6: Kodak Moments

People seriously love taking our pictures. Many of us have been randomly approached by strangers who ask us to pose with themselves or with their children for their cameras. It's the oddest thing ever; we're nowhere close to celebrity status back home obviously, but I guess just as much as we crave taking pictures of India - including its peoples - they crave pictoral documentation of our presence. "Hey look, foreigners! Wait, let me grab my camera." I don't know. It's a trip!

What's scary is they took pictures with their cellphones of some of us as we walked into and out of the ocean today. Girls, of course. They just blatantly did it too, as if they had every right to ogle us and snap pictures of us. It must be such a struggle being a woman in India. I'm sure their struggles are different, because the reason those men stare and take our pictures is because we're clearly female foreigners - not one of their own. But generally speaking, I don't think I'd want to grow up here, being a female. Wow. Just a very different culture; maybe some don't see it as sexism or a struggle at all. Or maybe most of them do.

I'm hoping to find out more about this when we go back to Mumbai (tomorrow, on another sleeper train - yay) and start our weeklong program with the deaf Indians. I'm sure some of the delegates are female, and I will hopefully build enough of a rapport to ask them about their lives as women in this country. We've (GRO) started discussing our two workshops already: the informal one we will present to the 10 Indian delegates about leadership and empowerment, as well as the formal one we will develop with the Indians and present to a large audience of deaf Indians from around the country (we hope). Can't wait to roll up our sleeves and get started!

Ended my day of traveling around Goa and visiting some historical sites (with a foray into their version of jetskiing as well - HMMM) with a beautiful walk by the beach under the stars. The water is so warm and the sky is so clear here. I was telling David, "Sometimes I dream about being hearing and living by the ocean - I would fall asleep to the sound of the waves constantly crashing against the shore." Oo la la. But hey - I'm grateful for even having the chance to stick my toes into the Arabian sea at all. It'll be something I'll tell my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren about :)

-avi
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