Wow, today has been quite the adventure! For starters, I had my photo students pick out 3 of their favorite pictures from their personal collections. Talk about a lot of pictures. I think total, between 14 students, they have taken over 1,000 photos! I know, it is insane! But it also makes me very happy. Once that was complete, my school director drove me to a place where I could get the photos printed in order to make books with the students. Here is where my day went south a bit. The man uploaded my pictures from my flashdrive onto the computer and started altering them! He started to crop the photos and change the contrast. I was so angry! I told him to not change anything and he proceeded to tell my director in Hindi, what I later found out, that it would make the pictures better and that he was only cropping out “extra”. Well, extra to him was important aspects of the photos. For example, he cut out an entire head of another volunteer in the picture and cut out half of a flower that made up a photo. I was frustrated that he wasn’t listening to me and taking advantage of my too kind director. Augh, I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but I kept my cool and made sure that he reprinted the photos he had altered to meet his standards. Once I saw that changing the pictures was easier than fixing them to fit the size of the photo, I realized that the man just wanted to get out of doing extra work. I didn’t like that he was trying to get out of a little extra work and that he made it seem like it was better for the photos. He was changing the work of the students and THAT made me the most upset. I want them to have their own, raw photographs: not something another person changed to fit their likings. It didn’t help that the weather was insanely humid, hot and sticky. We spent a total of an hour and a half trying to get the prints right and at last we did. Thank goodness Gabby was with me to calm me down a bit. Whew. I can’t begin to count the times that men here have tried to get away with cheating me or treating me poorly. It’s really beginning to test my nerves!
Once that shenanigan was over, I returned to my hostel to the head Aunt asking that Gabby and myself relocate. We thought for sure we were going to be placed with these two girl from London- who don’t really tickle our fancy, but to out own surprise, we were placed in a larger, AC’d room with closet space! Ah, it was so lovely to upgrade after such a challenging day! It’s unfortunate I will only get to enjoy the new room for a week since I will be heading to Dharmshala next Wednesday. On a brighter note, Branden is arriving tonight and I shall see him this weekend! Yay for Bowdoin connections around the world. I’m excited to celebrate my birthday with a familiar face and travel India a bit as well : D
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