Today we were invited
by Sudha to meet with the head of the department of zoology. Sudha is currently
getting her PhD in zoology (studying shrimp biology) and arranged it for us.
She asked each of us individually and was so excited when we all agreed. When
we first arrived we went into a conference room and just visited for a little
bit. Some first year PhD students came in and introduced themselves. After a
little bit they took us to what they called a museum. Really it was just a room
of shelves with animals (mostly marine) in jars of formaldehyde. Sounds a
little boring but it was actually really interesting to see. I ended up talking
to Dr. Nuckolls about what animals were around Vizak. So far we have only seen
tiny spiders and some lizards but that's about it. Apparently though, there are
quite a few large spiders, giant scorpion (the boys have seen a large one dead
on the road), and cobras. Cobra is what telugu means so people here can't kill
cobras that are in their home. Instead they have to call a cobra killer to take
care of them. I'm crossing my fingers that we won't have to contact one.
For the concert last
night there were three singers, one each hour. It was classical southern India
music which was very good but very repetitive after a while. We ended up only
staying for the first hour and then heading back home for dinner.
Lizzie and I are so
excited to start working with Green Vision. With our majors in health
promotion, my minor in international development, and her minor in non-profit
organization observing their programs is very exciting. However, we don't know
if Stephanie (our internship advisor) will like if we aren't doing or in charge
of anything. So we decided we're going to make a mock evaluation plan for one
of their programs and have Prabhakar look over and evaluate it. We're pretty
sure it'll never be used but at least we go through the process and have
something tangible to show for our internship apart from our survey. Now we're
even more excited. I'm not sure though if everyone are going to continue coming
to Green Vision with all of us. The subject isn't as interesting to them and
all they want to do is participate in actual project activities which doesn't
seem feasible with Green Vision since we don't speak Telugu and we are only
here for four months. I'm actually hoping that eventually it will only be
Lizzie and myself since that will help us be more intimate with the workers and
be able to find out more about their infrastructure and program planning
process.
Well I'm off to the
Conference tonight. We have no idea what to expect and we're all kind of
nervous but excited to. Miss you all!
Kendra
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