JV's blogs

Jan 8th:

Market full of jewel colors

Entering the market, my American friends and I was a sudden target for Indian to sell us clothes. They tried to coax us into buying clothes for ridiculous price.  The reason, we are going to the market is to buy ourselves something pretty for open house on Saturday. The market was overwhelming but lucky we had Priyanka on our side to guide us and give us right rates for clothes and jewelry.  This is not the first time for me experiencing being a celebrity in the market because its similar in Kenya due to our color of skin and how we dressed. Priyanka always made sure we are ok and comfortable. Negotiating for price was harder than I thought because in Kenya, I had it easy.  Also other reason why it was hard because vendors seem to be willing to negotiate for better price with Indian people but not white people. Basically I have to pay the price just because I’m white therefore I had to work harder to get better price. But I don’t think I will ever get really good price compared to Indian friends who hassle.

Eventually I finally understood how to negotiating here in India and I got pretty good price for my saree and bangles.  In America, we don’t really negotiate or get that much of attention when we enter market. It was interesting to see how environment is different from what we are used to.  I sometimes wish we could negotiate in America (china town don’t count) because here in india, you can pretty much hassle for better price.  Today I definitely learned from my mistakes and improved my negotiate skills.  I also learned that you get more respect for blending by dressing like Indian people.

Jan 10th:

“Student becomes the teacher
and teacher becomes the student.”

Today, the open house was bittersweet because same time I was glad that campers learned something from us but at same time we are leaving our dear friends here.  The quote I love, “Student becomes the teacher and teacher becomes the student.” This describes how I felt about GRO and open house because we came to teach but same time we learned from them. I learned about India culture, how they welcomed us with their open arms, created new friendship and newfound love for India. I hope campers will keep the wonderful knowledge and give them to other people. I hope the knowledge of what have learned spread around in India then people can learn and achieve their dreams.

Several children came and clutched to me crying and asking me to stay, this touches me because it seems that they love how we teach them and they desire for more knowledge. This shows that our hard work paid off. Also one story I heard that impacted me. Our POC, Carlos told me that one girl who lives in shuktara homes for girl kept hitting other girl. Carols and David the founder of shuktara did not want to  go and solve the problems. They would rather girls to solve on their own because they needed to learn. So after several camp sessions, girl actually apologized to the girl, which shocked David. David was so proud and hurried to tell Carlos, which told us in small matter of time. I pray the impact from the camp would stay with them and they would pass down to other people.