day 1

Saturday June 4, 2011
Day one:
So I’ve never traveled this alone before… The traveling part is fine – I sleep easily on planes and I love people watching during layovers, and boy does my i-pod keep me sane. But to be by myself when I arrive at my destination is something different. In Israel I’ve done that, but I speak the language and am familiar with where I would want to go.

This isn’t the type of alone like how it was to be an RA and have my own room, bathroom, free time etc. This is the type of alone where I’m currently staying on a farm-like piece of land right next to a vast jungle and the only other person I’m with is an older woman whom I just met this morning – granted there are some monkeys, a bunch of birds, and some wild night time creatures… I think I will really grow into myself during the next two weeks.

I don’t mean to sound so sad! The place where I am staying is absolutely gorgeous. Pat has a large property with a nice home and a huge garden in which she grows vegetables and has fruit trees. I can’t get over the fact that she has monkey’s in her backyard! Wow. I LOVE monkeys if you didn’t know :) Pat does not live on the Ecovillage, but she lives just outside and we will venture there tomorrow.

Driving from the airport to Pat’s house reminded me so much of India. The dirt is that orangey brown clay, and there are plots of land along busy streets that are undeveloped. The darker skinned Brazilians work away in the hot sun and their clothes are stained the color of the clay. There is dirt in the air and graffiti on the walls and India rushes back into my body and soul. The two biggest differences are that here, it’s hot, but not too hot (plus I can wear shorts), and tropical green plants overpopulate the sides of the streets (in India the city I lived in had sparse trees and hardly any grass). It’s crazy how different Teresopolis/Goiania are from Rio, where I was last year. This type of living is so serene and most surrounding people are poor. Rio felt a little like a tropical European city, with nice restaurants and cobblestone sidewalks.

I’ve already learned so much from Pat about environmental living and the hardships that ecovillages face. For example, a bank will not give a loan to an alternative building project, so it’s very hard for their ecovillage to fund their new buildings/residencies. I also learned that in this particular state, it’s mandatory to teach environmental education to children! That is wayyy awesome and something that I’ve advocated for in a few papers I’ve written at USC.

Ok it’s 9:45pm and I’m going to get ready for bed!
Much love,
Ninita

on sunday we are going to the santa branca ecovillage! yay! i can't wait!

Brazil, here I come! woo woooo

Friday June 3, 2011 The time has come for me to set out into the world again!

A serious long-term threat facing the world is the danger that human actions are producing irreversible, harmful changes to the environmental conditions that support life on Earth. I want to solve this problem and am devoted to learning how people can change their lifestyles to do so.

I am off to Brazil, supported by a USC SURF grant (http://dornsife.usc.edu/surf)to do research for two weeks. I have two research initiatives:
• To learn about the lifestyle practices that ecovillages exhibit in order to live in a more environmentally sustainable way
• To assess the role that Brazilian ecovillages play in greater Brazilian environmentalism I will explore the first initiative in order to better understand each ecovillage and be able to evaluate which practies are most effective and can be adapted for life outside the ecovillage.

When I return home, I will be an agent of change and will bring these lifestyles practices back to USC with me. Over the summer, I plan on making a short video about ways that the ordinary individual can transform his or her life to be more environmentally sustainable.

The second initiative will be a bit more challenging to rightly assess, especially in the given time frame of two weeks. I will interview ecovillagers, as well as city dwellers to find out what role ecovillages play in national environmentalism. In a world approaching peak oil, global warming, and possible water shortages, Ecovillages provide the perfect model to be emulated world wide.
Can these ecovillages be agents of change for Brazil’s devastating environmental state? In what ways can ecovillages maximize their impact in the environmental movement?

Over the summer, I will write a short paper on my findings and turn it in to the SURF grant foundation in September.

So why did I choose Brazil, you might ask? For a few reasons – I went to Brazil in March 2010 just for ten days and I fell in love with the culture, the people, the lifestyle, the language, everything. So I’ve since had a yearning to return…

More importantly, Brazil has a very unique and wonderful position in terms of environmentalism. Unlike other developing nations, Brazil has enough money and has the desire to invest in environmental initiatives. Sustainable development is not common for developing countries because of the large upfront costs that it requires. Brazil, however, is home to one of the greenest cities in the world (Curitiba) and has made valiant strides towards ending the accelerated deforestation of the Amazon. These, among other efforts (such as ecovillages), show that Brazil is prioritizing saving the natural world when the incentive is strictly environmental and not monetary.

As environmental issues world wide intensify, Brazil has the ability to set a model for other developing nations to follow – what if all developing nations were to start incorporating environmentalism into their development in small ways? The future would look much greener :)

And so Brazil it is! I arrive tomorrow and have no idea what my internet situation will be, but I will do my best to keep you guys updated on what I find. I love you and miss you all!
Chao,
Ninita

Maitri

Metta (Pali - pictured above) or Maitri (Sanskrit- pictured below) means unconditional and unattached loving kindness. What a wonderful outlook with which to approach the people in your life. Thank you Buddhism for keeping me in line with what is good in life.

Open Mind, Open Heart

College is a time for trying new things. As a friend told me - it's like ripping a band aid off - Just get out there and do it. If not now, when?

What I Love About 7 Days of Giving

I love hearing from other people about their experiences with 7 Days of Giving. I love that I ran into a boy whom I haven’t been close with since my single digits and as I passed him on the street he said, “Thanks for organizing all that giving – I’ve really been enjoying it!”

And I love the text I got from a friend saying that she made her brother a mix. And I loved hearing from a USC friend that he just got back from taking a friend around town running errands because the friend did not have a car. I love that one of my brother’s friends told me he was touched by my efforts and I love that a friend supported me and came with me for Free Hugs.

I love that there were over 1500 people invited to the Facebook event, yet I only invited around 150 myself – I love that that means that so many other people felt that 7 Days of Giving was something worth while and worth spreading. I love that I don’t know the names of all the people who wrote on the wall for the event.

And most of all I love observing the kindness that goes on around me everyday. I am continually inspired by the people who have entered my life, whether it was for 21 years, 24 hours total, or somewhere in between. Thank you to everyone who has helped shape me to be the person I am today. I love myself and I love all of you!

7 Days of Giving

7 Days of Giving yet again blew my mind away. The facebook group alone reached more than 1500 people and each of the stories I heard from friends and acquaintances reignited the flame inside me for connecting people and spreading kindness.
Check out our very simple website at: 7DaysOfGiving.weebly.com

Last Words on India

→ This post has been pieced together since my return to America and was finished sometime in the fall of 2009:

Man oh man. Where to start…
Returning to LA really made me realize how truly unique and fabulous my summer was. The Global Impact Program ended up having more of an impact on me than I ever could have imagined.



Culture Shock Upon Return

I went through the expected, “oh my goodness this country wastes so much” and “Could the American lifestyle be more excessive?”. But I also just could not handle LA. I was disgusted by women up to 50 and girls as young as 13 wearing clothes that showed more skin than an Indian man ever gets to see of his wife. It took me two and a half weeks to even wear a tank top again (in LA summer weather) and two more weeks to feel comfortable wearing shorts.
I felt a curdling inside my heart when I noticed the amount of make-up some women wear. I wore make-up once this summer (on a fellow participant Lena’s birthday). When I came back to school, just three days after returning from India, I wore make-up to the first party I went to. For my first few nights at school I completely conformed to life as I knew it at USC (dressing cute, make up, alcohol, etc), but soon realized that was just not who I am anymore.

I had a breakdown the day before classes started because I realized how much I had changed and was afraid that I would no longer fit into the life I had created the previous year at USC. As it turned out, my friends still like me regardless of my many changes of lifestyle and they even respect many of my decisions because I’ve kind of created a new way to live at USC that is different from what we all knew before. The description of an awesome night on the weekend no longer implies a loud frat party with an open bar. Instead we can spend two hours at our kitchen table eating quesadillas, talking with accents, while laughing, joking, and engaging in pure sillyness.



My New Outlook on Life

I have not figured it out to the point of any concrete form, nor do I think I ever will, but my experiences this summer sure changed my views about a couple of things.

Compassion: I would never want to live in a world in which people do not have compassion for one another. As the Dalai Lama his holiness explains in The Art of Happiness, genuine compassion is when you understand that every person has the “innate desire to be happy and overcome suffering” and when you do all that you can to help this happen to anyone – not just friends and loved ones, but strangers too (p. 92).
Upon my return I was overwhelmed by how cold everyone is to each other and by the negative outlook on life that the majority of the population has. I want to show strangers that we can all bring each other happiness and that every person in the world can and should be kind to each other.



Location: I am so lucky to be living my life. I do not have to run barefoot on the streets pulling at strangers pant legs to get some spare change. I do not have to work three jobs to pay my way through college. I have time to volunteer and play sports and I get to choose when and to whom I want to get married. These are just a few examples of the simple things that we often take for granted. Life is so much harder for people who live in other places, or in my case here at school, down the street in the community that surrounds USC. Inclusive of chemistry exams, knee injuries, term papers and sleeping problems I would choose to live my life any day.



Happiness: I truly believe that anyone and everyone can be happy – it is often mind over matter. I am not saying that we should all be happy all the time, because there are times when we need to grieve and times when small amounts of anger can be used as motivation, but overall, the world would be a better place if everyone could say they spend the majority of their life being happy. We can do this by cherishing what is good in life, and not taking it for granted. Cherish friendship and realize how lucky we are to be connected to and supported by other people. Be aware of laughter and smiles. In some cases it is true that a person will not have friends and family, but for the people reading this blog - remember these small things that you have in your life that are good, and give thanks to them by letting happiness overcome you in their presence.



Openness: The best way to achieve happiness in your heart is through openness. Accept people and situations for who they are and what they are. Trying to change someone, or being unhappy with where you are in life is pointless. See the good intentions in those whom you are surrounded by and the good that comes out of a situation.
As much as it is important to be open in the heart, it is important be open in the mind as well. Try new things and if it turns out you don’t like it, then fine, don’t do it again, but at least you will have experienced something and will be able to relate to someone else through that experience.

All in all, my summer was life changing and I hope these are values that will not fade in my mind, as the smell and sounds of India already have.

To anyone who has yet to see what life is like in the villages or cities of an underdeveloped country, I would advise you to find means to get out there as soon as your wallet can take you.

Peace and love,
Nina