So Wednesday night we had a lady come and do henna for us. She is new to Hyderabad and has only been here just a few days. It was really fun to sit around while she and her friend decorated our skin.
We put in "The Lego Movie" while we were getting our henna done. I have to admit, it was funnier this time around. I didn't really care for it the first time I saw it. I kept that fact pretty quiet because everyone and his dog and its fleas seemed to be OBSESSED with it. I still don't LOVE it, but I appreciate it better. So the lady charged us 150 rupees per side of hand. So my two hands, one-sided, cost me 300 rupees. Christy got both her hands done, double-sided, and her feet! So we gave the lady some pretty good money. For those of you still trying to figure out the conversion rate, I paid about $4.75 USD. I think we all slept a little restlessly that night trying not to ruin our henna and/or get henna crumbs all over our beds. I know that I did at least. I woke up around five and went into the bathroom to scrub it all off so that I could put my hands under my head without it scratching my skin up. The floor was a crazy mess for the next day as all our henna flaked off, and even now I think we are still sweeping the odd bits up.
Thursday I didn't end up going to the girl's hostel like I though, instead I went to kids camp, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was a two week program where for two hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays we just played games with kids from the local village. Monday will be their last day with this project. Technically Thursday should have been the last day, but Monday is International Kids Day, so they're going again to do a big celebration with the children. Kids camp was fun because we didn't have to worry too much about teaching or organization. We had some puzzles for them to do, like I said, kids here LOVE puzzles. We even laminated some pictures they had drawn and cut them up so they could have their own personal puzzle from a picture they created! That was really fun for some of them. One little girl just wanted to cut up all the pictures and not put them back together. We ended up hiding the scissors from her. Haha. Some of the kids tried to help put together a puzzle that had like 750 pieces, but that was too hard for them - they prefer the 35-50 pieces puzzles. Another good portion of kids spent some time drawing. I sat with a group of girls and colored with them. They were fascinated by my drawing, which literally was one of those drawings were you scribble all over the page and then color in all the empty space with random colors. But they all wanted me to scribble on a page for them to color - or the scissor girl who just wanted me to do the whole picture for her. She was a trial for me that day because she doesn't speak one word of English, so communication was practically impossible.
There was one little girl, Krishnaveni who really attached herself to me. I drew a picture for her and then I was her favorite. Haha don't I just know how to win the hearts of children? (I do, ask my nephews - Jamison will openly tell you that we are best friends) Towards the end of our time at kids camp, the kids started playing a game with the colored pencils that was basically pick-up-sticks. It was fun to see the way they used what resources they had. It was also fun to see that the way children play isn't all that different from country to country. On our way back out to the street to catch an auto, Krishnaveni held my hand and walked the whole way with us, it was darling :) You can see here here, hanging on my arm:
Scissor girl is also here in the photo, she is the one of the right in the "Hi-Yah" shirt. Here is another photo of Krishnaveni and her friend whose name I never knew. Krishna is the one in the green.
That afternoon I spent a lot of time listening to an audio book. Yes, Janie - the Cinderella one! Haha, Janie makes fun of me every time I bring it up, because I have been telling EVERYONE about it. It was seriously the most predictable book EVER. I had the whole plot figured out by like the second chapter, and there were 38 chapters. EXCEPT I did not predict that it was the first of four books...so if I want to find out what happens conclusively, I'll have to get the other three.
That night we went to dinner at a members house. It was someone from the ward we are attending that Janie's brother knew from when he served his mission here. On our way out the door to catch an auto, we caught a glimpse of a goat herd!
When we arrived at the landmark the man had given us directions to, we stopped to be tourists for a bit. Here, you just have to give the auto drivers a landmark, there aren't any real addresses or street names to go by, so they find there way around by well known landmarks. We stopped at the Sri Lakshmi temple to be picked up. While we waited, we took a look around the temple. It was SO colorful!
Then we walked the short distance to the home where we were having dinner. The house was beautiful and the food was delicious! There was even BEEF. So satisfying. He was telling us the story of how he met his wife and we were so baffled by it. Isabelle even kept bringing it up the next day. They were connected by a mutual friend, but not in person. He called her and she didn't answer - because in India, you don't talk to strangers. Blind dates? Not a thing. Arranged marriage though? Haha. But this is the church we're talking about so it's different...anyway, he tried calling her several times and she wouldn't answer. He would try and talk to her on facebook and she would get offline. So finally he backed off and a few months later - she called him. He drove out to meet her for a few minutes at the place she worked one weekend, and then they got married. Like, that's it. No dating, hardly any talking, barely met - BAM. I couldn't do it. But then Sarah told Isabelle and me this story about her great great uncle, or someone, who wrote a letter and sent it to the next town over from where he lived and merely addressed it to "The Prettiest Girl in Town." So I guess it was up to the discretion of the mailman...and he delivered the letter and Sarah's great great uncle and the prettiest girl in town got married. For real. Anyway, after dinner it started raining and the autos won't drive in the rain because the streets get flooded, so we were stuck for probably half and hour waiting for an auto. Christy and I made friends with the neighbor's dog while we waited. Finally the rain stopped and we headed out. Sarah and Janie stayed behind because Sarah had a skype interview for some fashion/sewing show that she didn't want to miss. Christy, Asia, and Lauren went to the store, and Isabelle, Courtney and I went home. I facetimed with my mom that evening, which is always nice. I love being able to not only talk to her, but see her too. And my baby! I love when Lionel comes into the room and Mom is able to hold him up for me to see. I can't wait to bury my face in his fur when I get home.
Early Friday morning Lauren, Christy, Asia, and Megan left for the jungle. They are going out to visit a tribe someone in the middle of nowhere. I had the option to go, but since I don't have any sort of malaria protection, I figured I'd be safer to stay within city limits.
Friday was Janie's last day with us. SO MUCH SADNESS. She is headed to Bangalore where she will meet up with her husband, which is fun for her but depressing for us. She and Courtney came to the first part of sewing with us and then headed home so that Janie could pack. We are going to miss her spark and energy so much!
For sewing on Friday we tried the split classes with beginners from 11-12 and 2-3, and advanced from 12-1 and 3-4. It was so much better! A lot for manageable for sure! The first basically just did hand stitching the whole time because the machines were being fixed. It turns out that they have been getting jammed up because sometimes when the ladies try to get the treadle going, they end up doing it forwards, and then backwards, and not being able to keep the consistency in direction jams the threading. Urmi, one of our partners on the project, helped to fix the machines so we had five that were up and running by the second class.
Everyone seems to have a really good hold on how to run the machines, which is good. Our afternoon classes were much smaller than the morning ones. In fact, no one showed up at 3:00. A few of our advanced girls came at 2:00 instead because they suspected that no one was coming for the 3;00 class. So because of that, we got to leave a little early, which was good because it was SO HOT and I was starting to feel sick because of it. As we were leaving it started to rain! The rain cools things down a bit, which is nice. As we were driving home in the rain, we encountered another herd of livestock! This time, cows.
When we got home, the power went out a couple of times, which was sad because Courtney was trying to facetime her husband. That evening we let Isabelle decide what we did because she was leaving Saturday morning. She was offered a spot in a small business seminar/workshop thing...Haha, I'm not exactly 100% sure - what I do know is that it is a summer program that will be very beneficial to the business she has back home, so she decided to go home early to take part in it. Sometimes I look at Isabelle and I think "What am I even doing with my life??" She is only 20 and already owns her own business! All the girls I've been working with are so amazing it makes me feel inadequate. I can't believe how blessed I am to have been chosen to work alongside such accomplished girls.
Anyway, Isabelle wanted to go to The Coffee Cup. We laughed a little that on her last night in India she wanted to go to the most American place in Hyderabad. But Courtney and I had never been and were dying for some American food, so we didn't object. On our way out to catch an auto there was a beautiful sunset! Nothing in comparison to the ones at home, but still beautiful.
This photo was taken from next to our moat. I have not had the pleasure of explaining the moat to you yet, so let me go on a tangent for a moment to do so. Lauren jokes that they found us an apartment with a moat for extra protection. I buy it. I wouldn't want to cross the moat for ANY reason. Sometimes when the autos drive next to the moat, I imagine that scene from the pioneer movie Legacy, where the covered wagon falls into the rive and they're all trying to climb out and they lose all their things. We have all experienced the anxiety of nearly toppling into the moat - which if that happened, I'd be flying straight home to a hot shower. The best way we can come up with to describe the moat is that it is an open sewer that runs in front of our apartment complex. Yes, that's what I said. I originally described it to my mother as a dirty black river, but sewer accounts better for the smell. Please observe:
Yes, that water is opaque gray sludge. If there were a miracle way to transport smell through this blog - I would,because I feel certain that none of you understand. We joke that we know when we've reached home because we can smell the moat from the street.
Anyway, we caught an auto to The Coffee Cup, but we didn't know what landmark to give them to take us there so the drive was interesting - including one exciting incident where we full on drove on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic. The Coffee Cup is this adorable, totally Americanized cafe that pretty much takes you out of India when you're inside. There's American pop music playing and the menu is not Indian at all. I got a delicious creamy chicken and spinach pasta that I can't wait to eat the leftovers of for lunch today! So. Good. After dinner we went downstairs to the Ice Cream Cottage, which is equally as adorable. First off, it had this giant hobbit door! And a tree that literally is growing through the wall of the building. The lights in the Ice Cream Cottage are mason jars. Like, Pinterest would be PROUD of this space.
We all got double scoops of ice cream, and everyone had at least one scoop of the oreo ice cream. I had oreo and sweet cream in a chocolate waffle cone. I kind of want to go everyday. It was DELICIOUS. Of course, it wasn't regular ice cream, because dairy products are not a thing here. Cows are holy remember? So we drink buffalo milk or something and the same is used to make the ice cream. It has a little bit of a different consistency, but was still good. The milk on its own is weird and I don't really like it, so I eat my cereal dry. Which is fine, I do that at home sometimes too. Anyway, as I was eating my non-dairy ice cream, it occurred to me that my little nephew Gregory, who is allergic to dairy, could live quite happily in India! He wouldn't have to ever check ingredients on things, because there just isn't dairy ever. And it's not even gross. I always though dairy substitutes would make food taste weird, but nothing (except the plain buffalo milk or whatever) has been gross. We were all very happy with our ice cream. See?
After ice cream Isabelle wanted to go find some jewelry pieces she could take home for her mom and sisters. As we were walking down the street we ran into the Elders! They don't wear tags here, so it took us a minute to realize, but once we did we stopped and chatted for a minute. One of the elders is from New Dehli and his trainer was from Payson! Small world. As we went on our way we saw a henna station set up in front of one of the stores and found out that we got horribly ripped off the other night. Remember what ours looked like? If not, refer to the beginning of this post. And that cost me 300 rupees. Now check out this:
And he only charges 50 per hand. And I think that's both sides, too! This girl was getting her arms and hands done for her wedding the next day. So exciting! The fun thing for the girls here, even the members of the church, is that the nearest temple, I think, is in Hong Kong - so they still get to have the crazy awesome traditional Indian wedding! We are actually going to a Hindi wedding next week. I can't wait!
We did finally find a store with affordable jewelry. Courtney and I waited outside while Isabelle and Sarah went to look. While we were waiting, two guys on camels rode by! It was crazy.
Friday night I finally had a pillow to sleep with! Haha. I had failed as of yet to buy myself one, but sweet Janie left hers for me! So comfy.
Early this morning, Melvin (a ward member) took Isabelle to the airport. He dropped her off and picked up our newest team member Julie. Julie will take over helping with the sewing classes and teaching piano etc. And we're expecting our new photographer Lauren next Sunday. While we are excited for our new team members to be here, we're sad to see the others go. Isabelle and Janie will be missed so much! The good news is that when we all get home from India...we're all going home to the same place. I'm the only one outside of the Salt Lake area, and even then I'm only an hour away, so yay!
So far this morning, I have done my laundry which consists of washing my clothes in a bucket on the back porch and then carrying them to the clothes line on the roof. I actually probably need to go collect them soon. After laundry and some other household cleaning, we had french toast and eggs for breakfast. It was so yummy! It's just four of us right now, (Sarah, Courtney, Julie, and me) because the other girls (Lauren, Asia, Christy, and Megan) are still out on their safari. They won't be back until tomorrow afternoon. Right now the other three girls are napping. In this heat, we all nap a lot. Later we will probably take Julie out to buy some kurtas. While we're out we plan to maybe do some jewelry shopping and go get my sari top made. It has been a very relaxing weekend so far and I look forward to continuing it.
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