Arrival

So we made it after nearly 30 hours of travel. We flew from Modesto to San Francisco to New Jersey and then all the way to New Delhi. We spent the first day meeting many wonderful people and eating way too much, including a banquet-style dinner.

On Tuesday, we celebrated the 60th annual Republic Day, which honors the day India got its own constitution. It's one of three national holidays (along with Independence Day on Aug. 15 and Mahatma Gandhi's birthday on Oct. 2).

As New Delhi is the national capital, we attended the Republic Day Parade in the morning. No pictures were taken because we couldn't bring anything into the parade except our passports and our invitations from the Ministry of Defense. Getting there, we drove in the thick morning fog, dodging other vehicles and cows walking the roadways.

Once we were seated along the parade route, patriotic poems were read and out of the rolling fog emerged horses, tanks, marching bands, decorated camels, colorful dancers, roaring airplanes and elaborate floats celebrating India's different states. The fog, along with seeing things like a tuba player riding a camel, gave the parade a surreal, dream-like quality.

After the parade, we went to eat southern Indian cuisine before visiting two of the five schools the Rotary Club of Megapolis is running in the outskirts of Delhi. The program — called Koshish, the Hindi word for "an attempt" — focuses on teaching children ages 3 to 6 basic skills so they develop an interest in learning and continue on with public education.


The school serves children of migrant laborers who otherwise would need to leave their young children at home while they go out to work. Teachers at the schools must actually go to the homes and bring the children to their modest classrooms.

The students, dressed in uniform jumpsuits, sang to us their national anthem along with other songs and performed Bollywood-style dances. One of the cutest things was when some of the little kids got up to recite nursery rhymes in English, such as "one, two, buckle my shoe" and "rain, rain, go away."

During a welcoming ceremony, they put a red dot on our forehead along with some rice overtop so that we "may never know hunger" along with placing a garland of flowers around our necks. This was done at each of the schools as well as an Indian flag ceremony, where we got to help display the flag on Republic Day. We were treated like very special guests and we all found the children really sweet and the whole experience very touching.

As if the day wasn't busy enough, I was also taken to a party where I sipped scotch with older Indian gentlemen before going to a Hare Krishna temple and then to another late-night dinner party. An Indian Rotarian told me, "the more we love you, the more we feed you." Needless to say, we feel very loved.