For any SiSA student traveling to India next summer, I strongly recommend bringing as much bug spray as possible and using it continuously. This certainly won’t prevent bug bites but will of course reduce the risk of mosquito and bug borne illnesses. I say this due to my own brush with a mosquito – borne illness, dengue fever. I am certainly not eager to discuss my experience in detail but I will say that I ended up in the hospital…
I figured it would be prudent and productive to describe what a typical day for me is like here working at Selco Foundation in Southern Bangalore. My day typically starts at 7:45 in the morning where I take a quick, very cold and refreshing shower. Sometimes the maid for the AirBnB comes, however, I often try to clean up as much as possible before the maid arrives. I often try to practice my Kannada (the local language, mainly spoken in…
As a part of my intern experience, myself and some other interns (one from Ohio as well) got to go on a work trip up to Kalaburagi in Northern Karnataka to do site visits with some of the individuals and communities that had received solar interventions in cooperation with Selco Foundation. I was so excited to go and leave the city since it had become very overwhelming. The city of 15 million dwarfed any place I had lived in, so…
Both through my independent explorations as well as my work at the office, climate change and its impacts on people have taken center stage. The city itself is adjusting to the complex and unpredictable changes that climate change is delivering. For instance, last year Bangalore had record low rainfalls which stretched the ability of the city to provide the bare minimum resources to its people. This year has certainly been an improvement, but changes are still potently clear. To my…
The first two weeks of my ten week stay have been exhilarating and very interesting to say the least! After being delayed three hours on the tarmac at Charles De Gaulle in Paris, I finally arrived in Bangalore at around 2 am. The landing was anything but smooth. Due to the heavy rains in the area, we had to circle the city twice until conditions were good and once we landed, the plane seemed to bounce on the runway before…
Although I feel like I planned this trip intensely, it never really felt like I was actually going to go to India. Now, as I sit in the airport after coming to the airport 4 hours before my flight (I was nervous I was going to miss it), its beginning to feel very real! I found the actual planning process of communicating with the NGO in Bengaluru, booking flights and housing accommodation, and fulfilling all of the travel requirements a…
