India has been AMAZING, but not for the typical reasons you would say; beaches, tourism and crazy “first world” activities. I almost feel like it’s taken me back to my “appreciation phase”. In a lot of ways, I feel like I lost a sense of feeling alive in the USA. Every hour of every day is accounted for, and it’s always for reasons that do not necessarily improve humanity or better the world’s conditions. I wake up, I go to school until five, then I clock into work and I won’t be out until 11pm or even later. We talk a lot about profit, about ambition, staying busy, moving up, “going hard”, but here we are in a beautiful city that’s always worried about setting up business plans in a way to help first, rather than boast profits.

Reality check: $1 can get about 65 rupees – this means for every dollar I’ve simply lost in the streets and not cared about could have fed two kids here for two days. Talk about living under a rock. This makes me wonder if I make good choices with the money I spend. Is it worth spending my hard earned waitress money on the stuff I choose to spend on a daily basis? You spend a dollar here a dollar there and we do not even realize how beneficial that could be to someone else around the world. We live in a different world. I am glad I got to be on this trip and witness that.

So… I wanted to do something about this and not just know knowledge, so I called my mom and we decided we will no longer be donating money to the three foundations we donate to every year. my yearly $1000 donation will now be going directly to India in form of school supplies, clothes and anything else that could bring smiles to their faces. Something as simple as dry tape white-out amazed them. I just need to do some rethinking. Happy I got the opportunity to come here and check myself.