Sorry

I am so sorry. We have been really busy, so I have not been able to write. We went to Pondicherry on Friday morning on a bus. It was a 4 hour ride that was very bumpy, but it was not very bad. Really all we did there was eat drink, and shop. It is a city that used to be inhabited by the French, so it still has a European vibe to it. There are great places to eat pasta, crescents, and cakes. On Friday when we pulled into town there was nowhere open to eat and we were starving so we went and bought a pineapple eon the beach and ate that until diner. That night we went to a restaurant and splurged for a 500 rupee a piece meal of penne pesto pasta, lots of veggies, and a banana daiquiri and then went off to our hostel. The hostel that we called did the whole switcheroo on us and we ended up staying in a homestead and paying way too much for it. But after we got settled in we went back to the same restaurant and got the same waiter and ordered dessert. While we were there one of the girls that we were with noticed that her necklace had broken. On it had once been her great-grandmothers engagement ring that had been made into a pendant that her grandmother (who just passes away in November) had always worn. So we all crawled on the floor of the restaurant and then walked the streets of Pondy looking for this pendant. No one really thought that we would find it, but she was really upset so we kept trying. Well…we found in lying in the middle of the street 5 blocks away from the restaurant that we had been eating at. It was defiantly a miracle!

The next day we did lots of shopping and eating. We went to a place and I got chocolate chip pancakes that were filled with Nuttella. Delicious! We also went inside of an Ashram. It was really interesting. There were flowers all around and a bunch of locals meditating, with their eyes rolling back into their heads. That night we met on a rooftop bar/restaurant with a bunch of other people that we knew for Vellore. We sat there for hours and drank Mojitos, listened to music, and talked. There are a lot of people here from America now, so we have all instantly become friends.

On Sunday morning we went to Singi. There is where the rulers of Tamil Nadu (the state that we are in) used to live. We had to stand the whole bus ride (2 hours) but finally got there. We walked around and looked at the ruins. It was neat to see that they were using the same brick techniques that we use today. There were also lots of Monkeys around the fort that came after us for our sacks of souvenirs. They learn that most bags have food in them so they try to go for them when you walk by. They also steal bottles and drink whatever is in them. They are defiantly not nice monkeys, but if you throw a rock at them they go away.

When we went to the bus station to get a ride back to Vellore, the bus station was mass chaos! There were hundreds of people there all trying to get somewhere. It turns out that there was a festival in Singi that many people came to go to and they were all trying to get back home to go to work on Monday. We finally found out that we needed bus 216. Well three of them came by, but they were all turning around and going back to Villapuram because more people wanted to go that way. One came that was going to Vellore, and so many people tried to get on it that there were people hanging out on the side of the bus and hitting each other to try and get a seat. We decided that it was not quite worth it, so we went to a hostel and had the owner get us 2 taxis for 9 people which got us safely back to Vellore.

We are in the community now and it is wonderful! I will have to tell you all about it later though. We still have much to do before we leave Vellore and we are leaving on Saturday. I am not proofing this either, so I hope it makes some since. I just wanted to let you know that we had a great weekend, and I am still alive! 17 more days to go…