Indian Weekends

I officially love weekends in India.  Ok, I love everyday in India.  However, this weekend was particularly fantastic.  Early Saturday morning, we all loaded up on buses to go to a little beach town called Mamallapuram, which is about two hours away from Rising Star.  The bus ride over was quite uneventful, which is usually a very good thing in India.

When we arrived in Mamallapuram, we started our adventures at some incredible ruins.  These ruins date back to the 7th century, and are some of the most spectacular ones I've ever seen.

Here's your fun fact of the day. Apparently, there is a peculiarly wide range of artistic styles and techniques represented in some of the carvings in these ruins.  Historians have hypothesized that this was once the sight of a prestigious carving school.   They believe that some areas in these ruins were used by the students of the school to practice different styles of carving. I think their work is absolutely sensational.

We also saw Krishna's Butterball.  It is basically an enormous boulder that is mysteriously perched on this insanely slippery slope.  As I was walking up to the boulder for a picture,  I totally slipped and slid part of the way down the slope, so it is legitimately slippery.  Scientists are baffled by the boulder because it completely defies the laws of physics.  They have tried to move the boulder many times, even resorting to hooking it up to a team of elephants, but to no avail.  It's very strange and completely amazing.

After exploring the ruins for a while, we all went shopping through the town.  I am trying to pace myself with the shopping so I ended up just buying one chuddidar.  Chuddidars, along with saris, are the traditional women's clothing here.  Female volunteers are required to wear them at Rising Star, and we have a whole room full of community chuddidars.  However, I want a couple of my own to take back to America so we found a little shop where you can get them custom made for really cheap.  There is so much beautiful fabric in India.

 I didn't photograph the finished product, but here is the fabric I chose. 

After shopping (and the incredibly putrid smells of some sections of the streets in Mamallapuram), we decided it was time to hit up the beach.  We pushed through the throngs of street vendors and boarded our buses.  Those vendors are so persistent, a couple of them even climbed into our bus and we had to kick them out. This woman was knocking on our windows until we pulled away.

We headed over to a beautiful resort called Ideal Beach, and it absolutely was ideal. It was so clean and there were beautiful trees and flowers everywhere.

We went to change into swimming suits and finally were able to head down to the picturesque little cabanas and enjoy the Bay of Bengal.  I can now officially say I have gone swimming in the Indian Ocean.

We also enjoyed the gorgeous swimming pool at the resort.  It was amazing to just relax and cool down in the pool.

We ended the day by stopping to get parotha on our drive back to Rising Star.  Parotha is a type of Indian bread.  It is basically a kind of cooked tortilla that you dip in a curry sauce. It was ridiculously delicious and ridiculously cheap.

This weekend was so wonderful and was just what we all needed to recharge and prepare ourselves for this upcoming week.

In other news, the kids are back!! I'm so excited, but we haven't been able to see them yet because the housemothers need a few days to get them back into a routine.  Tomorrow is de-lousing day, though, so we will get to spend tons of time with those beautiful faces as we try to kill some of the lice in their hair.

I love and miss you all.  Thank you so much for your endless support.  Your comments on this blog, messages on Facebook, and encouraging e-mails mean the world to me.  I am so blessed and I hope you all can feel my love from the other side of the world.