The shimmy is that on Saturday August 29th, a smallish group of students from Gustavus Adolphus College and Concordia College in Moorhead will be leaving Minnesota for a 3.5 month long adventure in India, Yay! We'll be stopping in London first for a couple of hours, but then we'll get on a direct flight and arrive in India at 4:00 AM. Jet lag will ensue.
The program focuses on Social Justice, Peace and Development in a country which is facing ridiculously fast urbanization, modernization, and westernization. India is being transformed into a huge political and economic world power, that may wrestle "world control" from the Western world in the near future. Already US government and private business has invested 48 billions of dollars into the Indian economy and only plans to increase spending.
As students, we're going to be studying the effects that rapid infrastructure and economic development are having in this country of over 1,100,000,000 people. We'll be spending most of our time in an NGO called Vishtar near Bangalore; a city of major IT development. No doubt this experience is going to be one of intense challenge and growth. We're all anticipating bouts of culture shock, diarrhea, noise, and complete lack of personal space. Bring it on.
