkam! (Hello!) Welcome to our blog for our trip to India. Our group consists of four people, members of Michigan Tech's Pavlis Institute for Global Technological Leadership. You can find more information about the group members on our biography pages.

Playing Cricket with Hari and his friends from India

We've been taking classes four days a week all summer to learn about travel and culture in Chennai to prepare for our trip. We've even learned a little Tamil from our Indian TA, Hari. He also taught us how to play cricket and has given us feedback on our attempts at cooking Indian food.

Madelyn with a bag of medical supplies

The other half of our cohort left for Ghana yesterday morning, which made the whole trip seem more real. We are leaving in less than three days! Yesterday we packed up several hundred pounds of donated medical supplies and books into seven suitcases. We're planning to pack our clothes into our carry-on bags and fill one checked bag with food and personal supplies to make our stay a little more comfortable. We're keeping our fingers crossed that we make it with all eight checked bags to Chennai. Our travel time is about 32 hours, with stops in Chicago, Newark, and Frankfurt.