Vanakkam

India…I can’t believe I made it!! After 2 ten hour flights, a 3 hour layover, and 4 airplane meals, I made it to Chennai, India. It seriously is incredible here!! I’ve never in my entire life ever experienced anything like this before. There really are no words to describe it. Mary Katherine put it like this: “It’s like real life slum-dog millionaire out there” as she looked out the hotel window. No movie could be more accurate!

The streets are crazy. I mean people told me they would be really crowded, but it is seriously out of control! There are traffic lights, traffic signs, and dotted lines to indicate where the lanes are, but they really are just suggestions. The Indian drivers could care less. Most of the time they are driving in the middle of two lanes, honking their horns at the bicyclists, trying to avoid the cows that are walking in the middle of the road, and flashing their lights at the buses to make sure they are seen (otherwise they would be smashed to smitherines!)

The Rising Star campus is located on seriously the most beautiful land I have ever seen. It’s about an hour and a half outside of Chennai. We eat dinner on banana leaves on the roof of the hostel and eat mangoes every day, all day, cause well it’s located on a mango plantation. We also have been eating a lot of the traditional Indian food, and well, it’s surprisingly extremely delicious!! (No food poisoning yet…thank heavens)

Some of us do yoga in the mornings on the roof…nothing too intense, just a little something to start out the day. This morning, while we were in the midst of our stretches, I hear this rustling in the palm tree next to us. I glance over only to find a man climbing up a rope to the top of the tree to cut down coconuts (which by the way are dirt cheap here…something like 20 rupees, which is like 25 American cents)!

Today I was on the education team! I tutored the second and fourth standards (or grades) in math and english. They are all so smart! I am so impressed with all of them. They seriously are the most loving kids I have ever met. As soon as you walk on to the playground or into their classes, they run up to you and grab your hand and say, “Auntie, Auntie…come here! Come play with me!” They just want you to hold them and take their picture and play games with them. The older ones, especially the girls, just want to talk and braid your hair! I love it! I still need to work on my pronunciation of their names! I got the easy Sonya, Anitha, Asha names down but there are quite a lot that are seriously impossible…like Poongvanhanagam?? Yeah right…Help!!!

The Heat: I seriously don’t know how people live in this climate!!! I have never sweated so much in my entire life! I mean I’m sweating in places I didn’t even know existed. And my ankles are huge and swollen, not to mention I have a heat rash on my arms and legs…Lovely! It can be kind of draining being in the hot sun, so we try to stay cool in the shade and the fans! Let me tell you…bucket showers are the best thing ever! I was a little scared of how I would be able to handle the whole showering with a bucket thing, but I am here to say that there is nothing like a cold bucket shower in the middle of the day to cool you off! I love them!!

The picture above was taken as we were traveling from the hotel to RSO! They were all dancing and going crazy as we took their picture! Sooo much fun!!