105 Degrees

Yup, that's how hot it is right now. If Will and I come home looking a little thinner in a few months, you'll know why.

Other than the heat, things are moving along well here. I hope to be posting pictures over the weekend of what the kids and I have been doing:
-Cardboard Fruits and Veggies
-Newspaper Weaving
-Paper Mache
-Straw blowing Watercolors
-Cereal Box Stencils
-Paper Rattles
-Paper Dolls
-Cardboard Looms

Amazingly I've only got 2 weeks left with the students here, as schools let out on May 15th for a holiday and then later resume for a summer session. This means I only have 2 or 3 more classes with each group of kids that I work with. It feels like it came up suddenly, and I'm now in the process of thinking what I'm leaving for this program after I've gone back to the states. I've been thinking about creating posters of all of the projects we did based on theme. I think big visuals would be best as it would make the ideas accessible to both the teachers and students. It's been tricky because my pictures are kind of all over the place right now. Originally I was keeping folders of pictures for each site that I worked at, as I do love keeping organized;-), but the recovery process of the photos has left things scattered.

I got to hear from my housemate Brooks last night. It's hard to believe I haven't heard her voice in over 3 months. She says that the house is doing well, with a little help from my Mom and Dad, and that our cat Mia has been sleeping with Brooks since we left. I think Will misses Mia more than I do, he actually mentions her from time to time. It's nice to know that Brooks, her daughter Emma, and our friend Jess are looking after things while we're away.

Will misses the Phillies, and has begun to mention this fact quite often. We've been getting reports of friends attending games including one where our buddies Matt and Scott attempted to eat one $1 dog per inning. Alas, they "were vanquished by the encased meat and only made it to 6"-Will. We're proud of their efforts though, and like to think one of those dogs was eaten in honor of Will's absence.

Go Phils!
Lauren

Pictures Found!

Well, after 2 weeks of vigilantly working on our laptop, Will has recovered our pictures. This is an amazing feet to me as I am not tech savvy at all. I had given up the pictures for lost days ago, but Will plugged along looking through over 4,000 recovered jpegs. to find our pictures. I'm really proud of him for his skills in this area and even more in awe of his patience. Will is going to continue to look for some videos and other lost items, but after that he will be reformatting the whole computer and then it should be up and running again.

In other good news, our friends Kristin and Derek have confirmed that they are coming to visit us for our last week in India. I'm really excited to show them the community of friends we have developed here, where we work, and this beautiful area we currently call home. I'm sad they'll miss meeting Jo and her dad Owen though. Jo is heading back to the states with her dad to visit family and check out some conferences/resources for children with special needs. Jo is always on the look out for what is new in this area and I am not at all surprised that she is using some of her much needed vacation time to continue working for her staff and students back at the Latika Roy Foundation.

Jo has been an exceptional boss to me. She is runs a tight ship with an open mind and heart. Jo has also become a dear friend to both Will and I, and I have no doubt we will continue to keep in touch after we part ways. I'm also going to miss Jo's dad Owen. I'd like to think that he and I bonded a bit while I've been here, as I have often stopped in to chat with him to hear the many rich stories of his life. My relationship with Owen has been especially touching to me as both my grandfathers have now passed. Owen's companionship and boyish charm will be greatly missed around here.

Blessings to you all, and to Jo and Owen on their travels back to the states.
Lauren

Will's Petri Dishes

These are fecal coliform bacteria colonies...just the blue ones. The yellow one indicates no fecal coliform presence. I don't really know much more than this, and Will says it's too complicated to explain plus the results are unsatisfactory, but this is what Will's doing right now. It has something to do with water. Sorry I don't have more on this, and Will is giggling while I write this post, but it's so rare that I get to put up pictures of what Will is doing so here it is.

Next week Will is heading up Rajpur road (up the hill heading towards Mussori) to check out traditional water harvesting structures. This project will tap into both his water interests and architecture expertise. Will has been given several books on the history of Dehra Dun and will be looking for references of historical harvesting structures in his readings in order to better understand what he sees over the next few weeks. Will's really looking forward to working on this.

Ngoega

Our friends Rebecca, Tareq and Namdol invited us up to the Tibetan School they are working at. This school is located up the hill from us and is a school for children with special needs. Rebecca and Namdol are physical therapists and Tareq is a volunteer staff member helping out wherever he is needed. This school is really amazing, and the kids live here full time except for during the summer. The grounds are simple yet clean, with lovely architecture. I was really excited to meet a few kids who were going to the local school for the deaf and they seemed pretty pumped to meet me. We exchanged signs and learned a bit from each other. I probably could have talked to them all night if I had not been visiting my dear friends. It made me really miss my kids back at PSD. I miss using sign language and having another way to express myself. It gave me great joy to use sign language with these Tibetan students, and I'm eager for more visits with them.

Will's Sketches

Even if we've lost some of our photos, Will has sketched a few of his favorite places.
1.) Rishikesh
2.) Jaipur
3.) Chandigarh

Lauren's Workshop

Last Thursday I heald a workshop for mainstream teachers at the Latika Roy Training Center. The theme for the day was "Using Art as Tool for Learning in Your Classroom" & "Free and Cheap Art Materials...Where do you find them and how do you use them?". The workshop went very well, and I was feeling a bit more confident this time after having heald a similar workshop for teachers in the Special Ed. field about 2 weeks prior to this one.

As I got to chat over lunch with these teachers, we discovered we had similar issues. Kids are being admitted into higher learning based on tests, and not all students show their skills through testing. How do we get the higher ups to understand this? How do we become involved in this kind of movement? After teaching all day, how do we find the extra time to become advocated for a more well rounded way of learning and achieving? We struggled with these questions together, and I am eager to see our anger turn into hope for the future.

Chicken Pot Pie

So there's this amazing little cafe called Chhaya up in Rajpur Village (that's up the hill from us), run by a local women's co-op, and they make Chicken Pot Pie, and I mean REAL Chicken Pot Pie. They also make Shepherds Pie, using muton of course, along with some absolutely fabulous salads, pizzas and other baked goods. We've gone several times over the past four weeks with a varied group of friends. Our Tibetan friend Namdol had Chicken Pot Pie for the first time ever, and bought more to bring home for his lunch the next day. Chhaya is truelly a slice of home...pun intended. Will and I have definetly reached our limit of being away from home comfort foods, and even broke down and went to Pizza Hut 2 weeks ago. Here is a small list of things we are missing most:

-Primo's Hoagies (Italian Diablo)
-Coffee
-Pizza
-Burgers (preferably BBq'd by our dad's)
-Caseroles
-Salads with lettuce
-Moist Cake
-Milk
-Pancakes with real maple syrup
-Doritos
-Corn on the cob
-Jersey Tomatos
-Whole Weat Pasta
-Fish from an ocean

To be far, here are some of our favorite foods here:
-Mo Mo's (Tibetan Dumplings)
-Just about anything at Kumar's Veg. Resteraunt
-LOTS of fresh fruits and vegies. I eat a whole watermellon every 2 days!
-Anything Jo cooks for us, as she is the queen of baked goods and fresh salads around here.
-Anything Priyam's mom cooks, and I love that she patiently explains how everything is made.
-Lisa's cup of tea.
-The chai served at Latika Roy's Training center, I think they put ginger in it.
-The Barista Coffee shop at the book store in town serves decent coffee drinks..with ice cream!

While I'm posting about food, Will is at home working on our laptop. He is currently trying to recover things that are lost, put them on our new hard drive and then I believe he's going to reformat our whole laptop.
Big job, and I'm glad, and thankful! he's got to do it;-)

Computer Crash

Well Folks,

we're not sure what happened but our laptop is on the fritz. Half of my photos were lost (thank goodness I've been making posts on the blog as back up for some!), and several of our documents are now missing. Most of the damage seems to be on my side under my log in. We aren't sure if it's the heat, the hundreds of photos we've got saved, or a virus, but Will is using every trick he knows to fix things. Mean while we have bought a hard drive to back things up on in the future, and there is a computer place that does data recovery should we need it.

Because we won't have our own laptop to use for a while, posting pictures may be slow for a bit. But, we're hopeful that things will resume to their normal state quickly, and our friends at Latika Roy have been great about me using their computer until our laptop is back in order- Thanks Priyam!

In other news, I finally decided to do something about my stomach as it's been acting funny for about 4 weeks now, and am currently on antibiotics to fix things. 1 weeks supply of two drugs came to 25 rupees, which is the equivilant to 50 cents in the states. At first I was like "WOW!", but Will and I have been reading a book called "Everyone loves a good drought" that reminds me of the fact that most rag pickers here make about 30 rupees a week. Puts things in perspective a bit....

Hope to be posting soon.

Love to all,

Lauren

Pictures from Chandigarh

So here are some pictures from our trip. Our housemate Lisa and I are at the top. You'll have to excuse my expression in some of the pictures as I was not always feeling well, plus it was pretty hot. It's 98 degrees today in Dehra Dun! Many of the more well known buildings in Chandigarh were designed by architects Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Matthew Nowicki, and Albert Mayer.

A long weekend's rest....and some architecture.

Hello All,

I'm here at our local internet cafe "Emotions" (gotta love the name:-), catching up on emails and our blog. I'm unable to put up our pictures at this time, but I did copy and paste this one of the swanky hotel we stayed at. Will, Lisa (our new housemate), Rebecca, Tareq (friends who are working in the Tibetan colony near by) and I took a 5 hour train ride out to Chandigarh this past Friday morning and arrived easily and safely at our fabulous hotel Aura Vaseela. We spent much of our time relaxing in our rooms and around the pool and headed into town only to see one or two sites as well as hit the local restaurants for dinner. This layed back weekend was exactly what we all needed, and because we split the costs of our 2 rooms, train tickets and taxi rides we each only payed about $80 for the 3 days that we were away (not including meals). Getting a good bargain always makes things more relaxing.

Because there were 5 of us, we were also more easily able to break up into small groups and do our own thing. Will actually set out on his own for a whole afternoon of hunting for and drawing pictures of some well known architecture in the area, while Tareq did some shopping and the girls and I headed back to our hotel for more napping and swimming.

Unfortunately my stomach problems have sprung up again and I think I'll be talking to Jo's doctor friend for some antibiotics as my tummy is starting to interfere with my day to day life.

Ravi, Will's boss, is talking about sending Will out on a short trip again. Ravi also mentioned that he has a surprise for Will, which we will find out about tonight over dinner at Jo and Ravi's house. Could it be some architecture work?

I have to mention Lisa a bit, as we've been living with her for 2 weeks now. She is just a few years younger than Will and I, comes from Ireland, and has turned out to be a real kindred spirit. Traveling together I think has really proved that we are all getting along very well, as it often pushes people to their limits. Lisa and I have begun to go out together for coffee and shopping a few times a week, and are even reading the same series of books. I am enjoying Lisa very much and it's nice to have a gal pal in the house.

Will post pictures soon.

Love to you all,

Lauren

Chandigarh

Heading to Chandigarh for a long weekend with friends. We may not be able to check email as much for a few days, but will do our best to keep in touch. We'll of course bring back fun pictures on Sunday;-)
Love to you all!
Lauren & Will

Multitasking

I often wonder if I'm teaching enough multi-stepped art projects.
I think this picture proves otherwise.

At the Satelite Early Intervention Center we used old toilet paper rolls and coffee to create these fun circle stamped works of art.

Bottle Bangles

In India many bracelets and bangles are worn by both men and women. In my efforts to continue to use plastic bottles and bags as much as I can in my projects, we made some Bottle Bangles at Latika Vihar (the after school program). First we cut out the plastic bangle from the middle of the bottles, then we wrapped them in fabric and decorated with the bottoms of the bottles. Some of the kids even used the leftover tops of the bottles as little toy trumpets! It was nice to see the whole bottle being used, and I loved it when my little buddy Asheesh turned the bottle bottom into a star (2nd picture from the bottom).

Movers & Shakers

In Karuna Vihar I noticed that many of the classes have music time. In the fish class we decided to make some instruments, using old bottles, fabric and a variety of beans and lentils to create different sounding shakers.

This is pretty cool! Bottle bottoms turned art/curtains. This was created by a British designer named Michelle Brand. Pretty sweet idea.

(Picture taken from Fabulously Green website)

A post about me. How nice!

So, Jo wrote about me a few weeks ago. I thought I was pretty good at keeping up on her blog, but as I was skimming down her history of posts today I saw one about me! It puffed me with pride of course to see such nice things written about me, and to have affirmation of the work I am doing here. Check it out if you want " Lauren Stichter and Her Bag Full of Tricks". Thanks to Jo for taking the time to write such lovely things and an extra thanks to my mother-in-law Connie who was on top of things enough to comment on Jo's post the day after she put up the article;-)

*Picture stolen from Jo's blog.

And we plug along...

Will and I got back to work this week, me with my kiddies and Will in his lab with his petri dishes and water samples. Will is pumped that today is the first day of baseball season back in the states, and although he was sad to miss his fantasy baseball party back home with the boys, he isn't feeling to bad about the young pitchers that ended up on his team.

I got sick again this week, which was not fun. It was actually worse than the one last week, and although I will not share the gory details, it's taking me much longer to recover this time around.

Yesterday our friend Priyam took us up the hill a bit to a small restaurant called "Orchard" where we had a mix of Thai, Chinese and Indian food while sitting under an umbrella, looking over the small farms below and listening to....wait for it.....country folk music that I'm sure was pulled from my dad's CD collection back home. We relaxed, played cards and enjoyed the view.

Jo has lent me the West Wing series, which has been interesting to watch. It makes Will and I talk about what's going on back home with our own new president. It's harder to get regular information while we are here, not because it's not available to us but because at home everyone talks about it, where here we need to search out more on our own.

We've had to search out some of our own spiritual life here too. At home our responsibilities to our community kept us on a regular schedule of growing our selves in dialogue with others. Will and I are now struggling with how to do that together and on our own while we are away from the community that drives us forward. It's especially easy for me to let my mind and spirit go on vacation, and I often even find myself justifying this with all of the work that I have done over the past few years back in the states. But so much of that work was done to serve others, which in all honesty helped me feel good about myself. So here I am, knowing full well that I am only on this earth to serve one being... and it's not me. I've been reading this great book by H. Nouwan called "The way of the heart", which is leading me to write songs again and helping me remain connected to the one who offers the greatest love of all.