Goodbye to College Prep and more great times at MUWCI

---

Our first full day on the MUWCI (Mahindra United World College of India) campus was a great one! Today is a day when we saw the importance of careful planning. We opened the day with Nandita Deostahle of MUWCI giving is an overview of the entire UWC system, and some of the history of MUWCI itself. The UWC system is now up to 13 campuses worldwide with a new campus about to open in the Netherlands. It was founded after World War two to try to prevent future such conflicts. Most campuses just offer 11th and 12th grades, but a few were K-12 schools when they became UWC schools.
MUWCI was founded in 1997 and it enrolls 200 students each year in 11th and 12th grades, usually from 60-70 countries and nationalities. It has a 175 acre campus was nationally recognized bio-diversity reserve park. The Prime Minister of India came to MUWCI to dedicate the Bio Reserve in 2000. After Nandita’s overview, our group was led on campus tours by 4 MUWCI students.

The next activity is a familiar one to those who know GYLI—the 5 C’s of awarness. As we have 5 staff members (Matt, Imroz, Amit, Emily and Lane) we were each able to take a C, explain it, and apply it two our own lives. This group presentation modeled the C’s wonderfully as we had among our 5: 2 males, 3 females; 2 christians, 1 athesist, 1 Hindu, 1 Muslim; 3 Americans, 2 Indians; 2 from upper classes, 3 from middle classes. As GYLI grows and we are able to staff our programs and recruit participants from such a wide background, the conversations become more and more complex and rewarding. The four small group 5C’s conversations went very well and built on work of the previous two days. It is such a thrill to see the planning pay off, and a good tool get better and better with time.
After lunch, we said goodbye to one school group: College Prep from Oakland, CA, who we know would only be with us for 3 days. They were off to Bangalore and Mysore, having already been in Dehli, Agra, Jaipur and then joining us in Mumbai.
We then were able to view further areas of the MUWCI campus such as the Bio Dome and the reserve itself. It was a great mini-hike up the highest points of campus to see the views below. Both the dome and the hike reminded me completely of the Year 2 experience in New Mexico.
Following this, were we introduced to our host mothers, again by Nandita. 12 of the village women, and two of their leaders and organizers came to campus so we could interact before our homestays on Monday July 28th. Nandita did a wonderful job with ice-breakers, and basic hindi so that we could interact, meet our host mother, and learn a little bit about their families.
Though we have been doing homestays in Costa Rica since 2005, this experience is likely to be even more challenging because of a wider language and cultural gap.
We ended our day, with another GYLI favorite activity—detailed discussion of your favorite dessert. It was very interesting when I asked the group about why we would combine a discussion of dessert and the homestays. Here where there response:
1. so we realize all the luxuries in our lives like dessert
2. so we realize how our ability to describe things in our language may by challenged by the language gap

This is a very thoughtful group of students from our three schools. Wow—we are on our way to an amazing institute!!

---