Saturday was our official first free day in India, although we still had to be up and ready to leave by 7:30 am. Our plan for the day was to go to a beach town called Mahalibipurum, and then go to the beach before coming back to Rising Star. At Mahalibipurum there are temple ruins that were thousands of years old. These ruins stretched over hills and hills that you would climb to get to the next temple. The workmanship on all the temples was so detailed and intricate that as we looked at it we couldn’t help but wonder how they created such incredible works of art so long ago, as well as the kind of people that lived in these temples and palaces and what their stories were. India is a land so rich in history and the more time we spend immersed in it and its culture, the more we want to know. Along one of the paths between ruins was a tree that was home to over 15 monkeys. It was fun to see them in their natural habitat, where you could actually touch them if you wanted to. One of the coolest monuments in the area was actually a massive rock that they call the Butter Ball that had fixed itself on a hill. Strangely enough, this rock kind of defies the laws of physics because of the fact that it would not budge even when they tried using a team of elephants to move it. So there it stays sitting on the hill even after hundreds of years for us all to marvel at.
After exploring all the ruins, we then made our way into the village to shop. As soon as we stepped onto the streets of we were immediately surrounded by men and women shoving their merchandise into our hands saying, “look at this, only 500. But for you I give special price, 400…ok, ok…350, that is a very good offer, I only give to you because you are friend.” I think we said, “no thank you” and “I don’t need that” hundreds of times to each person we talked to. They just don’t like to take no for an answer. Through this experience I learned two things, first, that Jordan is actually a rather good haggler when it comes to making deals, and two, that if I was shopping by myself, I would have had absolutely no money by the time I was finished because I am so bad at it. Shopping and buying souvenirs was both stressful, but also fun and interesting. Stressful because you have people coming up to you, many at least three different times and never taking no for an answer, but also interesting because we got to see how much of the population of India lives their lives. It was so neat to see how they interacted with tourists as well as each other in the business world.
After our shopping excursion, we were all very much drained and excited to experience a little bit of relaxation. We went to Ideal beach resort to play on the beach and just enjoy the Indian sun. When they say it is an ideal beach, they aren’t exaggerating. When you see the beaches in pictures with the big crashing waves, the white sand, and the hammock hanging between two palm trees, that is describing Ideal beach resort perfectly. I think one of the best things about this trip for me was that we got to eat something other than rice and curry! I had an amazing homemade cheese pizza, which I’m sure probably wasn’t nearly as good as it seemed, but because we haven’t had any other food other than Indian food or the snacks we brought for quite a while, it tasted like the best dang cheese pizza I have ever tasted! Jordan got fried chicken, French fries, and rice, which he says was delectable, but not quite as good as other fried chicken because it was “Indian-ized”. He just enjoyed it because it was something different from what we have been eating for the past week.
After spending a few hours in paradise, it was time to jump back in the vans and head back to our own little piece of heaven…Rising Star, where our own little angels were waiting for us to start their movie night. Every Saturday night, if a student got at least seven stars throughout the whole week, they could come to movie night in the dining hall. Tonight we watched TRON, which the boys were especially excited about because of all the racing and battling. Besides the couple of power outages, it was the best movie night ever, especially because each volunteer had at least a few kids laying all over us. We would have one child on each shoulder, one on each leg, and sometimes also one sitting in between our legs. It is the sweetest sight to see all these sleeping kids laying on the volunteers when the light come up and getting to carry them to their rooms for bed. Movie night only strengthened the love that we feel for each of these children individually and as a whole.
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