India is such a beautiful place; it is really hard to write down all of my thoughts about the last few months I have spent here. From rickshaw rides to the market, trying to figure out how Indian traffic works, drinking chai and hearing the call to prayer from a nearby mosque; it is difficult to pull out separate events to share with you.  It all blends together into something life-changing and uniquely important in my own life journey.

I’ve made my way around the southern parts of India along with seven other Gustavus students and nine students from Concordia on the Justice, Peace, and Sustainable Communities Semester in India. We were based in Bangalore for most of our time there but we have spent a significant amount of time travelling to various sites around India.

Our classrooms have been living rooms, open fields, school yards, train cars, crowded streets, and dining rooms. Those are just some of the spaces we have been learning in over the past few months. It’s one thing to sit and discuss social issues in a group but it’s a whole other experience to go out and meet land rights activists, child brides, manual laborers, vegetable peddlers, and organic farmers in and around the Indian countryside.

It all blends together into something life-changing and uniquely important in my own life journey.

We’ve been to Mysore, Koppal, Anatapur, Zahirabad, Wayanad, Shillong, and Thanjavur for field visits. We all split off for our mid-semester break and I travelled with a few friends to Darjeeling in West Bengal. We entered multiple communities and met with people to discuss issues of human rights, sustainability, economic justice, social change, environmental degradation, globalization, and the ethics of development.

Something that has become very clear to me is how much each and every one of us is connected – from the CEO to the beggar, the garment worker to the website developer, the study abroad student to the child laborer working eighteen hour shifts.

We aren’t only connected through economic channels. We all have a level of compassion, kindness, and shared humanity that we can wield while working collectively to envision and create a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world.