Kolkata Trip:

Before I tell you about it though, it was RAINING when we left Vizag. I had been pining for rain all week, but was told by everyone that it was simply NOT going to happen, since it’s the dry season. Well, God loves me a whole bunch, so He gave me 20 minutes of rain in Vizag J. BUT THEN!! It was POURING RAIN in Kolkata! It was so beautiful, especially when we first got there, because it was so green and lush out in the boonies where the school was. Tender mercies!!

First fabulous idea: flying instead of taking the train. It took 3 hours instead of 24 AND we got free water. That may not seem like a big deal, but when tap water is nonpotable, giardia-free water suddenly becomes a hot commodity.

Second: working at NISHTHA for a few days. At first, none of us were really sure what we were going to do, where, or how high the lice risk would be, but as it turned out, we were volunteering with a women/girl empowerment organization that works specifically with education. During the days, we visited a girls’ school where all of the students had been field laborers. We thought we were going to be teaching English, but we ended up practicing what they already knew. So there were a lot of rounds of “Ride that Pony” and “Down by the Banks” played. I even had to dig in deep memory storage for “London Bridge” and “Duck Duck Goose.” It was pretty well hidden.

It was really interesting to observe the girls, especially for their varying degrees of interest and dedication to furthering their education. Particularly in the more rural areas of India, the girls get married at 16 or 17 and so staying at home to learn the ropes of being a good wife and mother starts pretty early. According to their local culture, THAT’S where they should be, if not earning money for their families; they have no business in school. That attitude is very much reflected in the older girls’ participation in their classes. Just like any student, it’s hard for them to see the connection between effort and sacrifice now and benefits later, but I feel like the culture is far less conducive to promoting their scholarship. In some cases, these girls may be the first ones in their families to attend school at all. They really are pioneers and it’s remarkable what NISHTHA is doing for them. The woman we worked with, Mina, is one of the regional directors (or some such thing) and she’s really an incredible woman! She’s so sweet and is so dedicated to providing educational opportunities to women and girls so that they can begin to see how their lives can be different, better. I’m so glad we got to go.

The girls were so excited to have us there. A program from Utah called YMAD visits every so often to paint the walls, play with the girls, teach English, etc. and so they became very attached to us very fast. They were all such sweet girls, despite their incessant need to cling to our arms and waist everywhere we go. They present a pretty intense falling hazard. We danced with them for a bit and got to teach them the Macarena with much more success than our last attempt at teaching the Macarena to Indian niños….although no one in our group has the song on their ipod, so we danced to a Maroon 5 song instead.

We were only able to go to the school for 2 days because there was a huge strike on day 3 that was supposed to be very dangerous and we were forbidden to leave the hostel compound where we were staying for 36 hours, though the scariest thing that happened in our neck of the woods was when a lizard fell on my roommate. We got pretty stir crazy. So what do you do when 5 girls are stuck in a room for that long? Eat candy, watch Despicable Me, and plan weddings, of course! Guh. So much wedding stuff. Christian generally stayed well away in his own room, only coming down at night for scripture study and Tron. Poor kid. He’s taking a boat-load of estrogen like a champ, though.

The cost of staying at the hostel was much lower than anticipated, so we each got to make small donation. I’m so so glad we got to go! It was amazing!

It was amazing to see the difference between Kolkata and Vizag, or even more generally, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. It was very jungly in the area around NISHTHA. There were ponds, rice paddies, cranes, goats, and egrets EVERYWHERE, Eva loves goats, so we paid special attention to those. The culture was pretty different as well. Even the way people dress…..Well, I mean of course the dress would be different since it’s so much cooler in West Bengal, but the women don’t even seem to wear toe rings and we saw some pretty different hairstyles. All of the baby Telugu we’ve picked up over the last two months is totally useless here, since their speak Bengali. Weather-wise and vegetation-wise, it was a bit more like what I expected India to be like.

The rest of Kolkata was really cool, very fun, very different. We moved to the city to our hotel, Bodhi Tree on Thursday after saying goodbye to Mina and it was SO nice! Plus there was wifi. Can it get any better? We went to the zoo (z’s and j’s often get confused, so we actually visited the big joo to see the jebras….just keep going, it’ll get funnier) where we were definitely the most interesting animals to be seen. We got some pretty great pictures of zoo attendees turning their backs to the animals so that they could take picture of us instead. We bought some hideously awesome colorful straw hats and went to the Victoria Memorial, but, wouldn’t you know it, it costs 10 rupees for Indians to go in, and 150 rupees for foreigners. So Christian went in, found and old man who wanted to guide him around while we sat outside eating peanuts and making Princess Bride jokes. After that we went to Sir Hogg Market to buy gifty things. Holy cow. The moment, the vendors saw us, the prices went up 700%. It was an intense experience with lots of “Here ma’am! Come here!”s and “Bags, ma’am?” and “My price, special for you, good quality!” Plus I think we got scammed by a beggar mother into buying way-too-expensive milk, but it felt good to be generous, so whatever. Boy, it’s draining work, being ripped off. We split up for awhile, which was also terrifying. Anyway, the long and short of it is that we spent too much, bought fun, mostly useless, cool stuff and got fruit shakes at the end of it. The mango shakes with ice cream were killa and Eva had big fly in hers. BUT! No food poisoning. And she drank it all , anyway. Our tolerance for grossness is becoming drastically altered. Last week, Eva told Mackenzie that ants had gotten into their barfi. At first, she was disgusted but after considering her intense love for barfi, she said “that….is not a dealbreaker.”

We heard there was a McDonald’s close by, so we walked the 3 blocks or so to get there. It was an eventful 3 blocks. At one point, a pack of angry dogs ran right into Mackenzie’s ankles, right in front of me. She ran forward to get away, but I stopped cold, screaming my head off, trying to use the man standing next to me as a shield between me and dog fight. We had joked about Dr. Nuckolls’ tendency to exaggerate or at least tell the truth in the least sympathetic way possible to get us more accustomed to India. Once, we asked if the stray dogs were going to be a problem. He said “oh nah, unless there is a pack of 20. Then you should probably get out of there.” Oh Chuckles. McDonalds was nice, but there was a guy who came up to us asking us how his face compared to Christian’s and to rate him on a scale from 1 to 10. He said “I’m looking for a girlfriend. I cheated on my last one so I’m suffering.” It was an all-around uncomfortable conversation….for many reasons. We went home and crashed. The next morning we went to Mother Teresa’s home (one of them, anyway) where her tomb is, as well. The house is still a working convent/museum and it was cool to feel a measure of the spirit there. I learned a lot more about Mother Teresa and I was very intrigued by her much more literal interpretations of serving Christ, and it’s very evident that she loved the Savior immensely. I loved seeing the nuns’ white and blue-bordered saris and habits, thinking of how much good they’ve done and are doing. Eva commented that she thinks Heavenly Father specifically placed people like Mother Teresa and Gandhi on the earth outside of His church so so that they could have an impact in spheres that would have normally rejected the church and the gospel outright. I completely agree. He is the master micro-manager, after all. I also liked seeing all of the foreign visitors and how touched they were with Mother Teresas’ mission as well. After that we tried for forever to find a taxi to take us to the mosque a few kilometers away but the overcharging was too much so a nice man helped us get on a trolley car that took us to a very very old part of Kolkata. Old, crowded, dirty, almost zero women. We walked a few blocks and found the gate to the mosque but didn’t’ see any women inside. We sent Christian in, and thanks to his powers of persuasion and our foreignness (and, as it turned out, our ability to make cash donations), we girls were allowed in. I’m so grateful, too, because it was SO beautiful. We walked up and down the marble staircases surrounding a courtyard where devotees prayed and washed ritually in a pool. I loved how peaceful it was. I felt the Spirit there, too and it was awesome. The donation/fee was well worth it.

Afterwards we got stuck shopping for awhile shopping (also very much worth it because the goods around there are amazing) and we stopped for lunch at a Muslim restaurant that served beef Indian dishes. We hoped for the best, since I assumed it to be halal, and there were tons of other people there, but it looked pretty sketch. Scratch that, it SCREAMED food poisoning. I mean shirtless, sweaty men stewing ginormous pots of meat in a dark back room, cats running around, cold food, the whole bit. We prayed hard and ate fast and of course, they brought us the most expensive item on the menu. Poor Christian didn’t even get his beef. That’s okay. He’ll get his fill on the good ol’ US of A.

I had really wanted to go see the Jain temple but we weren’t quite sure where it was and Rachel was feeling pretty sick, so after haggling with con artists (ahem…taxi drivers) for awhile, we just decided to take the metro home. The walk to the station was super scary and that night I kept having nightmares that I lost my group….but we made it safely. A lady on the platform reprimanded us for being in such a dangerous part of the city. She said “normally, I always wear trousers, but when I come down here, even I wear traditional clothes.” I felt pretty dumb, and in hindsight, it definitely wasn’t very smart of us to do all the things we did, and I’m so grateful we made it back safe and sound. I’m more and more convinced that Heavenly Father rather enjoys answering my parents’ prayers.

We split up on the metro then, 4 of us going home with Rachel and 3 going to the market again. Mackenzie and I went out to buy a little cake for Christian’s birthday (it was the next day, but we would be travelling), then decorated our hotel room with Eva with some pretty fabulous decorations, including a birthday banner that read “Happy Birthday Christi” with the last two letters crammed next to the last I because we ran out of the napkins it was written on. We didn’t have any string or tape, so we tacked it to the wall using floss and bindi stickers. I also made a crown made of flowers and floss. He seemed pleased when he got back. I hope it was a good enough birthday for him! I’m so glad he’s with us. We really do have an awesome group. We may get a little impatient from time to time, mostly just when we’re hungry and the oreos have run out, but we really love and respect one another. We’ve been reading the Book of Mormon every night as a group and I think that that has been making all the difference. We have an awesome mix of personalities, and things just keep getting better and better!

As much fun as Kolkata was, we were all glad to come home to Vizag…It’s so cool that Vizag feels like home…I’m starting to get antsy to get back to the US, but I know I’ll miss India  a whole bunch. There’s so much to do before that happens!!

Love you more than all the Ganesh statues in Kolkata!

Allison

Wedding-palooza

And we’re back! 

our Telugu teacher is an awesome singer

Life is speeding up and the semester’s already half over! Whaaaaat. I’ve been staying busy, mostly working at Lebenshilfe and trying to find my footing there, observing in the different classrooms and therapy rooms, and trying to figure out what the heck I’m doing that is contributing to my project. I often feel like I’m studying AROUND my actual research topic, but Dr. Nuckolls seems pleased with my progress, so I think I need to give myself a bit more credit. I AM learning a ton, and I’m still so grateful for 1)the opportunity to be here 2)all the help I receive 3)how kind and gracious everyone is. Apart from Lebenshilfe, we’ve been having our Telugu classes regularly, so we’re picking it up, bit by little bit. I feel like we have about as much speech as a toddler…Mom, Dad, elephant, want, today, tomorrow, good, bad, etc. We’ve memorized about 4 sanskrit poems so far, and we have to memorize how to write them and 3 other poems in Telugu for our final in April.

Christian and a beautiful little girl in the yoga therapy room

Chennari's birthday...it's blurry, but they're so stinkin cute!

 

Pre-wedding Henna fiesta

The last few weeks have been a little unusual, though. I already made mention of the weddings, but here is a bit more detail from my journal:

 On February 13^th, we went to Madhu’s cousin’s wedding, and it was way cool, though a little anticlimactic, truth be told. Not because the wedding wasn’t wonderful, mostly I think because we were expecting more of a party party, not a stand-around-and-chat party. Madhu takes excellent care of us and tries to keep us from making more of a spectacle of ourselves than we already are, so he put the kibosh on dancing.

Eva+children+dance music=unamused Madhu

The wedding block

 We managed a few moves before he caught us, though. But we looked so good!...in my humble opinion. When Gowri, Sailaja and Chennari sent us of in the rickshaws, I felt like we were a bunch of Cinderellas in our fancy sarees. We met Madhu at a block that had been partitioned off for the wedding, then got in line to meet the bride and groom. Maybe it was just bad timing on our part for seeing them, but they looked pretty miserable….but it’s no wonder! They hadn’t slept for forever, they didn’t eat all day (the actual ceremony is quite long, and they can’t take breaks for the bride and groom to answer nature’s call), they’re greeting a TON of people they’ve never met before and will probably never see again, and they really don’t know each other at all. Regardless of how tired and hungry they felt, they were still so sweet and asked us to please stay for the ceremony (which started at 3:59 AM…) The decorations were phenomenal, though. There were lights lining the streets and an alley and been turned into the dance area. Super cool.

 

We met Madhu’s family and we all went up on a rooftop to watch all the festivities and saw fireworks going off. There was a little girl who was practicing her English with me and she kept insisting all night that I would come visit her house sometime. She even had me meet her parents and grandparents. They were all so sweet and very kind. We ate some dinner but we were getting tired and Madhu and his brother were getting worried about us being around the inebriated weddings guests, so they took us home at around 11 pm. No official marriage witnessing for us.

We're twins. Can't you see it? I need me a nose ring.

Wedding round 2

The next day we went to Raja Lakshmi’s (our translator) niece’s wedding. This one was super interesting because we got to see a lot more of it (the actual ceremony started at 12:45 am, so we stayed until about 2 am), it was Brahmin wedding, so there were a bunch of traditions we wouldn’t have seen otherwise, and we had a bit of time to bond with the bride and groom. Apparently, this was an arranged marriage as well (the vast majority of marriages are) but they were engaged for quite a while because of her schooling, so they had a good amount of time to get to know each other and fall in love. It was so fun to see them sneak smiles at one another throughout the afternoon and evening!

mid-festivity wardrobe change (some people may change up to 10 times)

With Raja Lakshmi. Means....we love her.

Not-so-secret love! EEE!!!

the bride is first blessed while sitting in the flower box, and is then carried out  by her father and brothers.

We were present for the sugar water sprinkling/drinking ceremony(we were unaware this had commenced, so we were caught quite unawares by a woman spraying us with water, seemingly appropos of nothing) where the bride and groom’s families exchange gifts and the main part of the actual wedding ceremony, but we left after they washed each others’ feet, finally had the swastik sheet between them dropped, and they smashed a leaf full of cumin and jaggery paste on each others’ heads. (What IS jaggery, anyway? No one knows…..just kidding mom, I just googled it.) We got to see at least 4 of the bride’s 6 sarees (all of which were incredibly beautiful) and we met some really nice people, though there was no dancing and people were still trying to surreptitiously sneak pictures of us with their phones. I really rather miss blending in. Anyway, we found an upstairs balcony to hang out and talk to kill time. Some of the kids at the reception had the same idea, so we played with them and it was fun getting to know them.

We had some free time to take pictures up on the roof...

I know I've joked about arranged marriage in the past, mostly to get out of the hassle of dating, and I really would trust my parents to choose very well for me (neither just my mom or just my dad....no offense....that's why you make a great team!), and I certainly see its merit in this culture (and in many others, actually) but no way, Jose. I actually had a dream that I had an arranged marriage and I woke up in a cold sweat. I'll pick my hubs, thank you very much!

We were really lucky to go to such an event, but I was surprised because it wasn’t really what I was expecting. Overall, it was beautiful, colorful, symbolic, long, well-documented (a floodlight was pointed at the bride and groom for about 13 hours straight so that the photographers and videographers would always have a good shot) and happy. From what I understand, an Indian wedding isn’t about the bride and groom per se, but more about the excitement of joining two whole families, which is really cool. At the same time, it also made me all the more grateful for the peace and sheer bliss of a temple sealing. It’s just about the couple and God. Simple. Beautiful. Perfect. I kept thinking about Jared and Tiffany’s sealing in the LA temple and why it is that I consider that to be one of the best days of my life...I mean, I wasn’t even there for the majority of the wedding festivities, but it’s because that of that feeling in the temple…ay that FEELING!! It’s the most amazing thing. I love that it brings the whys of God’s plan into beautiful, soul-expanding clarity. I hope the bride and groom felt a bit like that on their wedding day :). Everyone should feel that at some point!

Needless to say, the wedding week geared us up for a wedding FRENZY a few days later when we were stuck inside for a couple days because of a strike with nothing to do but pinterest engagement rings and watch wedding videos. But more on that later, so I can post this darn thing!

Love you all more than all the rice thrown at an Indian wedding!!

-Allison

Hey fam and friendlies,
Sorry to be MIA for so long. It's been pretty busy and I ran out of internet....
We went to 2 different weddings this week (go figure that the stars would dictate that Valentine's Day would be the most auspicious time to get married... also, the two most used adjectives in India are "auspicious" and "super". ) one of them was a Brahmin wedding, and we got to stay through quite a few of the ceremonies. We weren't up for the whole 24+ hours, but dang we looked good in our wedding saris, if I may say so. It was so beautiful and so colorful.
One of the girls that was supposed to come with us originally joined us for 2 weeks....She
(Rachel) had gotten her appendix out at the end of last semester and was told by her doctor that she wasn't allowed to go to India....a verdict he rescinded a week after we all left for Vizag. So she was pretty bummed, but still had her visa, passport, and a ticket, so she's here now! We took another trip to Simhachalam Temple yesterday and both she and Christian shaved their heads... so many baldies! We're currently in the airport in Vizag on our way to Kolkata, enjoying the few minutes of Wifi we have. Hallelujah! Sorry there are no pictures right now, but I promise to make it up to you all soon!
Love you all more than barfi! (our favorite dessert sweet... not made of barf)
-Al

Macarena Madness + a Warning

It’s been a pretty eventful week, despite all presuppositions.

 Last Saturday was India’s Republic Day (or something like that) and we were invited to a festival in downtown Vizag and it was…..an adventure. It was the first day we had all gotten to wear our saris (getting sari blouses back from the tailor takes FOREVER) so we were all excited and got dressed up….poor Gowri spent an eternity wrapping us all up. For some reason, we arrived at the festival 2 hours early, so the only people present were a million kids dancing their little hearts out on a stage with way-too-loud speakers blasting Telugu hip-hop.

 (Have I mentioned how loud everything is in India? Car horns, music, public announcements, dogs, demon crows that squawk at all hours of the day and night, and the crazy loud gongs and bells that go off at the Krishna temple down the street at 5 am and 6 pm. It’s actually not so bad for my roommate Lauren and I because our ridiculously loud fan drowns out the sound…tender mercies from God!!) So we just sat in the shade for a good long while and in no time flat, we had a group of nearly 100 kids surrounding us, staring. After a long time, I was tired of just sitting and exchanging “hello, how are you”s in Telugu and English, so my friend and I tried to teach them the Macarena. But the second they figured out that what we were trying to do was dance, they started SCREAMING and it was going to reach mayhem status pretty fast. Dr. Krishnayya stood up and yelled across the crowd, “No dancing! No dancing!!”. Whoops. I guess Macarena+India+white girls is a bad mix. We decided to take a break and come back once the festival had actually commenced, but the kids cornered us next to a tent where there was a goddess statue, so we got our picture taken and it ended up in the paper the next day. We were hesitant to actually head back once the festival was in full swing, but it wasn’t so bad the second time around….they just had us judge a sort of chalk-drawing contest and sit on stage for a bit while the kids had their singing contest….I’m not quite sure how, but we escaped after that! It was so sweet of them to make us the guests of honor, but I do miss blending in…you’d think I’d be used to being one of the token out-of-place white girls…

We showed up again in the paper a few days later, but we got in some trouble for it… a few weeks ago, we went to the beach to play and took some really cool jumping pictures (we stayed well away from the water and weren’t doing ANYTHING dangerous)…unbeknownst to us, someone took a picture of us jumping from the rocks and submitted it to the paper. We weren’t named specifically this time, but Dr. Krishnayya was very concerned because it looks like we’re jumping from the rocks onto MORE rocks. Not a good example for the chilluns.

During the week, I’ve been trying to spend as much time as possible at Lebenshilfe. The school psychologist has been helping me a ton with visiting different classrooms to observe, visit, and play with the kids. They have extremely limited resources as far as formal testing is concerned, so he carries most of the burden of assessment for incoming and current students. I was a little freaked out the first few days, though….it seemed like I hadn’t really made it clear that I’m STUDYING speech therapy, not an actual speech therapist, so the teachers told me, “ok, observe for a few minutes and then pick a child you think would be a good candidate for speech therapy. Then you can take him to the speech therapy room and teach him how to speak.” Uhhhhh……ok. I picked a little boy I had played with a few days before and we went to go practice some “pa pa” and “ta ta” things….heck if I knew what I was doing…Within a few minutes of me trying to play games with him and sing songs with him, he ran out crying…thankfully he ran straight to the psychologist’s office…I told him, ”I’m apparently neither a very good singer or a very good speech therapist.” As it turns out, I picked the one boy who cries every time he moves rooms, regardless of who he’s with or how well they sing. Go figure.

I got to spend a few days in the dance therapy room where the kids were practicing a traditional folk song about birds eating a snake. All the girls circled around a little boy in a snake costume, flapping their arms and then pretending to eat the snake…super cute and really cool. Apparently, if any of the students become agitated in their other classes, they can come to the dance therapy class, put on a costume, and become a part of the dance set. One boy came in during one of the practices, put a small cardboard bow and quiver around his shoulders, and struck a Krishna pose. He stood like that for about 10 minutes, then decided he had had enough and went along his merry way.

Lebenshilfe takes a much more holistic approach to special education than the U.S., so it might be a bit of a challenge to analyze JUST the speech therapy assessments, but I’m learning a ton and I’m so grateful that I get to be here.

Last Thursday, we took a day trip to the more mountainous region of Andhra Pradesh and took our translator, Madhu with us. It was very….eye opening. The landscape was beautiful, we saw some really amazing things and we bonded a lot more, but there were a whole lot of bodily functions I had no desire to see so abundantly. So be forewarned: If you’re not a Beauchamp and such talk is not your thing, please skip reading and enjoy the photos.

So 6 am: Train to Araku Valley. Train stations. Exciting and stinky places. Exciting because they mean travel and adventure. Stinky because the squatty-potty toilets empty onto the tracks. We also discovered that the area next to the train tracks in the rural areas outside of Vizag are popular dumping grounds. We did our best to not make eye contact with people relieving themselves in the forests…but they were so close! And staring! Well, what can ya do. I guess you’ve got to keep yourself entertained during that time. But isn’t that what newspapers are for? Our train ride to the Araku Valley lasted about 6 hours, so we had plenty of time to teach Madhu clapping games and hangman.

This is what eye contact with a forest dumper will do to you.

 He’s a very serious sort of person, so we try to help him loosen up…unfortunately, he seems embarrassed by us often…but then again, so does Christian, so maybe it’s just the nature of being with so many girls.

 Our neighbor on the train was a very nice man from Kolkata who runs an orphanage in the city and he gave us some really great tips for where to go when we visit in a few weeks (oh! We decided for sure to go to Kolkata…we’ll volunteer at an orphanage for a few days then tour around the city J) Also, true to form, we had a number of kids come and take pictures with us. India’s doing wonders for my ego!

The countryside is so beautiful!! It reminded me a lot of Ecuador, though a bit less green. After a few hours, the smog cleared and the air was so fresh and cool….it was glorious!! We passed through a bunch of tunnels on the way up, and everyone would lean out the windows and scream the whole way through…WAY more fun than holding your breath!

Once we got there, we hopped on a chartered bus (my favorite! #rotarykids {we’ve gotten into verbally hash-tagging things. Ridiculous. But it feel like homeJ…despite the fact that I have never actually hash tagged anything in my life}) and went to a museum about local tribal life…Apparently, the marriage proposal ceremony either includes or consists entirely (I’m not sure which) of spitting water on your intended. Mmm. Sign me up.

Also, the women have 3 nose rings apiece. Super cool.

Botanical gardens--nose picking photo an unintended bonus.

We briefly visited some really beautiful botanical gardens that have treehouses available to rent. Holy dream come true, Batman! I love treehouses. I want one so much. But the most exciting part of that little adventure was when the man sitting behind Eva started choking on his orange soda and sprayed it all over the back of her nubbly head. She shrieked and pulled a duck-and cover, asking frantically if it was vomit. Thankfully, no….But the man (possibly because he was still choking, but more likely because he was embarrassed) didn’t say anything to her….no “Here, let me help you mop that up” or “I’m sorry I showered my beverage on you.” She was a bit sticky for awhile…but thank goodness for baby wipes!

We had lunch at a nice hotel, where we realized how mild our cooks make our food…they are definitely increasing our tolerance by degrees, but it was fuerte. And tasty. Until later.

There was an enormous line for the bathroom, so I had a nice chat with a woman from a neighboring state and I got some interesting insights on scripture study in Hindu culture… We got out just in time to see a dance by some of the hill tribe women and we even got to dance with them a little! If you give them money, they’ll chant your name and stomp in rhythm to it. Best 10 rupees I ever spent.

We loaded back into the buses and drove on winding, mountainous paths that rival the Andes highways for twists and turns, but have significantly fewer potholes… Unfortunately, at least 3 of the ladies on our bus got pretty carsick and threw up all over the side of the bus. I felt so bad for them! They had some time to recover when we stopped at a beautiful scenic overlook of an enormous valley and a bit later when we reached the Borra Caves. The Caves have some religious significance…we climbed down into the caves and saw some pretty impressive stalagtites and stalagmites (said to be original statues representing gods and goddesses) we even climbed up a rickety little staircase at the bottom of the cave that led to a shrine where you can perform a puja and ring a small bell.

 Madhu was taking very good care of us and making sure the monkeys didn’t get close enough to steal our things...I think we drive him nuts sometimes, because we’re so easily distracted by all the new and exciting things…but I figure we’re just preparing him to be a good dad.

not the vomit side of the bus

The ride back to Vizag was even more twisty and gastronomically distastrous for our Indian travelling companions, but we made it in one piece! Unfortunately, I discovered at 3:30 the next morning that the food had given my poor roommate food poisoning….It also got Mackenzie, Eva, AND Christian. So Kelly and I played nurse for them the whole next day and our bedroom turned into the sick room, complete with multiple episodes of Alias, electrolyte powder, and plenty of just-in-case buckets. But truthfully, they are the most fun sick people I’ve ever been around, cracking jokes at every turn of their stomachs. A few of them love the show Parks and Recreation and felt a peculiar bond with this man from an episode in which everyone gets the flu.

Everyone’s better now, thank goodness. We’re so glad to get back to normal! But as a spiritual aside, Heavenly totally answered my prayer on Friday morning….I first prayed that my roommates would get better, immediately followed by a plea that I would NOT get sick, then that I could be of help to someone that day. Lo and behold, no food poisoning for me! Score one for the republic. I really don’t know how, either. I eat everything….maybe I should be more judicious. Tender mercies!!

Sorry for the graphic-ness, but this is also turning into my journal….plus you were warned. And it’s a true glimpse at life in India for BYU students.

Love you more than all the times we made it into the paper this week!

-Allison

And just because: more photos!!

This probably won't be our band's album cover.

But this will.

Lebenshilfe with Christian and Madhu