Searching in Gadchiroli: The Final Stretch

So I come home in 9 days! And I leave SEARCH in 4ish days. While I am so excited to come home and see family and friends and relax, I'm definitely going to miss so many things about SEARCH and Shodgram and all the amazing people I've met here. One of things I will probably miss most is dance class. I'm not going to lie; it's not always easy - but it is always fun. I love all these kids. We're putting on a performance on Wednesday: they're performing the two dances they've learned and I'm doing one dance. I left costumes and such up to them to decide so we're going to be going to whole nine yards - sarees, make-up, bells, flowers, etc. I'm a little intimidated that I'll be the one in charge of all the dressing and make-up-ing. We had a little trial run last night, just to make sure the sarees would work on the little kids. It was definitely good to practice. I will put up pictures of the performance when I get a chance. Until then, here are some pictures from the other night:

After class pow-wow.

Tanmay and his granddad - SO CUTE.

Also, last Sunday we got the chance to go to Sevagram (Gandhi's Ashram). It was a 5-6 hour drive (so wee spent about 11 hours in the car?) and we decided to just do in one day. This allowed me to watch some surgical action on Saturday night. There was a surgery camp happening - all hysterectomies. So I got to watch that for a bit. There was some light-headedness for sure, but all in all it was a very interesting and good first experience in the operating room. It'll definitely be interesting to compare this to surgeries in the US.

The operating room.

Anyways back to Sevagram. Except for a small bout of motion sickness/breakfast not agreeing with my stomach, the trip was a success. We walked around and saw the places that Gandhiji lived and some interesting personal articles. The western style toilet made especially for him was a huge plus for sure. We also got to see his glasses - much larger than I expected. Afterwards we made some purchases at the book store (10 rupee book - awesome much?) and the khadi store. Khadi is homespun cloth and also was a popular movement started by Gandhi during the independence fight. The aim was to boycott foreign goods (like clothing) and promote Indian goods.