First three days

Hello, all,


I write at 6 in the morning , having been awoken at 5:20 by the call to prayer from the small mosque on the edge of campus, and the horn of a passing train (another one is going by now as I type - long, minute+ horn blasts, with full Doppler effect!).

Some mornings there is a lot of amplified activity - people speaking in Hindi over loudspeakers, car horns, the trains, and the calls to prayer. This is blended with the sound of birds - crows (black with a gray collar around their necks), peacocks, parakeets, and other birds. The sound of men pedaling their bicycles (that light "clank clank" and whir as they pedal by) figures in as well.

Most of us seem to be settling into the pace of the conference - we are getting closer to being attuned to the schedule - though many of us still wake up throughout the night - and connections with delegates from other schools are being made, so there are more and more familiar faces and ongoing conversations.

There has been some adjustment on the part of our digestive systems to the new food, but this seems to be running it's course as well.

We have been here a full three days, and we should be having some blog entries from the students soon:

Sabrina - Opening Ceremony, and first conference speaker
Abby - Service Day
Liza - Third Keynote Speaker and student Riika, and Indian Fair
Isa - Adventure Day
Quincy - Closing Ceremony and Democracy Film Presentation
Annie - Departure for Jaipur and Agra

I've tried uploading photos, without success - perhaps these will have to wait until we get back...

Some impressions and reporting from me - the opening ceremony featured Prince Andrew, who went to a Round Square school and is a Patron of the organization, the local Maharaja (a Mayo college "old boy"), a procession of antique cars across the cricket ground that has a tank and fighter jet parked next to it (this IS a boys school!), and a very powerful speech by Ms. Aruna Roy, who has spent her adult life living in rural villages and worked with village people to get a right to information act passed to combat corruption.

She spoke informally, but talked to the conference theme of "lead me from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge" and demonstrated that through personal sacrifice, and continued effort, and a belief in the power of people, that change can be brought about. She was funny, genuine, and a person worthy of great respect.

The day did hold a lot of sitting and listening - we had RS business to attend to in the form of the annual general meeting, and voted on such items (Liza voted for our delegation) as varied as approving the minutes and keeping the auditors. Students were surprised to hear that faculty meetings follow the same format and occasionally similar content...

The day ended on a high note with a presentation on an enormous stage, with elaborate lighting and costumes by some 70 girls from the Mayo College Girls school of the RS pillars in the form of dance, and an interpretation of why each was important. The dances were beautiful, and the IDEALS dances were interspersed with folk dances from around India. The girls must have been practicing for months!

The second day was the Service Day, and also featured a speech by the youngest member of parliament, who talked about the status of Indian democracy, and arrived surrounded by a phalanx of reporters, assistants, and guards with automatic weapons.

The questions from the students were good ones, and he touched on issues of combating corruption, and delivering goods and services to the entire population. The Barazza, or discussion, groups have been good for all of us - lots of student participation, and examination of the issues being raised.

The third day was the Adventure Day, and the Hotchkiss students went some three hours away to Chittorgarh, an ancient fort town. They returned with reports of monkeys and wild pigs, and said that the fort was interesting too!

More importantly, last night was the multicultural evening, and each region had time to share elements of their culture. These performances ranged from a choreographed performance of "Surfing USA" to traditional Kenyan dances, Peruvian flute music, followed by the "Dance of the Anacondas," to poetry and songs in Arabic, to all of the Indian delegates dancing to "Jai Ho" and bringing the other student delegates to the front of the stage in a huge mob of laughing, smiling, dancing kids. The African delegation had a large dance as well to finish their segment, and I can tell that the student social/dance at the end of the conference will be a very succesful one!

Much of this was captured on film by Catherine Tatge and Dominique Lasseur of Global Village Media, who are here to present the Democracy film project that started last year at Hotchkiss, and is becoming a world-wide RS project. They will present the idea for a Democracy Film Festival, as well as "Democracy Outside the Voting Booth" the Hotchkiss film, and also a nine minute collection of video responses from 7 other RS schools to questions about democracy - very exciting!

After the multicultural evening, Charlie Noyes, Chris Burchfield, and I ate with the students, and it was fun to see students learning Japanese dances from the Tamagawa delegation, and then taking photos in each other's traditional dress, and a huge circle of students forming around a female delegate who was teaching them how to belly dance, and just general laughter, conversation, and fun.

The conference is starting to "gel" and it is interesting to hear about the conversations that students are having - dispelling stereotypes, exploring similarities, answering questions about Hanna Montana and Miley Cyrus (collective groan), and oh, also Obama (!), and just connecting with fellow teenagers around the world.

OK - in the next couple of days we will get off campus - go to a mosque in town that is one of the most holy sights in Islam (visit seven times and that is equivalent to going on Haj to Mecca) - and also start to wrap up the conference.

Best from all of us,

DLT