My team (Justin, Bo and I) are producing real life stories about social entrepreneurs, which will hopefully become part of the first year curriculum at EDI to help inspire the students here. It\u2019s now the back end of week 3, and we\u2019re halfway through the internship. After two weeks of reading, learning and discussing with our supervisor, yesterday my team were finally awarded the opportunity to start doing some practical work towards our project with a two day visit to our first social entrepreneur\u00a0 having been arranged. Unfortunately, this was an opportunity I had to leave to Justin and Bo, as I am currently dealing with the harsher realities of living in a new continent\u2026<\/p>\n
Today marks my fourth bed-bound day, after falling horribly ill last Tuesday. Beyond just a regular stomach upset, this left me wrapped up in bed, in a hoodie and blanket with the A\/C cranked up to 32 degrees because I had suddenly started feeling very cold (an unusual feeling in India) and soon after I started shivering uncontrollably. Fortunately this passed after a few hours, and I\u2019ve been slowly recovering since, but just not quite back to full health yet. I would love to be able to issue some words of caution or advice for future interns, but unfortunately I hadn\u2019t eaten or drank anything different from any of the other interns here, and no one else fell sick on the same day. I\u2019m clueless as to what caused it. Luck of the draw, I guess, and one of the inherent risks.<\/p>\n
But, I don\u2019t want to end this blog post on a pessimistic note, and I would also like to talk about our weekend trip away last week. We\u2019d decided to get out of Gujarat for the weekend and go visit the very scenic city of Udaipur (in Rajasthan), and it certainly was a welcome break. We visited the City Palace, which is a very interesting and not very typical traditional Indian looking centre piece of the city. The next day we took a cable car up to the\u00a0top of a big hill (or small mountain, I\u2019m not sure which it was) which had spectacular views of the city. We (thankfully!) also had beer for the first time since we left, because alcohol is illegal in the state of Gujarat, although as we\u2019ve heard, it does not actually stop people. However, oddly, despite being legal in Udaipur, you won\u2019t find\u00a0beer on any menu and the charge is disguised on the bill as an abbreviation or increased tax\u2026. fishy!<\/p>\n
In Udaipur we also discovered other foreigners, which in Ahmedabad to call rare would be generous, and it left us staring at them as much we get stared at in Ahmedabad.\u00a0In Ahmedabad, we\u2019re quite the novelty, people want to talk to us, take photos with and\/or of us, poke us or just very politely continuously stare intensely at us. Occasionally the people who approach you will be after some money, through begging or persistent selling; however, I would dare say is not as bad here as it is in the tourist hot spots. Here, in fact, locals have helped us out on a couple of occasions when rickshaws have attempted to overprice us, as I\u2019m told there is currently a movement to fight these kinds of behaviour as a part of the population want to improve India\u2019s international image. It is for the sake of those people that you end up haggling over pennies.<\/p>\n
Overall, on weekdays when we\u2019re stuck at our slightly secluded campus, with the repetitive food, seclusion, painfully slow internet, the lack of a way to get a little taste of home as literally everything has been changed for the Indian pallet (not even Snickers or Coke tastes the same, and all the crisps are flavours you\u2019ve never heard of, and even the \u2018most authentic\u2019 foreign food restaurant in the area mixes things up. I ordered Bolognese, what I got was indisputably Arrabbiata) and other minor things start to hack away, day by day, at your admiration and patience. But on the weekends however, when you venture out to the city or elsewhere, and you get to eat amazing food at vibrant street food stands, haggle with auto drivers, mingle with the curious locals, see incredible buildings with architecture you\u2019d never find at home, and see sights like cars driving the wrong way, four people on a bike, a complete disregard of queues, sights that the locals simply dismiss as \u201cthis is India\u201d when you question them about it. That is when you really grow an affection for this place, which I have. I can comfortably say I love this country and can\u2019t wait to explore it further.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My team (Justin, Bo and I) are producing real life stories about social entrepreneurs, which will hopefully become part of the first year curriculum at EDI to help inspire the students here. It\u2019s now the back end of week 3, and we\u2019re halfway through the internship. After two weeks of reading, learning and discussing with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[41,44,55,58],"class_list":["post-3218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india","category-uncategorized","tag-edi","tag-entrepreneurship-internship","tag-india","tag-internship-only"],"yoast_head":"\n