In my last post, I said I wasn’t brushing elbows with greatness but
that’s a big lie. One doesn’t need a
Nobel Prize- one does not even need to surpass 5 feet in height to be great!
Me at the UnB... such a green, airy beautiful campus... meticulous landscaping... actually they spend so much time taking care of the yards that some of the buildings are falling apart... |
So today Reva was showing me around the University, introducing me to people
and I learned a bit more about her story.
Her family set up an arranged marriage to the man who is now her
husband. During this process, he
had already moved to Brazil to work as a professor at UnB so she had never met
him, just looked at his profile in the notebook and communicated a bit through
the brother in that family. So she
decides to move to Brazil where she doesn’t know any Portuguese, where there
are barely any people from India, vegetarianism is extremely rare and marry a
man she’s never met. Fortunately,
they get along and I couldn’t imagine a more perfect match- it’s adorable to
watch them. But she said she spent
her first few years spending a ton of time in the University library learning
Portuguese and actually published three physics papers (her work is
theoretical). During this time,
she didn’t have a job and didn’t know the language well enough to have any
friends. She said watching a soap opera was critical to her mastering the language. Fortunately, they both found jobs at a less reputable college at Victoria then once she got tenure, she was able to earn a salary from there and both her and her husband returned to teach at UnB and they had a son here who is also amazing.
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Me outside the library where Reva spent so much quality time |
He went to public school then switched to American School of Brasilia,
an exclusive, expensive school where ambassadors tend to send their
children. They were able to send
Amit here since the husband recently retired from the University and decided to
teach physics and calculus there for a couple years. (This school is where Reva wants me to work- we’re visiting
on Wednesday with a copy of my CV (don’t worry parents, I’d have to finish my
degree first…)) Amit went to
Stanford for his undergraduate degree with dreams of becoming a doctor. He traveled to India after his freshmen
year for a community service project.
He met another man who ran eleven schools as well as planting a ton of
trees who inspired him to build a hospital that would serve 100,000 rural
villagers in this isolated area.
He partnered up with four fellow students, now who live all over the
northwest: including a chemical engineer turned actress who is working out of
LA, a lawyer in Seattle, another lawyer in Portland. They’ve been working on this Hospitals for Hope project for
over 12 years, remotely. They’ve
been really creative with fundraising- they had a colleague write up their
story as book whose proceeds benefit the project, a professional photographer
sell posters of the village to raise money, as well as more traditional
events. They just completed
construction on the hospital last May, with the help of a construction company
who agreed to build for free. All
these people are in their mid-20s and did this while working full-time
jobs. Amit got accepted to Yale
medical school but has been working as a project manager for Google instead.
This afternoon I’ve been helping Reva with some technological issues,
including trying to compress a video of an event related to this project into a
form where it can be shared. But I
highly encourage you to check out the link to their website and help out in any
way you can. Reva wants me to
convince my mother, who she knows is a nurse, to spent a couple years serving (I’m
sure that invitation extends to all my medical school friends!). Now that they’ve got a building, they
need people to work there and run it.
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