The Beginning of My Adventure Up North

In the last week of February we were all given a week off to travel and do whatever we wanted.  I really wanted to go on a trip to see the Taj Mahal and ride an elephant if at all possible, luckily two of the other girls felt the same way!  We got train tickets, our first train was directly from Visakhapatnam to Agra, and then coming back we rode a train from Agra to Vijayawada and from there to Visakhapatnam.  The first train adventure was a 34 hour long train ride! It was a hideously long journey but we thankfully made it there safely! We traveled from Thursday (February 20^th) to Friday night, well, Saturday morning at 1 a.m.  I was so glad we had a driver from our hotel come to pick us up; it was kind of a scary area especially at night.  It was so nice to stay in a hotel because we got to have nice soft beds and we got to take our first real showers since January!!!  It was so awesome! 

And this is how I feel after our first train ride.

An All-Nighter Indian Wedding!

We were all invited to our first Indian wedding here, of course I was super excited to go and so was everyone else! We all got dressed up in our sarees and then Durga and Sailaja helped us get super fancy by putting fancy bindis on our foreheads, flowers in our hair, and of course lending us beautiful necklaces, earrings, and bangles to wear!  We arrived around 8:00 p.m., we first went into the main building to see the bride and groom.  The inside was set up with rows of chairs all facing a very decorated stage where the bride and groom were standing taking pictures.  We got to go up on the stage to meet them and congratulate them, and their photographers took pictures of us with them.  

Here was the outside entrance.

She was so pretty!

After that we went to the other section of the party which was outside next to the building.  This was where everyone was getting food and visiting in a big open marble courtyard.  They had tons of food stations all along the sides of the courtyard with such a huge variety of foods!  We went around and visited each station completely filling our plates with delicious north Indian food.  It was delightful!  It all tasted so good, and the best part was the dessert table because it had ICE CREAM!!!  Yep, we loved that part the most; there was no keeping track of how many times we went back to that table!  

All of us with our Guru!

Seriously, this food was SO good!

While we were trying to eat our dinner, there were SO many people who would come over and just stare at us haha and many who would ask to take pictures with us.  One of our Telugu teachers had invited us to the wedding so we found her during dinner to ask her when the actual marriage ceremony would be.  She told us that the decided time for the actual marriage was at 3:17 a.m.!!!  This was the auspicious time chosen by the priests, I think this is determined using their horoscopes and something about the alignment of the stars… Anyways, basically we had to entertain ourselves until 3 a.m.  Most people don’t even stay for this part, but it’s more of just family members who stay the whole night through.  We walked around and did some exploring while most of the other people there disappeared to “take rest” till the ceremony.  It was such an interesting experience because there’s so many different rituals and things that they do for the wedding.  Once it began, the bride and groom started separated and weren’t allowed to see each other.  We got to watch the priest do some sort of ritual with the bride and her parents, while the groom was across the room doing something similar.  

Exploring on the roof, it was really pretty!

The set up for the bride's ritual.

The groom's ritual before his bride joins him.

Then the bride was carried in a basket up to the stage where the groom was and they sat across each other with a sheet in between them so that they still couldn’t see each other.  

Separated by a curtain so they can't see each other till the right time.

Yay! Time to throw some rice!

These people know how to party I guess!

After another long ritual they were able to see each other and then the priests and family members up on the stage started throwing rice on their heads.  We went up on the stage with everyone else and got to take turns throwing rice on their heads which was lots of fun!  The ceremony continued with nonstop chanting and when 5 a.m. rolled around some of us decided to go back home and go to bed!  Two of the other girls decided to stay till the end; they ended up leaving at 7 a.m. and I guess by that time it still hadn’t ended!  Crazy!!!  It was a really fun experience, and I’m so glad that we actually got to see an Indian wedding while we are here!

A Wonderful Valentine’s Day!

Valentine’s Day was a really nice day, it started with a test in our Telugu class which went great and I got a call from McKay after!  I went out with a translator in hopes of getting another interview but it was unsuccessful; the place we went to did give my translator and I eggs though! Haha So that was random but nice… We’ve all been getting sick this week so today was just a nice day for all of us to try and get feeling better by resting.  I had a wonderful time finishing the end of my book that I’ve been reading, Pride and Prejudice!!!!!  Dad I know how much fun you’ve had watching that movie with me since it’s our favorite, and since I didn’t bring the movie with me (luckily some other girls did!), I thought it would be great to read it instead!  So I’m sure you understand the joy it’s been to have the book with me on this trip ;) haha! Anyways, we all decided to go back to our favorite Pizza Hut restaurant for a special Valentine’s Day dinner!  That was super good!  One guy even tried to propose to one of the girls!  Don’t worry we ran away, seriously we hopped into the closest rigshaw and drove off!  After we safely arrived home, we had a fun movie night watching the Princess Diaries and drawing henna tattoos on ourselves! McKay called and talked to me again and so it was just a really great day!  This morning (Saturday morning my time and Friday night Utah time) McKay and I had set up a Valentine’s Skype date J it was so cute, wonderful, and fun!  During our date I had the most wonderful delivery that came to my house.  McKay had surprised me by sending me a huge beautiful heart-shaped flower arrangement of red roses, a teddy bear, Valentine chocolates, and a letter!!!!!!  It was so cute I died!!! He is amazing!!!  It was the best! Such a fun and memorable Valentine’s Day!!!  Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!!!

Me and my handsome date!

Oh my gosh I love roses!!!

Such a sweet and wonderful surprise!!!

Telugu Apparently Easy?

We have a Telugu class in the morning three days a week, and it’s taught by two teachers.  One of our teachers, Sarma garu, has been teaching us some Telugu poems and this past week we have been learning how to write them in Telugu.  The writing looks pretty cool! I like learning how to write some things in Telugu but it’s a lot of memorization!  It’s so funny because anyone here who speaks Telugu will tell us how easy it is to learn and that it will be no problem for us.  One man said it would only take us a month to learn the language haha I don’t know what planet he came from but we've been here for over a month and no such luck! One teacher (while telling us some words for random things) said “you will use them and you will know them” haha it’s as simple as that!  So anyways it has been funny going to class having both teachers overload us with words and then expect us to know them and say full sentences using those words by the next day of class.  Well Sarma garu has given us three different poems so far to write and have memorized this week.  Monday he tested us on the first, Tuesday the first and second poems, and tomorrow (Friday) he is testing us on the biggest poem.  On Monday’s and Tuesday’s tests I was the only one to finish them completely without mistakes! Wahooo!!!  Haha I felt like a little kid with a gold star sticker on my forehead! So that part of Telugu class is going well but the whole speaking it and writing it is quite difficult!  Anyways I thought it would be fun to show some pictures of what these poems look like!  I call it the caterpillar language because the writing looks like little caterpillars!

Okay, I know my handwriting is terrible but the writing really is pretty!

The Three Poems (Slokas): Suklambaradharam, Saraswati, and Subhashitam

Quiz on this tomorrow!

Quiz on the first two.  He wrote: Cala Bagundi (very good)! How special! haha

The Train, Telugu Tour Guide, Tree admiring, Tribal dancing, Tall feeling, Museum going, Cave Temple, Tea Time, Puppy Saving, Crazy Bus Driving Adventure!!!

So this week we got to go on a fun excursion up north from where we are.  We got up early to be ready to leave for the train station at 5 am.  Two of our translators took us, thankfully, because the train station…. Kinda scary! The train ride was one of my favorite parts of the day.  I sat next to the window and it was just so amazing to watch the landscape change and see the different areas that the train ran through for 4 ½ hours.  

After we got off of the train we hopped onto a big tour bus that took us to a bunch of places throughout the day.  The first little stop on the bus was for our tour guide to point out some trees for everyone to see.  He was talking about them for quite a while and so I asked one of the translators what he was saying and he told us they were the trees that are used for making matches and toothpicks, “ooooohh” “aaaaaahh” what a life changing moment.  Mom, I have seen in real life THE trees that are used for matches and toothpicks, yep, pretty dang cool! haha  At the next real stop we went to a garden (I honestly have no idea what its importance was because the tour guide spoke excellent Telugu) but it was a beautiful garden!  Then we went to a museum that was filled with super creepy mannequins.  It was actually a funny experience because one of the main parts of the museum wasn't lit so we walked through the building with enough light to see where to walk but not enough lighting to see the actual displays! We were hurried through our museum tour and got back on the bus which took us to a hotel for lunch.  The food was spicy! but actually pretty good!  I was happy because they actually had spoons!!! (for those who wanted them) So I got to use a spoon which made me happy! 

After lunch we got to watch a tribal dance.  I guess there is some jungle tribe close to where we were so a bunch of lady’s came and did a tribal dance for us, and after we got to dance with them!  I also snuck a quick picture next to them to show you all how dang tall I am! I’ve found a place in this world where I am tall, so I’m enjoying it while I can!  

After that lil adventure, we got back on the crazy bus for a long ride over to the Borra Caves.  

This was the coolest part of the day the caves were amazing and huge!  We got to go down (and later climb up) a bazillion stairs to get into this huge cave and walk around, it was super fun!  We were told that we would be seeing a temple on this trip and then when we were in the cave our translators told us the temple was actually in the cave. Cool!  So we climbed up these super ancient-looking, scary, unreliable stairs (major Indiana Jones moment) to get to this “temple”.  The temple turned out to be this small little cove with a bell hanging down that people could ring if they wanted.  It was just really funny to go through all this fear in climbing those stairs just to find that the temple was really just a bell and nothing more haha and then turn around and go right back down.  After walking around in the cave we had to get back to the bus that was going to drive us all back home.  Okay I have to tell you about this bus driver of ours… the guy was a mad man! He was the craziest bus driver ever and I LOVED it!!! Seriously the guy drove the bus like he was in a Nascar race!  As soon as we were headed for home he drove so fast I think he was faster than the train!  The difficult part was trying not to get car sick.  On our way back we stopped for “tea time” and as soon as we got off the bus one poor girl ran to the side of the street to relieve her stomach, so the drive was a bit rough.  We found six puppies at the place we stopped at for our tea break, my heart absolutely broke for those poor puppies!  I have no idea how they were alive, one looked inches from death L it was so so sad, but luckily McKenna and I had brought some crackers for the trip (in case the food wasn’t safe to eat) and we fed all the puppies my crackers.  So we felt happy that we were able to give them some sort of food, they were absolutely adorable!  The place we stopped at for tea happily served some sort of snack along with it, I have no idea what it was but it was surprisingly really good!  After that the bus took us back home.  It was a super fun packed day, and we even saw monkeys during the bus ride! So that was pretty cool!

Funny Moment… In India!

Ah weekends…. All of us decided we needed to take a break and relax from all our school stuff so Saturday was a pretty lazy laid back day. We all made some fun Saturday night plans to look forward to though.  We decided to go to Jagadumba (I love saying that name!) it’s this huge shopping area filled with tons of clothing stores and jewelry stores and things like that, it’s crazy busy and packed with people, it almost has a New York – ish feel to it.  So we decided it would be fun to explore and walk around Jagadumba and that having our beloved pizza for dinner was a must!  So after our little shopping fun at Jagadumba, we caught a ride up to the major shopping mall here, CMR.  CMR has Domino’s pizza and a Pizza Hut restaurant!!!  Yep, I’m happy.  We all got a booth in the Pizza Hut and were super excited to have our familiar American/Italian? food, and it was awesome because they were playing the kind of popular music we listen to on the radio at home.  It was funny though because they would randomly play a Christmas song.  It was the best moment when we were eating our delicious pizza and the “All I want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey came on! We all started dancing in our little booth and singing along to the song so they turned the volume up for us while everyone else in the restaurant stared at the weird Americans.  We couldn’t help but laugh at the experience we were having, recognizing: here we are at a mall, in a sit down Pizza Hut restaurant in India, eating our amazing pizza, singing and dancing to Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is You”, on the 1^st of February, IN INDIA!!! Haha who does that?!  Anyways it was a lot of fun! J

One of Those “Oh No!” Moments

Of course the day after I vowed to never drink water outside of the house again…. I do!  I went out with one of the translators to interview someone for my project.  We went to talk to this one lady and her daughter, they were SO nice!  They were super excited to have me in their little home; we ended up staying there for almost 3 hours! The majority of our time there wasn’t even related to my project because they wanted me to look at a bunch of their photo albums haha!  The main lady that we spoke with wanted me to see the wedding album from one of her sons who got married not too long ago.  She brought me out a HUGE book and started going through it with me, pointing out each picture and talking about it for probably 3 minutes per picture.  It took a long time to get through the album haha but it was really fun to look at.  She ended up having me go through four different albums; my translator was trying to flip through the pages as fast as she could haha recognizing how long it would take.  Well they were incredibly sweet and very hospitable; it was a great experience for the most part.  Towards the end of my interview with them, the mother brought out a plate of sweets to offer to my translator and I.  I still wasn’t feeling very well from my night before but I didn’t want to be rude so I took a “sweet” to be polite, I took a small bite and regretted it haha (a good amount of the “sweets” or “desserts” here aren’t exactly pleasing to the taste buds if ya know what I mean) I figured I would just take the rest of it home with me and dispose of it there.  Well during our conversation they insisted that I eat it haha so I fought with my mouth and stomach to swallow each bite and keep it down.  I was relieved when I finished that sweet but then she brought out another plate with two other types of sweets to offer to me!  Still not wanting to offend, I picked the smallest option and started eating it “mmm! It’s so good!” I said to try and thank her haha she smiled at me and then handed me a big cup of water!!! OH NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!  

I awkwardly held it not knowing what to do, while I tried to swallow the other treat and keep it down.  Well what do ya know, as soon as I finished that sweet she held the plate out again to me wanting me to eat the other!  There was no way I was going to be able to convince my mouth to swallow more especially when it was such a large sweet.  So I tried to say “no thank you I’m super full” but she kept insisting that I take it.  We finally settled on me at least trying it so I broke off a small piece to hurry and swallow and then took two very small sips of the water to wash it all down haha.  My translator must have recognized the panicked look on my face about the water, because she then told me that it was just fine if I didn’t finish it.  Whew!!! What a relief!!!  I’m sooo glad I didn’t have to drink all of that water!  I didn’t want to offend them so I’m so grateful for my wonderful translator!  It was a really fun visit with this family, they were so incredibly nice!  My translator told them how I was getting married when I got back home, and they insist that I get married here in India! Haha and that I could come live with them, they were really nice cute people!