Lost in Bangalore - Home from Hosur

Okay I am combining two blog posts, but I will try to keep it short. I am back at Niketana now, so my blog schedule and picture uploading should get up to date. Yesterday was our touristy shopping day. We love visiting schools, but its nice to have a day that doesn't have a time schedule. We ended up driving into Bangalore to visit with Vidya's cousins family in their condo, and then we went into the city. First we wandered down a busy road to take pictures of a legislative building - it was huge and beautiful, but we couldn't get too close. We stopped and got some fresh guava from a street vendor for lunch, and took a few pics with some curious strangers. Thus begins the lost portion of our journey.

We walked through a few beautiful parks, got sugar cane juice from another vendor (delicious!), and tried not to get hit by cars. We ended up getting some rickshaws to take us to the commercial district of Bangalore. Our rickshaws were so close that Sara and I held hands from separate rickshaws. It's a real open air experience - we were at a stop light and a beggar came up on crutches and stood next to our vehicle for a few minutes staring at us. That's something that's hard to get used to for me, blatantly ignoring beggars. These are not like the homeless people that you are used to, and with our rickshaw being so open, we did not feel very comfortable. Our drivers ended up being affiliated with several clothing stores, and would not take us to the right location (its something you have to watch out for here in India), and we finally gave up. The whole trip ended up costing about a dollar. We walked into commercial street from our drop off point, and its completely hard to describe. I have no idea how to convey the complete chaos and volume of people that were crammed into one street. You have to keep your bags close and watch out for cars and bikes that are driving around you. I'll give you a pic to look at, but none of my pictures capture the magnitude of the street. It was a true Indian experience. And nothing helps clear your clogged sinuses than the suffocating smell of gasoline! We loved getting able to walk around on such a culturally different street- but were very happy to see our driver. We ended up just going back to our rooms and wrote in our journals and got room service.

Today we visited the TVS Academy again and were just as impressed as before. We got to sit in on more classrooms and spend more time talking to students. These children are such sweethearts. Everywhere we walk they invite us into their classrooms and wave. I visited a first year class who was learning to identify spices by using their senses, I talked with lots of students about their pictures they were drawing, we learned how to create 'kolum' with chalk, and we got to watch their Pongol festival celebration which starts this week. -- More on that later! When we left everyone asked if we were coming back tomorrow :( Then we made our trek back to Chennai! Which is where I am now. And very sick. We are just in love with all of our pictures, which I will be posting more of soon! Nighty night. (for me).