Wednesday, May 11-A Birthday Surprise

Well apparently today marks my 21st birthday. To be perfectly honest I didn’t really register this fact until my phone registered “Happy Birthday” on the home screen. Anyways, in the outreach mindset I assumed today would be like any other day at the school and then maybe in the evening if I was lucky, we would have an opportunity to celebrate back at our house. But, Gabi being Gabi, actually brought me a birthday card from the states to give me exactly on my bday during breakfast. ha it was really cute of her and there was a little golden puppy! I miss my Bailey girl, can’t wait to see her again in a few weeks!

Anyways our day started out with Yoga with the instruction from “Yoga Sir” where we focused mostly on breathing and meditation practices and then we headed to the school. All started normally until we entered the main instructional room where we typically present the first activity of the day to the students. As I walked in, I saw there was obviously something else on the agenda— the 1st thing I notices was the classroom lights weren’t fully on and there were two candles on a silver plate that contained a yellow and red container of powdered dye. As I looked to the other SWE members in the room, I noticed that the chalkboard was also decorated and it said, “Happy Birthday Rebecca” with a bunch of balloons surrounding the board. Essentially what ensued next was 3 different ceremonies/ birthday traditions incorporated from both Eastern and Western cultures. The students started by singing “Happy Birthday” to me with an additional phrase at the end to wish me a “Happy Long Life.” Then there were 5 women (specifically needing to be in Sarees) that took turns to do a plate full (literally) of traditions— putting the yellow and red dye on my forehead, circling my head with the plate containing two lit candles, circling my head with what looked like a wedding ring, circling my head with something that looked like a hazelnut, sprinkling red and white crystals over my head, and lastly putting a little sweet in my year by feeding me “a little bit” of sugar. Mind you this is still 9am. Anyways, precariously there were still TWO birthday cakes in front of me saying, “Happy Birthday Rebecca”, one was vanilla and the other rich chocolate. :)  The woman leading the ceremony placed a pack of candles around the two cakes and lit them for me to blow out. As I did so, there were two boys that were still up in the front of the class…with mischievous smiles on their faces, they took out confetti guns and foam spray cans and went all out! I was covered with foam and Allison had beautifully confettied hair for the day. Then the ladies leading the ceremony asked me to cut a piece of the cakes. Little did I know that instead of smallish wedges, I should have cut minuscule slices! It’s funny how when I reflect on the ordeal I wonder how I didn’t see this next part coming, but oh well—SURPRISE!

So as everything happened, I don’t recall the phrase spoken by the ladies, but I do remember a LARGE piece of cake coming at my face and forced into may mouth in full. ha! The last time I think I had this much cake/frosting on my face/hands from trying to finish eating the cake unexpectedly in my face was probably at my 4th birthday when my “well meaning” brothers decided I deserved to have my face smashed into my cake for my birthday present! The upside to my 21st would be this time, I didn’t have to dig out red frosting from my nose! Well, if I thought that one piece of cake was enough, I was VERY wrong (per usual this morning)! lol I’m just thankful that I didn’t have to receive a piece of cake from all the other SWE members on the trip! Anna and Akanksha (the Directors of the trip) did both get the privilege of feeding me cake too. Now, to clarify half of my problems with eating the cake that was shoved into my mouth originated purely as a result of the fact that I was caught off guard, then started to laugh and trying to chew a large mouthful while laughing rarely goes well for me… lols I’ll find some pictures from other trip members and I know there are a few videos out there I can look into adding to the blog at a later point. Also at the end of the celebration one of the boys went and popped all the balloons on the chalkboard except one. This surviving balloon turned into a toy that Anna attached to my ponytail and proceeded to play tetherball with Akanksha…After wearing the balloon for a few minutes I did take it out and tired it to my purse for the day. 

Throughout the day, many of the students and teachers followed other birthday traditions. One was shaking my hand and wishing me happy birthday or happy long life. One of the students in the camp actually bought over two strings of jasmine flowers to be placed in my ponytail for the day. I’m not 100% sure the significance of this practice, but it was very sweet of her and I had the jasmine kept me “smelling fresh” (a pleasant hint of jasmine followed every step of the day). 

As far as our actual camp was concerned today we had a few bumps in the road—nothing one wouldn’t expect when planning an Engineering day camp. Today was suppose to be the first day of Lego Windstorms activities, but the software needed wasn’t working properly on the computers the school was trying to use. Ultimately, this actually helped us because we were able to devote significantly more time to the other activities of the day. In particular we were able to do Chemical Reaction Bottle Rockets for longer. This gave us additional time to teach acid-base chemistry to the students so they could determine limiting reactants, reaction stoichiometry, etc. before launching their rockets. After the students calculated the amount of baking soda they would need to react with the 100 ml of vinegar we gave them, we launched each rocket. Then we just allowed the students to make modifications to the rocket design and fuel combinations to see if that could influence that airtime and height of their rockets. The students seemed to LOVE this activity and I know I had a blast too ;) 

After the snack break, we introduced the kids to the concept of “Elevator Pitches.” It was a really wonderful way to hear about the students career aspirations, co-curricular activities, and various lessons learned in and out of the classroom to prepare them for their careers. Over the course of the time working with elevator pitches, the students became more comfortable and everyone in our class not only presented their pitch to their friends in their small groups, but they even went to the front of the classroom to present to everyone in the room! I know its only day three of camp, but I can already see the students becoming more comfortable interacting and speaking with SWE members as well as feeling more confident in speaking English, even to the entire class. 

Today in teacher interactions we learned about the basic structure and functioning of Indian Politics. Now that India is a democracy, it is the 7th largest by land area and the largest democracy by population size. Additionally, the voting age in India is 18 years old. In the conversation that ensued we discussed many of the problems in Indian politics occur in the US as well— such as the difficultly of getting voters under 25 politically active (even just voting) and as the two main political parties contain candidates farther and farther from the center, elections become highly polarized, tense and craziness can occur… *cough *cough US 2016 election? 

Then some of our SWE members presented on various recent engineering inventions/innovations, many of them originating from the University of Michigan. Following this discussion, one of the BCA teachers presented on Gravitational Waves! Lastly, we concluded with a Marathi language session. We broke up into small groups (often 2-4 teachers with each SWE member) and had individual verbal language lessons… Lol, this was so hard to do! The room we always use is extremely hot and there are a ton of fans to try and help, but that also adds a lot of noise to the room so we generally use a microphone to help. In the small groups even sitting right next to the teachers it was hard at time to hear the pronunciation of the phrases being taught. Also, so I could try and learn and remember them I was trying to take notes…unsurprisingly I struggled at spelling (phonetically or actually) the Marathi and English translation lol, honestly I think the teachers also stopped trying to correct my spelling because they didn’t know where to begin. Its kind of like when you spell a word when texting and then it becomes highlighted red and says “no replacements found” aka you royally screwed up the spelling that its completely unrecognizable from a computer programing standpoint! 

P.s. Sorry for the essay, a lot happened today...