I am on my way back to Boston, and I can’t help but think back on all the memories and new relationships that I just created. My last week in India was the best and toughest. During my last week, I finally gotten close to so many of the Indian and Chinese students, and we were finally on the performing phase on our team project. On the other hand,  during these last few days in India, I had to do one of the hardest things for me, which is saying goodbye.

My last week in India was filled with a whole lot of fun and a final project waiting to be completed. On January 8th, we had a culture day. We all wore traditional Indian clothes and looked our best. I never thought a saree would look that good on me. My gold saree looked more beautiful than I thought once I put it on, as you can see below. My favorite part of culture day was during the best-dressed fashion shows competitions. The Indian boys went up first followed by the Indian girls, American boys, American girls, Chinese boys, and finally, the Chinese girls. Everyone looked amazing as they worked the runway. I was happy and excited to have won the American girls portion.

After the culture day, my group and I had two more days to complete and present our final project and the stress started to kick in. My groups project, “Multimodal books for Visually Impaired People” was an interesting and fun one. My group and I went to visit some blind schools to get some primary source information and understand our targetted customers better. During this experience of teamwork with different cultures, I learned more patience and gained a lot of communication skills. At the beginning of the project, I was very worried about how well the project is going to go due to the language barrier and different cultures. When we would plan meeting, I would always show up at the exact time and wait for everyone else to show up late. I came to understand that not everyone works on American time. If a meeting is planned, expect it to start about thirty minutes after the scheduled time. This type of exposure to different cultures will definitely assist me in the real business world. I will be required to work with different types of people, and no classroom or book would have helped me experience this as this program did.

After our presenting our project, it was finally time to say goodbye. Saying goodbye to my new friends was not easy. We had all just started getting comfortable with each other, and then we had to leave. I could not hold back the tears, as I thought of all the fun nights and laughs we shared. We may now be going our separate ways again, but one thing for sure is that we shall meet again. See you soon India!