Indian Road Trip

Ahh what a long and exhausting day! Today was the day the US Consulate came to visit the Muslim school we were at yesterday. They had prepared cultural events to impress him because they were very honored he was coming. Overall, we were pretty angry with how the day turned out. We arrived at school and the wonderful teachers who have been hosting us brought out flowers for our hair and helped us pin them in (see below). Then we went into the courtyard and greeted some of the children who were taking pictures. The school had different children dress up in the traditional wear for different aspects of Muslim and Hindu religion. You will understand when you see the pictures, I'll post some tomorrow. But anyways, these children were standing greeting everyone, and then we went into the chemistry lab and a high school girl performed a traditional dance for us. (The teachers had to make sure the door stayed locked because boys are not allowed to see the girls dance past a certain age). When we went back upstairs, things started going downhill.

                                                             (like my pants?? :) I love them)
The school hired a professional photographer to shoot pictures while we were there. Immediately, he started butting his way in and "setting up shots". When the consulate came, we met him in a room and were served coffee, cake and cookies. We had just began eating however, when were ushered out to go view children's science projects. Hardly anyone had touched their cake, and food must have been thrown away. We looked out the window and discovered that in using this classroom as a meeting place, the principal had displaced the classroom of boys outside to have class. Whether they enjoyed it or not, these little things that are done for us end up feeling like guilt. It's hard to take when someone is making many adjustments for you, when you are agreeable to live like they do. We are fine sitting with the students, but they always fetch other chairs for us and we feel like we are on throwns. Vidya says that we must remember that it makes them happy to do these things for us, because we are guests and they are excited about our visit. If they were coming to America, we should greet them with the same hospitality and enthusiasm. But as everyone knows, this is often lost in the US. Anyways, so we were paraded with the photographer from one room to the next so he could snap 'candid' shots of us interacting with the children. We were led into the toddler's class (sooo cute), and just as we began talking to them he snatched us out. I ended up judging the student art show with Sara, we had to pick the first, second, and third place prizes amongst the four houses of the school. Their object was to create something using recycled materials. It was really interesting seeing what they came up with. Lots of Styrofoam, sewn objects, painted vases, there was a tree 'painting' made out of matches, with little red birdies that were bindi's, etc. Our winner was the house with the bindi birds and a Styrofoam sculpture illustrating an Islamic religious space, our second place was the house that had created a little bird out of eggshell, a guitar out of cardboard, and a bouquet of flowers out of old x-rays and paper, and third place went to a table with sewn and screen printed handkerchiefs and paper mache necklaces. The girls were so eager to tell us about their art! It was alot of fun.

   After that, the show started. The children performed dances in honor of the consulate, and we sang our national anthem after they sang theirs. The consulate gave a talk about their school and called us 'angels from America', and all sorts of other things that didn't make us feel good. But the school was very sweet and called us up one by one to give us wooden carved elephants. It took us awhile to leave afterward because so many girls stopped us to talk to them in the entryway before we left. They are all so sweet! I am going to miss that school a lot, and it really opened up my eyes to the Muslim religion. Right after we left the school, we began our trek to Hosur which is where I am now. It took us about six hours to drive 180 miles. People do not drive fast here, because they drive so squished together. And our tour bus is not a racecar. We drove through beautiful scenery and jungle- and it KILLS me we couldn't stop to take pics! Our heads were out the window the entire time taking pictures, most of mine suck, but I think Sara and Megan got some. We stopped at a bathroom along the way and just as Sara went into a stall, I saw a cockroach scurry under her door. Kelsey was standing with me outside, and I pointed to it and mouthed, 'Should we say anything?' She immediately shook her head and we couldn't stop laughing. We told Sara not to look down when she came out, and apparently the stall was dark so we really freaked her out! I guess the bathroom that was inside (this was the outdoor stall) had little cockroaches too. It is what it is, you kind of just have to laugh things like that off! It makes good stories. So I'm now in bed, we watched a little Bollywood and ate tomato basil soup (I actually ate it! and liked it!) with some hot naan. Mmmm! Now I can be lulled to sleep by the never ending horn-honking.