India 3.0

Although the school did not get 100% completed in our two weeks there, we definitely made progress and they are currently enrolling students for the school year to start in April. Next February there will be another team heading to Bihar for Phase 2 of this project (any volunteers?!?) where the bamboo classrooms will be made brick, more classrooms will be added, and other projects. And though there was still work to be done when we left, we still needed to properly celebrate with an opening event.

Time to stage the party! Debbie brought some globe beach balls that were a huge hit. 

School kits from Trek Lite Gear in Boulder, CO! Carried those over to India myself :)

Thanks to Toby's connection with Adidas, he brought about 30 soccer balls over for the kids

Grant and I representing NWMSU on the other side of the world.

These ladies were SO great

The soccer balls were a huge hit!

Every party needs a gigantic tent, of course. (Which we didn't get up in time, and had to take it back down. Ah well.)

Lookin' like a celebration

 Team photo before the start of the event

A huge crowd gathered for the event! It was supposed to start at 4 p.m., so it started about 6 p.m. (which was still considered early). TONS of kids - I just hope then enroll in the school.

The program consisted of many speeches, songs, dances, and words of gratitude (in several languages). I gave a short (and awkward) speech on the importance of education for girls. (Apparently everyone wanted to hear the blonde Amazon-woman speak.) Hopefully Gulshan improved my speech as he translated it into Hindi :)

We were also treated to an interpretive dance by a local gentleman about how a life without education is a life without hope. It was... interesting. He broke multiple long, fluorescent light bulbs over his head which surprised us all, and also scattered glass shards among those of us sitting on the stage. It took everything we had to keep (semi-) straight faces during this performance, as demonstrated below :)

The music was thumping and people started dancing as the sun went down. I got some dance lessons from lovely girls in the village but my attempts at dancing brought on fits of laughter from the local children. Ah well :)   It would have gone until the wee hours of the morning, but the Americans shut it down early. We are fun-haters, apparently, and we had an early wake-up call the next day.