Settling into Udaipur

I’ve started to get pretty settled in to my new life here in Udaipur. Life here moves a lot slower and I think it was helpful that I had that expectation coming in or else I would have been more anxious about my time and frustrated with work. Here’s a quick updated on the various aspects of my life:

Work:
Alvaro and myself were able to pick up right where Ron left off on the microfinance project. We started by creating a standardized exam for the existing accountants because there were concerns that they were not correctly tracking the SHGs (“small help groups” or group of village women). The next steps with this project are to create an auditing system so that the accounting books get checked at least once a year and then to create and implement some performance measurement tools to track how the various groups are doing with savings and loans.

While the project has been pretty interesting, it did not seem like there was enough work to keep two volunteers busy over the upcoming year or so. I asked if there were other projects that I could work on and was given a list of alternatives. One of the projects that seemed really interesting was helping local farmers bring their product (custard apples) to market directly rather than through various middlemen, who take all the profit. I have just begun to learn about the project and will post more about it as it develops.

Trips:
Here are some pictures and quick notes on some of the places I have gone during day trips:

Kumbhalgarh – Remote fort from the 15th century; supposedly, home to the second largest wall in the world; the fort includes some 300-400 temples and has an amazing view of the local area






Ranakpur – One of India’s largest and most important Jain temples; incredible building of white marble with nearly 1,500 intricately carved pillars





Monsoon Palace –19th century palace perched atop a local mountain; beautiful views of Udaipur and great place to enjoy the sun set






Other thoughts:
Seva Mandir – I really like the NGO that I work at. Because the organization is so large, there are many different projects that are going on at any time. It’s cool to see work on something very focused but to be part of a larger vision of addressing many social problems. For example, one of our friends at Seva Mandir who is an employee (rather than volunteer) has worked on a children’s corner in the slums of Udaipur. They were expecting around 30-50 kids to show up for the opening. In a slum of 300 families there are about 750 children and nearly half of them showed up. It was mayhem but the kids seemed to have a great time and the project has been going well since.


Udaipur – The city is small but really beautiful. I am glad I have a small camera that I can take around to snap shots immediately because I see something picturesque almost every day.

Love Nest – I really like the place that I am living. The roommates are great, though Ron left this past weekend. It was sad to see him leave but he is on to bigger and better things and now I have my own room and we converted the extra bedroom into a lounge area. My only complaint is the cold “showers” and the one attempt at trying to get the water heater fixed resulted in a bathroom flooded with boiling water.

Food – Though we don’t cook, we have our go-to restaurants where the owners know us and charge us the “local rates.” The food here is great and although I have been eating a lot, I did one thing I never thought I would do...I joined a gym. I’ve gone four times in the past week but we’ll see how good I am at keeping it up. And my favorite thing so far is the garlic Naan...mmmm, soo good.

Note: I also uploaded more pictures onto Picasa and have included it as a new slideshow. You can either navigate the slideshow or click into the album to check out the other pictures.