An SVYM Staff Dinner

Last night, the Cornell students living in Sargur and Kenchanahalli were invited to attend the monthly staff potluck at one of the physicians' homes in Sargur.  Once we arrived we realized that this was a dinner for the Executive Board of SVYM, the directors of the SVYM hospitals and their families.  It felt incredible to be welcomed into a group of such intelligent, driven and passionate individuals.  We had so much lighthearted fun - we played Telephone, had a huge Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament and played a math game (sorry Cornell, I was out long before the Indian children I was playing with... hahaha) - and had the opportunity to listen to some of the doctors sing Indian classical music and dance Indian traditional pieces.  The monsoon rains began halfway through the night, so we quickly grabbed the food and went inside, where the furniture was whisked away and all 50 people sat cross-legged on the floor sharing food, conversation, and laughs.  We were absolutely stuffed at the end of the night, there was so much good food!  It was such a fun evening.

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Note: the night before, we were asked (or rather informed) to make pasta to serve the fifty people who would be attending the event... so we prepared a list of ingredients we needed to make the noodles and the tomato sauce and hoped we could actually pull it off.  Yesterday, we were told that they had found dried noodles, so picturing the boxed noodles we have at home and thinking of the amount of time we would save, we quickly agreed to use those instead.  When we arrived at their home to cook yesterday, we discovered that the dried noodles were actually the Indian equivalent of Ramen noodles.  We laughed to ourselves, began to prepare our tomato sauce and hoped for the best.  After putting an Indian twist on the seasoning, we finished our dish and brought it to the potluck.  It was by no means stellar, but we tried... hahaha everyone was a really good sport for trying to eat it!