Race to the Finish

October 14, 2008
This week has been a race to the finish. Lynne and Ratnam left last night for he US, so there were a lot of things that needed to happen before they left. First the calendars needed to be finished because they wanted to bring a bunch back with them in their suitcases. We got the off to the printers on the 7th, but it took them a while to configure it so that it was printer ready, which meant that we had to come back again when they did the printing to check the color. The next day they didn’t have to paper that we wanted to print on, and the 9th was dusserha, which means everything is closed. The next day we went to the printers after they started to see the colors, and we ended up staying the whole entire day there to make sure that each page the color came out the right way. It was kind of cool because t hey let us go right into where they were printing and we got to see the machine. It was absolutely huge. It was at least the size of two cars tail to tip. . They then spent the next few days cutting, folding, laminating, hole punching and stapling all the calendars, and Ratnam picked them up on Sunday night. We hadn’t realized how much each calendar was going to weigh, so we were a little surprised at the volume of calendars, but they look great.
Another project was to buy all the cloth for the kids to have a new outfit for Christmas. There are a lot of easier ways of doing this, but Lynne was very insistent that each kid should have their own pattern or color not only so that they can tell them apart after they do laundry, but also so that they feel like we picked it out just for them. On the 8th we shopped for the boys, so we went to one shop and stayed there for 7 hours. We picked out 100 shirt pieces for the boys cut to different sizes based on the size of the boy. We then sat down with all the shirts picked out and matched them with pants. The hard part was having just enough cloth. Too much was wasting money, and too little it wouldn’t work for the older boys. We only created about 40 sets that first day, so we had to go back to that shop again on Sat. for another 6 hours. On Sat we also bought all the Punjabi cloth for the girls and Saris for the female staff. It was quite an experience. Dusserha (the 9th)and Sunday, when all the shops are closed, we spent putting cards on each set with a boys or girls name on it and size. It is harder than it might seem because some kids are a lot fairer than other so they can’t were white background shirts, and some are so dark that if you put the in a full color shirt they might get lost. We finished just in time. There were many points at which we had strong doubts, but we did it. Monday we spent packing suitcases and Lynne and Ratnam left at around 11. Today was very quite. I worked in the computer room this morning setting up the computers and downloading software, so my thinking is that I will start classes either on Friday or Saturday.