The following post features student writing.

After a busy first few days in the village, we are finally developing a routine! Every morning we take a thirty minute walk to our worksite, a temple with the best breeze around. The first few days, while we awaited the arrival of the supplies to build our chabutra, we began painting the intricate fencing inside the temple. Our busy days continue in the afternoons when we visit Tara Ji’s home to work on making our dresses. It didn’t take long for us to discover the insane amount of difficulty that is creating the intricate beading on the scarves and sewing our skirts.

On Monday, our hard work paid off when we had a Fourth of July celebration! First, dancers from the village came to the Raola and danced for us. Two girls around our age danced while men played large drums. We even got to try out the dancing a little bit, and later we will get the opportunity to take dance classes from them. After dinner, we continued the festivities with sparklers, confetti guns, and some Indian “fireworks.” It was so much fun to celebrate America’s independence all the way from India!

Painting continued on Tuesday morning, and we worked on our dresses again in the afternoon. After our daily dose of chai and cookies, we divided into teams and set out on an exciting village scavenger hunt. From buying candy at the genral store, to complementing people in Hindi, to learning new words, we completed a list of tasks before making our way to another temple. The children followed us, and before long we were sliding down the rocks with them. We have only known them for a few days, but friendships have already formed, and the language barrier does not stop us from communicating with them.

Wednesday brought about a slight change. After a two hour drive through the camel, monkey, donkey, sheep, goat, and, of course, cow filled streets of the neighboring towns and villages, we arrived at Komalgarh Fort. We walked up the steep path to the top, where we took in a picturesque view of green mountains that seemed to go on forever. Then we had lunch at a beautiful hotel that resembled a medieval castle and is owned by Mahendra Ji, the owner of our home in the village. After a delicious meal, we were exhausted and got some much needed rest time relaxing next to the pool, before returning to Kotri Village.

The busy days continue to bring about exciting new things, and today we began the construction of our chabutra! We got a taste of what the locals experience when we carried sand in buckets on our heads. We did some exhausting physical labor today, but were rewarded with fresh fruit and cold lemonade. We are looking forward to tonight’s joint birthday celebration for Lucila and Lizzie! There is never a dull moment here as we continue to meet new people, bond as a group, try new foods, and delve deeper into the amazing culture of India.

All the best,

Kaylee