Busting Crackers and Cologne

This past week has been a fairly standard week in the life of an eMi intern; I'm still working on the civil design for the projects I've been assigned to, which are still about a week or two away from completion. There's really nothing that the average person finds exciting about the nitty gritty of my work (designing poop tanks and water systems), so I unapologetically devote very little blog space to discussing those things. Instead, here are a couple noteworthy things from my week outside of work:

• Diwali - This upcoming Friday is a Hindu holiday called Diwali, which I'm told is the Indian equivalent of Christmas. It's considered their "festival of lights", so there will supposedly be massive fireworks shows on Friday, and many have already been set off in the past few days. Yesterday morning, the neighbor kid set off a few firecrackers (known as "busting crackers" in these parts) at 7 AM, a slightly unwelcome start to my day.
• Hindi - My co-worker Graham recently said that his 2-year-old daughter Priya is going through a "language explosion", where she has all-of-a-sudden started talking all the time. Well, for whatever reason, I've had a little language explosion of my own in the past couple weeks with Hindi...which isn't to say that I've been speaking it well or even correctly, just that I've had lots of opportunities to speak it. Everything that I learned from my Hindi classes 6 months ago seems to be flooding my memory, and it's all making sense for once. It's been very exciting for me, and even though I'm rarely forced to speak Hindi, it's nice to have the language barrier broken somewhat.

And finally, here is a conversation from dinner tonight with Hudson, Graham's 5-year-old son:

Intern Katie: "...Maybe he should put some cologne on."

Hudson: "What?? What's that?"

Me: "It's something you put on that makes you smell good."

Hudson: "Boys don't need that!"

Amen Hudson.

Newsletter

Here is a newsletter that the EMI-India office puts out every quarter. It has some great photos and articles that give a little more info on the projects I'm working on and the rest of the staff here.

Himalayan Trekking

Early last Sunday morning, I set out in a taxi with 5 other interns from eMi for a week of trekking in the Himalayas. As some of you may remember from a blog post last April, my weak stomach is apparently no match for the winding roads of India, especially when they are driven like a race car driver. I was reminded of this at the start of our journey when I threw up 5 to 10 times within the first couple hours of our 6-hour taxi ride. It wasn't pretty, but I felt great the rest of the week after that.

Without getting into too much detail about the trek, I'll just say that it didn't go quite as planned. Overall, it was about 5 days and 40 miles of hiking, 5 miles longer than it was supposed to be. Days 1 and 2 of hiking were great – the weather was perfect, the paths were clearly marked, and we made it to our destinations with relative ease. Day 3 we spent near a secluded lake in the mountains known as Dodital, resting up for our big hike the next day. Day 4 started at 6:30 AM with a demanding, steep, 3-hour hike to reach the Darwa Pass, a 13,000 foot high crossing from one river valley to another. Despite a few clouds, the views from the pass were incredible; we saw a number of large snow-capped mountains from just a couple miles away, including a couple peaks that I normally see from about 50 miles away on my walk to work every day. I spent a couple hours just sitting and staring at them and probably could've spent a couple more. It's cliché, but the pictures truly don't do them justice.

Views from Darwa Pass

Day 4b is where things got a little crazy. Once we got to the other side of the pass in the afternoon, the path that we were supposed to follow became really difficult to find. I unofficially served as co-leader of the trek with my roommate and fellow intern Nate, a very smart and nature-savvy guy. (Check out Nate's blog for his perspective and greater detail on the trek.) Those of you who know me well know that, in the heat of a debate or argument, I almost always insist that I'm right. Well...it turns out that I am not right all the time. I learned this the hard way when Nate and I disagreed about which way to go, I insisted that we go the way I think we should go until he relented, and it ended up being the wrong way. It was very humbling to say the least.

Because of our wrong turn, we ended up wandering through the forest for about a day and a half, somewhat lost. We knew where we were and where we had to go, but not how to get there. I kept reminding myself that we had plenty of food, water, and shelter to survive for a while, but my emotions told me there was a chance I would die.

The exact moment when we first went the wrong way

At the critical point of our hike, when we basically had nowhere to go, we decided to head back the way we came. It was frustrating to call it quits but ultimately the right decision. Day 5 ended up being 14 hours of hiking in rain, hail, and snow, through dense forest and seemingly impassable bushes, and for a few hours after the sun had set. It was miserable at the time, but as I describe it from the warmth of my office desk, I have to say it was a pretty epic hike. For all that went wrong, God's providence was apparent through all of it. For example, the same snow that soaked through my shoes and two pairs of socks also reflected the moonlight to light our path as we hiked in the dark. We also saw some amazing landscape that we wouldn't have seen if we hadn't been lost. And the fact that nobody got hurt is pretty incredible given the treacherous route we took. It would've been an infinitely more difficult hike had anyone gotten injured. Eventually, we made it back over the pass, back to the secluded lake, and back onto a bus that took us to the comforts of Mussoorie.

Dead water buffalo, straight out of The Lion King

I think that's the shortest version of the story that I can tell without omitting important details. Now that I am back in Mussoorie, safe and sound, I can say that I'm glad it happened the way it did. I gained more from the trip than I would've if everything had gone as planned – namely, a healthy respect for Mother Nature and a reminder to not think so highly of my own knowledge and opinions.

Lest anyone think that I'm only in India to have fun and hang out in the Himalayas, today I returned to the office, where I have plenty of work awaiting me. Both of the projects I'm working on (KIM and the Kings & Queens School) are still a week or two away from completion, so I will be busy working on the civil engineering aspects and writing the reports for those projects. It was great to have a week off of work, but I can't say I feel too rested. :)

Pinecone Hunt

Just as the squirrels gather acorns for the winter, so too do we at EMI gather pinecones to use in the bucari, a wood stove that serves as our source of heat for the winter months. Last Saturday, we had our annual pinecone hunt on the Mussoorie mountainside, where we collected about 70o pinecones for the winter. I personally collected 58, good enough for 3rd in our friendly office competition.

The other major highlight of the past couple weeks for me was that the other male EMI interns and I have started tutoring a few Indian guys in English 3 days a week. It's a test of my patience at times and a reminder of how convoluted the English language is, but it's been fun getting to know those guys and seeing their English skills progress (ever-so-slightly). It's also been a good way for me to practice my Hindi.

This upcoming week is our intern holiday, our week of vacation for the semester, and we are using the time off to trek the Himalayas, where I hope to take pictures similar to this one:

Please pray that we don't get lost.

Project Trip #2

Picking up where I left off...after hanging out it Chennai for a couple days, I picked up 2 volunteer architects from Hong Kong at the airport and met up with Matthew & Ivy, project leaders for the trip. The next day, we met up with another eMi team from the UK office, and the 12 of us loaded up in a mini-bus and took a 4-hour road trip to our home for the next week, thus beginning project trip #2 for me.

UK-India superteam

The ministry that we partnered with is known as KIM and is run by a widow of 13 years:

KIM already has 8 ministry centers throughout the state of Tamil Nadu, all of them with various functions (church, daycare, school, and vocational training, to name a few), and all of them sharing the general mission of empowering Indian women.

The ministry has recently been given a blank piece of land that will hopefully become a children's hostel and a hospice care center for elderly folks, which is where eMi comes in to help with the design. Our team checked out the site the first day, and the second day, I surveyed the site with Adam from the UK team.

Check out that farmer's tan.

That was about the extent of my work for the KIM project. The next day, I took a train with Matthew and 2 others to work with a different ministry called Mssionary Upholders Trust (MUT), whom eMi has been working with for about 5 years. They are a fairly unique ministry that focuses on meeting the needs of Indian Christian ministry workers through various means, but primarily through providing them a place to take sabbatical and get affordable health care.

MUT Campus

Head honcho at MUT

The MUT squad

The purpose of our visit was to check up on construction around the campus, provide a gentle nudge to take care of some water & wastewater issues on the site, and discuss future development of the campus.

...and do a little manual labor.

After our 3-day visit to MUT, our mini-team reunited with the rest of the team to finish up design for the KIM project and present our design to the KIM board of trustees.

A few more snapshots from the week:

Some guys let me take a turn with the cricket bat. I swung and missed twice.

Local wildlife.

The many fruits we ate throughout the week.

The south Indian dosa, my new favorite food ever.

And now, after another 2 days of traversing the subcontinent, I am back at the office in Mussoorie, eager to stay put for a little while. I really enjoyed my 3 weeks in Tamil Nadu on many levels - getting to explore the city of Chennai, getting to know a little about south Indian culture, meeting some fellow eMi folks from the UK, and discovering an incredible number of ministries that are doing legit Kingdom-building work in south India.

Chillin in Chennai

After my comrades from project trip #1 left to go back to our office in Mussoorie, I had a couple days to hang out in Chennai by myself while waiting for the next project team to arrive. Here is a brief pictorial summary of my activities for the 2 days:

Sight-seeing:

(From top to bottom: Santhome Cathedral, where Saint Thomas is supposedly buried; statue of the great Mahatma Gandhi-ji; and a large Hindu temple)

Golfing:

The course wasn't nearly as nice as it looks, but the novelty of golfing in India was easily worth the $7 I spent on it.

Making friends with my blond hair and blue eyes:

This guy was quite the comedian and made me take his picture.

Going to the beach:

This was people-watching paradise, and probably my favorite activity of the two days. I liked it so much I went 3 times.

Riding in rickshaws:

This was my least favorite activity, mainly because of the extravagant fares I had to pay and the hassle of negotiating prices. On this particular ride, the driver insisted he take my picture in front of his rickshaw.

That's my mini-vacation in a nutshell. I found it pretty enjoyable trying to navigate a big new city by myself, figuring out where to go and what to do, and it was a nice break between projects. Stay tuned for an update on project trip #2.

Project Trip #1

As of Sunday night, I am back “home” in Mussoorie after more than 3 weeks of working on projects in southern India. As you can tell by the lack of updates, internet access was hard to come by while I was away, so I'll try to recap with words and pictures my life over the past few weeks...and I think it will take a few blog posts.

After 2 days of travel by train and taxi, our team of 2 engineers and 2 architects arrived in Chennai, the largest city in the state of Tamil Nadu. We spent a night there and met up with an Indian engineer and an Indian architect, who served as volunteers for our project trip, before heading out to the Kings and Queens School, where we stayed for a week. The school is run by an Indian man and his wife, and they currently provide housing and K-10 education to 264 kids, most of whom are children of Indian Christian ministry workers serving all over India.

Currently, classes are held in temporary structures, in the dorms where kids sleep, or on top of piles of sand (see below), but they will need new, permanent classrooms within 2 years to keep their government registration. They are also hoping to build a new community center that will provide vocational training for people in nearby villages. Hence the need for EMI's help with planning and design.

My 1^st day there was spent expelling all my food from the previous few days (both ends), but I was feeling much better by the 2^nd day. Most of my week on site was spent working on the survey, taking lots of pictures of the site, and figuring out civil design issues - how to get enough drinking water to the site and how to deal with the wastewater. Meanwhile, the architects were busy talking with the principal and his wife, planning the location of future buildings and the details of each building. At the end of the week, we gave a presentation of our design work to that point, and now the rest of the project drawings and report will be completed back at our office.

One of the highlights of the week for me was having 264 kiddos running around the site while we were working. I played soccer with the older boys almost every day, and by the end of the week, they were waking me up at 5:30 AM to play with them.

Towards the end of the week, once we had finished most of our design work, we spent half a day playing games with the kids – duck-duck-goose, sharks and minnows, red-light-green-light, spud, soccer, etc. The boys were split up from the girls, and most of the boys' games deteriorated into wrestle-mania, which isn't too surprising. Everyone seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.

Also, on our last day at the school, a Sunday, our team was asked to plan and lead the worship service for all the students and staff. So our brave project leader Graham did the preaching, and I helped lead worship with some backing vocals.

I obviously don't have a lot of experience with microphones.

We also gave a short presentation to all the students about what architects and engineers do, and I'm pretty sure I convinced more than a few kids to become engineers when they grow up.

Some other pics from the week:

The whole school meets for morning assembly every day before class. Poor kid forgot his uniform.

Our team, plus the principal and his wife on the left.