Let me just tell you this right now. IHP is not an easy program. I don’t mean that in the sense of the schoolwork (even though that’s not easy either). I mean it in a sense that we are shown things that are hard to handle emotionally. Yes we have been shown some amazing and inspiring things about cities but the ones that stick with you a little more are the ones that hurt your heart. There are about 4.5 million people in this amazing city of Ahmedabad and 2 million of them live in slums. Now when we are in the United States, with out meaning to, when we picture slums we picture people who are different to us who we know nothing about. Now try to picture your mother in a slum, your best friend in a slum, and now yourself living in a slum. I have met people who drink toxic water, because that’s the only water available to them. I have met people who pay for their home but live in fear of the government showing up one day with bulldozers in front of their home because it has happened to others around the city. I have meet people whose homes were burnt to the ground just because of what religion they believe in. I was also unable to meet a woman because the husband of the woman she was counseling set himself on fire. These are difficult things to handle emotionally especially when we are able to sleep in a bed and carry a water bottle with us of clean water. Everything we see everyday we compare to past life experiences (everyone does this, even you do this). We live in a country that believes in capitalism, which teaches us that poor deserve to be poor. We learn in elementary school that we live in a world where it is survival of the fittest. We think that because we have a life with nice houses and a good job we are the fittest. From what I learned today I disagree with that statement. Try living on $2 a day and surviving. Don’t you think poor people have more challenges they have to go through in a day, just to see tomorrow? These people I have met who live in slums have much greater inner strength than I do and are over all stronger people, they are the fittest that Darwin taught us about. Now I challenge you to think of what I have written here in context of your own lives. Next time you see someone who has less money than you, do not think you are better but understand that they are a stronger person because they get by just like you but with less than what you have.