Great news: in this past week, we finished all our presentations!
On Tuesday, Pam spoke at the Indian Institute of Science, the foremost scientific institution in India. The program was about the "Nature Crunch"---the scary state of the environment today, why it matters to us, and how we can fix things before it's too late. Even though we'd seen Pam's slides many times before, she managed to add new information and tie everything together in a way that kept it new even to us. Much of our audience was from IISc's Management department, so it was especially interesting to see the reactions from people who hadn't spent six weeks in the jungle.
Then we spent the weekend at the School of Ancient Wisdom, right outside Bangalore. This was a more comprehensive, spiritual program about "returning to Nature" in order to heal ourselves and grow as humans. Pam spoke for most of Saturday (it was a marathon), and on Sunday the program took a lighter turn---Sandeep sang, we all answered questions about our experience living in Nature, and we showed our films to a live audience for the first time!
The whole weekend was really fulfilling. The audience managed to stay interested the whole time, and they were unbelievably friendly too: between sessions, people would come up to us, share their experiences and wisdom, and even thank us for our work and our presence. It's a beautiful, tree-filled campus with colorful lizards and aphorisms lining the walkways; people come from all over for lectures, workshops, and weekend-long programs like ours. The School reminded me a lot of Duke, because at such places you can learn just as much from the people attending as what's being "taught"---whether it be an impromptu discourse on spirituality, a surprising story, or the contagious warmth and openness coming from every direction.
