Srimantam - A Baby Shower

At our program house, we have wonderful people that cook for us. Yes, I know, we are completely spoiled. Anyways, Durga, our main cook, is pregnant, and Amy D. put on a Srimantam for her. A Srimantam is an Indian version of a baby shower. It was fun seeing these different baby shower traditions, after having gone to a couple of baby showers in America just a few months ago.

This is Durga. First there were quite a few ceremonies, probably to bring her good luck in what is to come.

During some of these ceremonies, our translator Rajalakshmi stood next to Durga because the pregnant woman is supposed to stand next to a married woman with no children.

One of the ceremonial parts involved Durga getting lots of bangles to put on her wrists. We each got to put a couple of them on her.

Then she sat in this cool throne thing.

This is Durga with some of her family.

And Durga with us students and a few translators.

Then there was food to give to everyone there. Sweets and fruits, which are always a plus :) Notice the cute half-size bananas. We have those all the time here. They have a slightly different flavor than regular bananas.

Our cute little neighbor girl came to this Srimantam. This is her enjoying the grapes she got.

After the Srimantam, the neighbors and friends that had come all left, and then the cooks and translators served us a really nice lunch traditional style. It was very kind of them.

The day was quite a success, and I think Durga enjoyed it a lot. We were all glad to be able to give her a special day, because after all, she feeds us wonderful food on a daily basis. We just plain love her!

Rajahmundry

We took a trip for a few days to a city called Rajahmundry. We saw a ton in a small space of time, so it was exhausting, but I am glad we got to experience it all.

We took a train to and from Rajahmundry. It was my first time on an Indian train. We got really great seats because there was air-conditioning. But you can also buy seats without that luxury. And my friends that rode a train to Calcutta before had cockroaches in their part of the train, so I was very glad we had chosen these particular seats rather than the cheaper ones.

We spent one of our days traveling in a car all day, stopping at cool places. The first place we stopped at was  a place where people are cremated. We went for the sake of Kirsten's research - it is really fascinating because people in India haven't done cremation for very long, and now they are doing it here at a few different places. The cremation places looked like candy land or something from Alice and Wonderland. It was awesome, I must admit. I am still unsure why it was so colorful though.

Here is me, at the cremation place.

Uh, this is where they cremate the bodies. 

Then we headed to the river, which was nearby.

This is a statue that stood near the river - it was just beautiful, I had to take a picture.

This is Krishnayya, one of our wonderful program directors.

There were many people bathing in the rivers. It made me glad for my bathtub. Especially when I learned later how dirty the river is. 

After the river, we went to a nursery of plants. This was amazing, guys. It made me want to work at a nursery for my next job. What a wonderful job - surrounded by beauty for your whole day, every day. Especially with the colorful tropical plants here. It was pretty hot though, that would be the one downside.

This cactus was interesting - it was attached to the base of a coconut tree. Weird, eh? The tropical plant best friends with the desert one.

So the people that worked at the nursery just loved us. So they were generous enough to give us each a coconut full of coconut juice. Very kind of them. Because it is "good for health". But despite that, coconuts are not filled with coconut milk. Coconut milk comes from the flesh of the coconut. Coconut juice is quite a different thing, and it is not very pleasant. But don't worry, I kept my manners and drank the whole thing. I just felt pretty nauseated for the next hour of of the car trip.

Then we went to a famous sweetshop that serves a special kind of kaja (the best stuff ever). But the kaja was not the only cool thing they make there. They had all these beautiful desserts, in different shapes and designs. 

Little watermelons

Roses with pearls

Apples 

Pumpkins 

Strawberries - boy do I miss strawberries... 

This is the famous kaja we ate. I had two :) It was too hard to restrain myself.

You really could get all sorts of sizes of this kaja. Look at those huge ones. Honestly, buying one of those would be like buying your own heart attack. But at least your taste buds would be happy.

After looking at the sweets and sampling them, we got to back room where they make all the sweets. Most of the students in the program were appalled by the lack of cleanliness, but honestly it was a lot better than I expected. I mean, this is India. Clean isn't exactly a common thing here.

After that we went to the place where the river meets the sea. It was beautiful and it was nice to walk around on the beach before we got back in the car for the long trip home.

On another day, we spent an entire day on a big boat on the river. I discovered that I really don't enjoy being stuck on a boat for that long, but it was a good experience to have.

This is super random but cool. On the boat, someone had CTR shoes. I mean, it must have stood for something else, but not to me :) 

We got out of the boat a few times and got to enjoy the beauty. 

There was this weird tree at one of our stops. I didn't climb on it too much because I didn't trust my own balance - it was on a steep hill. But I did a little bit.

So that was our Rajahmundry trip. Now we are back doing our projects and research. There ain't much time left :) We are really buckling down now... It's a good thing we had a little vacation right before we hit the work harder than ever.