Here is Aarti! Ian would refer to her as the "Principal of Principles," but she also had other names such as Super Aarti, Aarti the Astronaunt, Princess Aarti ...
She is a no-nonsense woman who is incredibly driven and a strong advocate for young people. As a principal of a K-12 school in Pune, India she is quite busy, loves her students and relishes life to the fullest on earth and ... (drum roll) ... in space!
Here is Aarti "on a mission!" While completing our course in Thailand, she was still working - keeping touch with her lead teachers at her school while maintianing balance and conflict amongst the students and staff via Skype and on the phone (as you see here)! See the outfit she is wearing? It is now mine! :o) Before leaving she will give me a number of beautiful Indian outfits which I will proudly wear!
She has a wonderful sense of humor too! Here she is with the $7.00 apple that I bought and blogged about in an earlier post. Almost all of my classmates had fun taking pictures with the apple, after which I managed to cut in 17 pieces so we could all taste it! Aarti ate healthy and managed to walk every day (in the intolerable heat) for an hour and a half and lift weights a few times a week!
Here Aarti is presenting one of our teachers who is Buddhist. On this particular day we had three teachers (a Buddhist, a Catholic priest and a Muslim) talk to us about interfaith dialogue.
Because Aarti always wears her hair in a braid, you never get to see how long it really is! Through Aarti and Manisha, I learned quite a bit about Indian culture, food and customs. A few things that peaked my curiosity were the concept of arranged marriages, husbands burning their wives to death because of (in some cases) the unmet demands of an on-going dowry. Their non-violent ethic behavior is an expression in their way of life implicit in the Hindu religion which was fascinating and contrary to how the majority of people in the world deal with conflict. We had some incredible conversations!
One day after class, through a magnificent PowerPoint presentation, she gave us an incredible talk about her training program with NASA. She is about to begin her third phase of instruction and preparation. Initially, there were six people from India; they either dropped out or were eliminated for various reasons. Now, two remain from India and Aarti is one of them!
You can see from her slide how much weight she lost, which she stated was her greatest accomplishment this year - that of losing 23 kilograms (50.6 pounds)!
Aarti, getting her certificate from the Rotary Peace Center and attaining another goal!! Congrats Aarti!! I look forward to seeing her advance in her training with NASA and Skyping her while she is in space!! GO AARTI!!!!!!!!
