The plan is to begin our 31-hour air trip (three separate flights) the day after Christmas. The three faculty members going -- myself along with Journalism Chair and leader of the trip Bill Thorn and Carole Burns, our College's technology instruction chief -- will leave from Marquette University at noon via ground transportation to Chicago. We will have two students accompany us to Chicago where we'll meet two more students at O'Hare to start our flight. It goes from Chicago to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Delhi, then on to Ahmedabad, where we will meet representatives of St. Xavier. We will stay in the Jesuit housing at the college.
We will be coming back the same route, arriving January 10 (at 5:20 p.m. in Chicago), then ground transportation back to Milwaukee. I'll be teaching Monday, so I really expect that first class of the semester to be a lively affair (working lesson plan: "Here's the syllabus; get out of my face."
If the computer gods are with me, I'll be posting to this blog throughout my stay.
We will be teaching backpack journalism to students at the college, and I'm making a presentation to local media. (Pray to the PowerPoint gods and to Carole Burns' work in imbedding YouTube presentations into my PowerPoint.) Everything will be in English, which is the common language in India where they speak 37 languages plus dialects so they need a common language. Backpack journalism is the newest thing in the media world. It involves a reporter who also is his or her own producer, taking video and still photos, editing them on computers, and producing a complete package using equipment that can be easily carried in a backpack. The plan is for faculty to teach in the mornings, then St. Xavier students will be split into teams where they'll work with Marquette students on producing material for a website (our faculty will trouble-shoot and handle technology). It should be exciting.
Oh, yes, speaking of exciting. There is this little security worry prompted by the shootings in Mumbai (not to mention bombings in Ahmedabad last summer). The Jesuits and Marquette's overseas instruction people have been in almost constant consultation. Since Ahmedabad is 300 miles from Mumbai, in a different state (Gujarat), and because of the nature of the outbreak of violence, it has been agreed that this is a fairly safe trip. Most of our time will be on the campus (although I have to visit Gandhi's ashram, which is in Ahmedabad) so our safety is pretty well taken care of. Besides, I'm now inoculated against tetanus, hepatitis, typhoid, malaria, and yellow fever so what to worry?
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