Timeline

6:30am - HIIT Workout (led be me!)

Today Courtney, Ellie, and I decided we needed some traditional American excercise. We managed with the space we had and did a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workout in our room. It was funny to watch us workout in such a small place, but it was great to squeeze some excercise into our busy schedule.

8am - Breakfast

Americans are famous for loving our breakfast. All 14 of us were in the dining room 8am sharp to eat a typical Indian breakfast of yogurt, cracked rice, and omelette.

9am - Protect that Pill!

Today I presented a segment on biomedical engineering. Biomedical engineering is applying medical concepts to design things to help with the health and well-being of humans. To demonstrate the applications of biomedical engineering, we presented the challenge to design a pill-coating that would dissolve in a base, but not in an acid. This is because several medicines, including aspirin, should dissolve in the small intestine (basic), rather than the stomach (acidic). If aspirin were to dissolve in the stomach, this could cause stomach bleeding.

11am - Water Filtration

The goal of this activity was to create a water filter from rocks, sand, coffee filters, and cheese cloths to filter several kinds of contaminated water. We observed the change in pH before and after filtering soapy, oily, and dirty water.

12am - Project Proposal

Our last activity of the day usually focused on improving English and presentation skills. Today, we discussed how to write a project proposal and asked the students to write a project proposal based on the water filtration system they previously created.

1:30pm - Lunch

Typically by this time, we are really hungry from facilitating the camp all day. Walchandnagar treats us super well and serves us delicious meals and ice cream for dessert for both lunch AND dinner.

3:00pm - Teacher/SWE Discussion (with a surprise!)

Every day after lunch, SWE meets with the teachers to discuss teaching and cultural differences between Indian and American culture. The past few days SWE girls have mentioned how cool we think henna is, so the teachers surprised us with henna today! Henna is a red dye paste left on the skin and “stains” the skin temporarily to reveal an intricate design.

5:30pm - SWE Recap Meeting/Preparation for the Next Day

On our final day in Walchandnagar, the students will put on a performance for us that includes dancing, singing, and more. We are asked to do a short performance in return. We decided that we will sing the American National Anthem, Indian National Anthem, and “The Cup Song”.

8pm - Dinner

Again, a delicious meal of curries, rice, and ice cream for dessert.

9pm - Lights out!

We have an early morning tomorrow, everyone needs to be up and ready by 7:30am for a yoga class by one of the teachers. I’m so excited to have some time to meditate, reflect on our trip, and observe any differences between yoga in India and yoga in the US.