Sunday, January 16, 2011

Sunday

Today was our second Sunday at church. I love the ward here – everyone is really kind and welcoming. I go to the morning branch. It is very small, but the people are wonderful and give inspiring talks and lessons. It is true I guess that you can go to an LDS church even across the world, and it will still have the same spirit.
After church, Kelly and Amy D. and me went walking to go to the beach. It was my first time going, but everyone else has gone before. I just happened to be busy all the times that they went. But this time I could go! I was excited.
On the way over there, we were stopped by these TV people that wanted to get us to promote a movie they were advertising. So first they interviewed us and then they had us say that the main actor was super cool. Of course, I had never heard of him, but they thought I should think he was super cool from just looking at his picture. Anyways, after the whole thing, we got a free mug and a free CD. I am excited to listen to the CD, I love the music that they put in Bollywood movies. I have never actually seen a Bollywood movie, but I have heard some of their soundtrack music. Sad I know, don’t worry I will fix that and watch a bunch of movies while I am here. So far I have just been too busy.
We then continued on to the beach. It took a little while to find an entrance, but then we found one. It was such a beautiful place. I am amazed still by how blue it was and how big it seemed to be. I am always amazed by the ocean I guess. 




Saturday, January 15, 2011

The Vizag Zoo

Today a few of us went to the Vizag Zoo. It was pretty interesting with all of the animals. 


They had tons of monkeys. Everybody seemed to like feeding the monkeys. They threw in bananas and other snacks. Even wrapped candy, which surely was bad for the monkeys, but I guess these people have been doing it for ages.

And to every monkey, his own snack.

 It was cool to see a tiger in India. I mean, I know I can see them in zoos at home, but it seemed legitimate to actually see it in India. Especially because I love the book Life of Pi.

There were lots of different parrots, and other cool birds. Unfortunately none of my pictures for them turned out because every bird was in a chain link fence. My camera seemed to like to focus on the chain link fence rather than the birds.

Oh and here is a white tiger, that was cool.

This is a lion, if you could not tell.

We liked this sign particularly. 

My favorite animal was the sloth bear. It was so cute, it had bunches of fur on its cheeks that made it look like it had super chubby cheeks. See above and below. 


The Hippo

Turtles

Deer

And this bizarre tree that looks like a bunch of roots growing above ground. Admittedly not part of the zoo attractions, but I thought it was awesome.
By the end we were exhausted. The zoo is pretty big.

But we had a blast :)


Friday, January 14, 2011

First Day of Pongal

Today was the first day of Pongal! I feel like we have celebrated it so much already, that it already started, but that really wasn’t the case I guess. I bought a saari and wore it for the first time. I can’t say that I really like wearing it. You have to constantly be worrying about if it is still on right. I prefer their other beautiful clothes. 

This is a bunch of us girls in our new saaris.
This is me.

This is us with the tailor who made our saaris for us.

It is interesting that women always look super dressed up here. Even most of the poor women, they all seem to wear nice clothes. I think it must be really important to them to look presentable and nice. The other day I was getting copies at a copying place, and the lady commented on the fact that I was not wearing any jewelry. It was kind of funny. She said I looked “very simply simple”, only it was in Telugu and my translator friend translated it for me. It’s okay though. I didn’t feel badly about my appearance because I have also had multiple people here tell me I look like a doll. Do they all have the same doll or something? If they do, then apparently it is blond and has my face pasted on it. If I end up finding it in the stores, I can buy it and have a lookalike doll, like the ones in those American Girl catalogues they used to sell.

 Anyways, so we burned stuff for Pongal, because that is what they do on the first day of Pongal. And then we did a dance around these cool designs that were on the ground, drawn in chalk. The designs are called Mugu. We learned how to draw some in my Telugu class. The dance must have looked either really good or really funny to the people of VIzag who were watching us, because somebody called the TV people and they recorded us doing that dance later that night. They even interviewed some of the girls a bit, but I didn’t really want to be interviewed, so I kind of scooted away at that part.


We visited our program doctor that night to celebrate Pongal a little with him. It was nice, he gave us little gifts of oranges and a few other things for us to eat. He told us we can stop by anytime, and he said he didn’t mean that in an “American” way and that we actually can stop by anytime. I thought that was pretty funny. After all, we do tend to say that over in America, and people don’t usually mean it literally.


Thursday, January 13, 2011

Borra Caves and A Visit to A Village

We went to the Borra Caves, which were pretty cool. I did get some pictures of those, some are a little hard to see because of the lighting. And the trees and river outside of it, which were just as cool as the caves in my opinion. The whole place is beautiful. I did feel a little bit nervous in the caves when walking on some of the slightly unsafe stairs, but that might have been only because my balance is a bit off sometimes.


If you click on this picture, it will enlarge, and you can read all about the Borra Caves. Don't feel obligated though - It isn't particularly fascinating. I just thought it would be useful information if anyone cares to read about them.


Outside of the Borra Caves was this very pretty stream, so I took pictures because I loved it.


This is right outside of the Borra Caves as we are about to go in.

We started going in. There were tons of stairs, so we all got our workout for the day.



I am actually in this picture - can you see me? Where is Waldo...

I love this picture. It was so cool seeing this little peephole to the outside.

Then when we got back outside, we saw a few monkeys. One of them apparently thought my friend had food, and promptly attacked her. She freaked, obviously. I mean, how many times does a person get attacked by a monkey in the U.S.? No worries, though. My friend escaped.
This is a picture of some of us after our Borra Cave tour. We are happy.


Oh, the drive over to the Borra Caves – really crazy. The roads were super zig-zag-y, and the driver liked to drive in the wrong lane, even when we were going around a bend. So at every turn I was sure we were going to run head-on into a bus, but we never did. The scariest part was when we reached the Borra Caves and the driver didn’t realize there was a thick metal bar across the road to prevent us from driving any farther. We were driving pretty fast and were amazingly close to the bar before the driver saw it and stopped. It put all of us in the car into a little bit of a shock. I was in the passenger seat (once again, I never learn) and probably would have been beheaded had he kept going. I swear the front window was about 2 inches from the bar before he managed to stop the car. Very scary driver, that is all I have to say.


There is the bar that almost decapitated me. Too bad I didn't get the picture when the car was temporarily parked about 2 inches away from it - you will just have to believe me.

After the Borra Caves, we went over to a Non-Profit Organization that helps a lot of the remote villages in Vizag to live in safer conditions. We ate lunch with them. Delicious food, once again. My favorite – the potatoe curry. Man, I wish I had filled my plate with just that, and rice with curd, which is also my favorite. I bet I could eat that every day.
Then we went down to visit a village that was going to do a dance-performance thing for us. They normally do it in celebration for Pongal, which was actually going to be the next day, but they performed it early I think so that we could see it. Very kind of them. Visiting the village made me realize how people can have so little, and yet they can still be so happy. I just love that idea. Riches just don’t equal happiness, that is just how it is.

Here are some of the people of the village. I wanted to take pictures of all the babies, they were just so beautiful.





Some of the students participated in the dancing celebration, but I didn’t at the time because somebody needed to hold the bags, so I was absolutely fine with doing that. But later we went back to the non-profit organization building and did dancing with the people there. Dr. Nuckolls had brought his 80 year old friend with us on this whole excursion, and he probably enjoyed dancing the most. It was so fun to watch him dance, I loved it.


Tuesday, January 11, 2011

At a Temple: Birds, Cow, and a Strange Dog

We went on another temple trip today. At this one people often shave their heads to give their hair to the god. They also take showers in these little showers they have outside, in order to be clean before they go in I think. Most people shower with their clothes on, but not everyone. I actually took a picture of a group that seemed clothed while they were showering. It was a great picture I thought, until I noticed there was a naked boy in it, so I thought I probably shouldn’t include it in my blog. So I deleted it. Don’t you worry, I will always keep this blog with, at most, a PG rating :P
Near the temple, there were these beautiful little shaded off areas, look how pretty. People get married in these things apparently. 



 This is a picture of two trees grown together. They symbolize husband and wife, it is so sweet.

Here is a statue of someone you might recognize if you have ever seen A Little Princess (the newer version, not the Shirley Temple one)

Near the the beautiful little shaded off areas were a bunch of pigeons and a cow. I made friends with the cow, but we weren’t so close of friends when he started pooping and splattering it everywhere. 



At one point while I was at the temple it ended up that I had to be alone for a while. While I was standing there, a bunch of people started to notice me and were fascinated I guess. They all came up and shook my hand and wanted to take pictures with me. But they didn’t have cameras, so they wanted to use mine. So we had a whole photo shoot. You might notice I looked a little nervous in some of the pictures. Well I was. You would be too. Most of these people didn’t know English, except this one guy, who was giving me a little more attention than I was comfortable with. I might have been a little paranoid, though, being alone and everything. Needless to say, I was relieved when I could join my group again.







Here are the pigeons that were there. I looked them up in my bird book and I think they might be Rock Pigeons. Although they were a different color in the book, but I don't know... They didn't look remotely close to any of the other pictures. So I shall call them Rock Pigeons until I find out differently :)




There was this high-up decoration on the entrance to the temple and on it were perched lots of crows, but there were also a few parrots that I could barely see. I couldn’t get very good pictures because of how far up they were, but I did my best. My first sight of parrots, guys! It was cool.




After the visit to the temple, we went to a bunch of little shops for souvenirs. I didn’t find anything I wanted, but there was this really stray dog that was trying to scratch a hard-to-reach spot with his teeth, and he managed to twist himself in this really bizarre position. It was so weird, I just had to take a picture. He did it for like five minutes straight. I am sure he must have been cramping up after that. It is probably the weirdest thing I have ever seen a dog do.


The picture of him is sideways, so turn your head to get the full effect.