Sunday, 19 June 2011

A Day at Deloitte


This is some India landscape from the windows of a tall building.




This is part of "high tech city."  I couldn't take pictures of the other buildings because they are crazy about security and won't let anyone take pictures.  High Tech City is a small (very small) section of city where all the nice buildings are.  It is really clean and they have nice landscaping done.  If I didn't look too far to the left or right it felt like the US.  I liked it there...


Deloitte does and Impact Day every year on a Friday where the whole company does not make a dime.  They have to help out in the community instead of work.  It was really cool.  I went to this meeting with Subhash the director of CARPED.  CARPED is the NGO I am working with on the Missing Children Project.  This group of employees was working with NGOs to help them with PR, web design, or grant writing.  I went with two other employees of CARPED, who didn't speak english.  It was so weird because I was the one who had to communicate on behalf of CARPED.  I am in their country but for once since I have been here I was the one who could understand what was going on.  At one point Subhash (Subhash can speak english, but it is pretty broken, he is not all the way comfortable in english) disappeared and all the the Deloitte employees were asking me all of these questions about CARPED and what needs to be done.  I have only been with CARPED a couple of weeks but I just pretended like I  knew everything.  It was a kind of scary.  The Deloitte people are really smart professionals so they had in-depth questions about what needs to be done.  It really put my public health knowledge to the test!  The other two CARPED people who didn't understand were just smiling at me, like yeah doing great.  Haha hopefully I moved their organization in the direction they were wanting.  


I met a fellow white friend, Kristen Thomas.  I was so happy that I could easily pronounce her name.  She is living by herself in India for three years to help them with internal communications.  She is from Georgia.  She was so nice and I could understand every word she said.  A lot of the people I have worked with speak english, but I really have to listen to hear through the accent.  I usually miss some of the words so I have to piece it all together.  


At the end of the day they called my name and everyone clapped for me and I go to go up and get my "award" for helping make the world a better place.  Haha it was pretty funny.  All the employees from the visiting NGOs went up.  There were 13 other NGOs there all together getting help with IT stuff for their projects.  There were some really amazing people there doing some really cool projects.  There were projects dealing with child labor, trafficked women, and AIDs amongst many others.  I am amazed at home many people I have met here that dedicate their lives to helping others.  I got to meet most of them and they told me about their projects.  They are all so passionate about it and have been working on it for years.  I was really impressed with how much they really care.  


My award, a rolling multifunctional pen set, not to be confused with a pencil box.  



I had to wear my badge all around so I didn't get kicked out.  They had security swarming the building.  The building was really nice and very clean.  We got two snack breaks and they fed us lunch.  It was great.  

IMAXED out on Carmel Corn


We decided to go to the IMAX theater to see Pirates of the Caribbean and I was pleasantly surprised to find such a nice establishment.  



They had a lot of concession choices.  I got a chocolate milk shake and some carmel popcorn.  Haha I didn't hold back.  The milk shakes here are more like chocolate milk, but a bit creamier.  I did manage to eat a lot of popcorn say a whole bucket practically.  I bought it with the intension to share with everyone but I was on the end and no one wanted it.  I didn't feel so good later and we will just leave it at that.  


This is pretty dark but the theater was huge.  I got in trouble for taking this picture because they do not allow any photography in the theater.  I guess they don't want me to record the whole movie on my small digital camera and sell it for cheaper on the streets.


The 3D glasses here in India are a little more stylish than the ones in the states.  They get pretty mad if you damage or break them.  

Sunday, 12 June 2011

Village Trip




So we went out to see the site where one of the NGOs we are working with wants to build a science center and this is what we found... lots of very large rocks. The science center might be a little more difficult then we originally thought.



We went to visit a village near the town of Kowdipally.  These are some of the women who were out in the field when we arrived. 


Lexi and I with some of the tribal women.  



Their are way more boys then girls in India because girls are not wanted as much.  It is somewhere around 800 girls for every 1000 boys.  



We obviously are not the first health people to visit...


This is the nicest house in the village and they have a tv.


the roof


dirt floors (it is very rude to wear your shoes in someone's home)


the kitchen/storage room


Cooking over an open fire


Some of the little boys clothes were literally hanging on by a thread


This lady wanted us to take pictures of everything and show her.


Just hanging out.  Those are some more "houses" behind them.


Some of the men in the tribe




They have some wells where they get their water.  I am not sure who this water is for but it seems sketchy just sitting out there.  


They liked hand signs but no one was catching on in this picture.  haha I just look like a dork!



The girls.  They were really shy but so pretty and nice.



They farm for money.  They use about half of the crop and sell the other half.  



haha this little boy was jumping in front of my camera every time I tried to take a picture.  I had to start taking then when he was not looking.


again


I finally caught on and gave him his own picture.


They throw just about anything up there to keep the roof on I guess.  


This is a hut with cell phone charging cords rigged up there from some electricity thing that was not exactly a plug.  






This is the community shower room.



scare crows?







sweeping the dirt




running after us to say good bye


We drove for a long time in these autos down dirt roads.  There were like 10 of us in each of them.