A Lunch Adventure

I had a meeting at Indus International for my school inquiry project at 9am. It was our first meeting so it was short. It looks like I will be at Indus Wednesdays and Fridays working with a history  teacher that teaches 7, 8, and 11th graders. She has been a teacher for 20+ years at private and boarding schools. I will be a participating observer (thanks John for coining the term! People really like that phrase and it seems to be less intrusive than research.). At Indus I will be paying particular attention to their Design Thinking Process (DTP) and Community Action Service (CAS). From the the way several faculty have talked about these student-centered curriculums, it sounds very similar to youth participatory action research (YPAR). DTP is actually part of their core curriculum. My teacher partner and I agreed that we could learn a lot from each other about putting these curriculum ideas into action. It felt great.

I got home at 10:30 am and asked John if he wanted to go out to lunch. Why not right? It is all about "seizing the moment". We decided to go to a place that had chicken and mutton (no beef since cows are sacred in India). I was craving some non-veg (that is what you say when you want meat) since mostly everything we eat is veg. I called our auto rickshaw at 11:30am. And he did not show up until 12pm.



At this point, we were gearing up for a long adventure. John had itranslate all ready to go to inform the guy named Shabbi where to go (we now have a regular auto rickshaw and cab driver that we can call. Thanks to Amrata at Indus who gave me their numbers). Lo and behold their was a lot of confusion and we realized he may not be able to read. But our cleaning ladies came to the rescue. They read it in Kannada (local language) and easily guided him. Still we were unsure if we were going to go to  a local non-veg restaurant. But we shrugged our shoulders and hopped into the
auto rickshaw.






You will be happy to know we got there safe and sound and he took us to a great place with delicious food. Shabbi told us not to pay and that I should call him and he will pick us up when we are done eating. We said ok. We are finding that there is a lot of trust and people are true to their word. It feels great to have a little network of people. Our lunch cost a total of $5 for the both of us and we got home by 1pm. It turned out not to be such a long adventure and really positive. I just need to trust the system. People are kind and generous here. Especially where we live. Everyone knows everyone and if there is a problem, the 24/7 security is always happy to help.

Truly was a great day! I feel a lot of peace and contentment here.











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