12 days left until the longest day of my life

Yep, that's right. 12 days left in India. 6 days left at field. 4 days for one final excursion. And then the longest day ever. If everything goes according to schedule (which it won't) Chris, Michelle, and I leave Mumbai at 1:50am on the 30th and 32 hours later (via Amsterdam and Memphis) arrive in New Orleans at 9:20 pm on the 30th.

Let's just say the 32 hour trip is not one of the things I'm looking forward to when these 12 days are up.

Honestly, I can't believe that I have less than two weeks left here. Time started really slow, but is definitely now moving at lightning speed. These final days at my field agency are especially busy. November is Adoption Awareness Month and my agency chose this week as our specific adoption awareness week. There are different awareness meetings scheduled with doctors, and nurses, and events for the families that have adopted a child through the agency. It's really great work.

Not only is this last week at my field busy, but the previous week was full of new excitement. Michelle and I went to the Ellora and Ajanta caves and then we met up with some of the other international students in Tuljapur where the rural campus for TISS is and spent the week there.
I accidentally erased my camera's memory card (oops), but was able to recover most of the pictures (yay!) and Michelle let me have her pictures as well before the recovery happened.
The Ajanta caves are all Buddhist caves and some of them are painted. The view was definitely fantastic and we has a guided tour so met some other foreigners as well.

At the Ellora caves there are Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain caves. Definitely more variety and more stairs. Both caves were equally amazing in different ways.

The rural campus visit was definitely a learning experience. This picture is from a village we visited. The two students are from Sweden and the children were definitely not camera shy. We also visited with multiple NGOs and exchanged our social work experience in our countries with social work professors at one of the local colleges. We ended our 3 day experience with some sugar cane juice, which was delicious.


Once I finish my field work Chris and I are planning one last India hurrah in Rajasthan and it may involve a safari. Just 12 days and then you can ask me about it.