Sunday Meetings June 3rd and 10th

Every Sunday, our organization meets in the park or somewhere, and people, almost exclusively men, give prepared speeches. The subjects range from family values to global warming. At both meetings, the interns and I were asked to talk a bit. In the first meeting, I introduced myself and told a little story about a gardener with whom many there were familiar. The interns also had to speak about what they would be doing, which they had no idea because Vikash had not told them yet. The day after, everyone's picture appeared in the newspaper with short descriptions in Hindi.

Picture that was on the front page of the local paper
(From Left-to-right) Vikash, Raghu, Raju, Jacob, Mahesh, Eric (me), Kapil, and  someone else, I forget right now.

The second the interns prepared far more. They even thought of soft drinks for all the people. This time Vikash completely surprises me by making me talk about the Boy Scouts of America. I had to do it on the spot, so it lacked the structure the other speeches had. Afterwards, I thought of many things I could have done to make it better, but what are you going to do. The interns told me that people struggled to understand what I said because of my thick American accent.