In the morning we went to the medicinal plants building where we were given a tour of their compilations of plant samples and recording of ayurvedic medicinal properties of indiginous plants into a countrywide database. Oustide there was an area of land where many of those plants are grown to be used for collecting samples and just to keep many species of plants from becoming extinct.We checked out the fish farm and then head to lunch at the home of the local farmer who went with us to the music show the day before. In Karnataka we could not communicate with everyone as easily because many people did not understand Hindi or English. So I had not spoken much except smiling and nodding that we really enjoyed the music when "speaking" to him the day before, but he had communicated to Patilji that he really wanted us to come join him and his family for lunch. In a place where food can be difficult to afford for your own family, much less guests, I hoped they would enjoy the experience too.It was a lot of fun. One of Patilji's relatives who was nice enough to take us to the areas we went to that morning took us there with the driver of the jeep we had been riding in. We visited the beautiful farm, and the farmer and his family. His extended family was there and we tried to speak via our two friends who spoke Hindi and Kannada. They asked about farming in he U.S. and also about life. As usual we did our best to speak a little about farming and explained that we lived in cities, so could not answer those questions definitively. Still, it was good to just share. Sometimes sharing what you have or know the best you can is enough. We saw how they grind wheat and corn. There were mattes covered in fresh corn and red chilli peppers. We also say pan leaves being grown.In the home we sat with the family and enjoyed a wonderful meal. We went into the kitchen and met the mother and wife. The didn't have a chiminey or at least not an effective on, so the wood burning stove really created a horrible black smoke filled atmosphere. My eyes burned immediately, and it made me think about these wonderful women working there every day. I tried to ask why they did not cook outside and how it was really terrible for the women to work in there. This is where you are at the mercy of your translators. Sometimes people will just do their best to convey your sentiments, while others, well meaning though they are, paraphrase or answer your questions for you and thus you can't really communicate as much as you'd like. Kristeen made friends with a small child with fancy footwear. While we drank tea outside the home, some more relatives came by and we talked again through our friends. An older man came by and invited us to his home after we had exchanged more smiles than words. We couldn't refuse so we had more tea. It was really great to try our best to share experiences and get to know people while letting them get to know out world too.That evening we went to visit another one of BIRDS' many projects. This one was a dairy where women who had purchased buffalos via their micro finance program brought the milk in twice a day to be tested, recorded and deposited for sale through the collective. I can't say enough good things about how kind and informative people were. Patilji Sr. and Jr. really welcomed us into their organization and everyone went to great lengths to share with us what they did, not with expectation, but with a desire to share. I truly hope that we can return that favor by telling others and connecting good resources and volunteers to them. Being in a rural area, though they have done a great deal, there is always a hunger for outside knowledge to continue. I feel people interested in agriculture and social work can gain a great deal by spending time here and giving back to the community in BIRDS.We spoke to some of the women, particularly those in leadership roles at the center after they had finished with the evening milk aquisition. These are illiterate women, who run entire households and obviously always had the ability to do a lot, and now made good use of the opportunity and showed others. We spoke to them again through translation and learned a bit about how they were impacted by the programs. These were not public speakers or mouth pieces for the org. They live this, so unlike someone trying to sell you on the idea, they just talk about it matter of fact and don't consider themselves all that incredible. It was fun to share some of what women deal with in the U.S. with them, good and bad, to kind of connect them, if only a little. I was also glad to tell them that we read about the work of women like themselves in other parts of the world like the U.S. and are inspired by what they are doing.