Hey all y'all!
Wow...it almost feels like a P-day...sort of. But not really. The only similarities between today and a P-day are 1: I went shopping and 2: I'm now emailing y'all! But it is a good day and have been a good week. This email will likely be considerably shorter than I would care for it to be, but I promise that the next one will have greater details about life and my experiences and reactions. I'll take notes from my journal so as to ensure that I remember all the highlights when I next write, since my memory tends to be a little unreliable at times.
But I'll start by telling you about today. Or rather, I'll start with approximately 11:00 last night when we boarded the train from Chennai to Coimbatore. At about 11:00 our group of adventurous BYU India field study students, Ben, Kate, Nate, Ashley, Melanie, April, Gwen and myself, were all sitting seated around a big ol' mound of backpacks near platform one at the station. Before long our train arrived and we located our 2nd class, 2-tiered, air-conditioned car and got aboard. We were all in the same car and relatively close together. I was nearest to Gwen, April and Melanie. Gwen and I were in top bunks across the aisle from the other two. Anyway, beneath us, on what we had supposed to be beds aboard our sleeper, were about 7 Indian men who jovially talked until about 1:00 in the morning.
If you were to ask how I felt physically at the present moment, an honest answer would be "tired and sweaty". It was a long night. But I managed about 4 or 5 hours of sleep. And I enjoyed the company of my travelling companions, and of Kandasami, and Indian member of Parliment when daylight hours arrived. We arrived in Coimbatore at approximately 10:00 this morning, so about four hours ago. It is a pretty big city, but not as big or dirty as Chennai. And the weather is lovely. It is quite humid, but there is a lovely breeze.
The first thing we did when we arrived was to rent a hotel room for the day to store our belongings. Then we went to a restaurant for some food. For breakfast this morning I tried...oh shucks...I can't remember the name. It looked like a giant, rolled-up crepe though, and there were several spicy concoctions to dip it in. It was alright, but I perferred the idly we had yesterday morning. After breakfast the males and females split up. The girls wanted to go shopping for salwars and sarees. The bus ride was an adventure, to say the least. Every experience with public transportation feels like an adventure. The traffic and driving is wild. But I love it. It is fun to head straight at headlights and to come within inches of motorbike riders every few seconds. The rickshaw is the funnest mode of public transportation I've experienced yet, but I'll tell you about those another day.
Shopping was good. As you know, I'm not much of a shopping. My poor group...I was as frustrating as ever. But I did end up with a salwaar and some good ideas of what i want for a saree and for my second salwaar. Some of the other girls got some beautiful fabrics and salwaars and the married girls, Ashley and Kate, bought toe rings, a symbol of their marital status.
Yup...so we went shopping, and then we bussed it back to the hotel and now I'm at an internet cafe. Pretty fun stuff. Well, that pretty much wraps it up for today. Anyway, I hope that all is well! Have a beautiful day!
Love,
Allison
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