Hello again, after a winter holiday hiatus! Dave and I took the chance to see other parts of India during the two schools’ winter vacations. I think both of us saw far more foreign tourists in some of our destinations than we have during the months we have spent in Hyderabad! However, I think we both had nice, relaxing trips and met some interesting people along the way. We look forward to sharing stories about our travels in the next coming weeks!

We will recommence our classes starting tomorrow, so both APRS and Vijaynagar Colony will begin to work on their final videos. We are still working on getting complete translations and subtitles for the news video from Vijaynagar Colony but will have their news video about street traffic and child labor up for you to enjoy very soon. In the meantime, here is a short clip from a visit we took to the Girl’s Railway HS in Secunderabad. When we first arrived in Hyderabad, we attended a blind chess competition and befriended a group of girls who were there to draw and sing. This enthusiastic crowd gave us their school address and urged us to visit, so visit we did, and received a very warm welcome! The marching band wasn’t for us, haha, but we were lucky enough to catch them rehearsing for a news crew that was coming the next day to do a story on them. It looks like we beat the news crew to the chase and got footage of these great musicians first
The school principal told us that this is the only all girl’s marching band in all of India, since the few schools that do have music programs mostly focus on the boys. Being a former hardcore “band geek” myself, I was ecstatic to see all these young women in full force, and hope that they will continue to pursue interests that may not be as common for women in their communities. One young woman we were speaking with told us that she wanted to become a politician. I have not only worked with students here in India, but high school students from the west side of Chicago and students at a summer program for gifted and talented high schoolers, and she is the first young person I have met that has so enthusiastically expressed their interest to be part of a profession that may have picked up a negative stigma. Speaking to this girl was a great sign to me, for young people to realize that in order to create positive change, we need to have intelligent, strong, compassionate leaders in charge. Perhaps one day I will open the newspaper and find India’s new prime minister to be the girl we spoke to.

[youtube=http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q7aSbUPrIU]