February 4, 2009

We have traveled northeast and are now in the beautiful city of Visakhapatnam, right on the Bay of Bengal. The Rotary club of Visakhapatnam welcomed us warmly at the Waltair Club, originally built by the British in the late 1800's. Since then we have disbursed to different host families around the city. Yesterday we visited a school and a Rotary eye hospital. The school was established by lady Rotarian Chaya and provides a private-school quality education for a very nominal price. Chaya herself particpated in a GSE exchange to Arizona several years ago and reported that she incoroporated many things that she learned during that trip into her school. The children were lovely. When we asked them their favorite subjects, the uniform answer was math! Perhaps our American schools could learn something....

The eye hospital was established and funded entirely by Rotarians -- both Indian, British and American. The hospital provides surgeries and basic eye care to rural Indians and performs some 81 surgeries a month (the 7th busiest hospital in the country). As usual we also enjoyed a delicious lunch of tandoori fish, palek paneer, tomato curry, briyani, and various naans.

Today we visited the Rotary Blood Bank, a project of Rotary Club Visakha Port City. Again, the blood bank was established and is currently run entirely by the Rotarians. It provides blood at half the cost of the government blood banks. We next visited a school for visually challenged girls, also supported by Rotarians. After our visit, we drove north of the city to see the early stages of another IT area (Silicon Hill). Perched atop lovely hillls overlooking the Bay were the skeletons of countless new technology businesses and planned housing for some 100,000 employees. Despite the world economic slow-down, India continues to boom and expects to grow its GDP by some 7% this year. Construction is everywhere in this city.

We are having an amazing experience. Chaya told us yesterday that Indians believe that God visits your home in the form of a guest. We can certainly vouch for that. All of us are meeting wonderful people, eating delicious food, and seeing a glimpse of the real India. While all of the classic stereotypes are here (cows ambling along the roads, horns constantly blaring, colorful markets, monkeys, temples everywhere), we are also seeing the commitment to education and community service.

Carmen has become our language guru as he is picking up Telegu (the local language) incredibly quickly. We can always find Craig as he is usually the tallest person around for miles! Mr. Thomas (as he is called) is doing a great job of looking after us all.

Weather continues to be warm and steamy -- can't say we are missing February in Oregon!

Namaste.