Monday, October 24, 2011

Weekend Adventures

This past weekend we went to Mamallapuram. It's a coastal town that has temples and rock carvings that date back to the 6-7th century A.D. It also has some great shopping and I started to get some ideas of things that I want to purchase while I'm here in India. While I was there we explored a lot of these rock formations, and one of them was Krishna's "butterball." The story is that Krishna reached down and placed this butterball on this hill. It doesn't look like it should be staying in one place, but urban legend says that they had groups of elephants try and pull it and it wouldn't budge, so there it sits on a hill.
The classic tourist shot is to pose as if you are holding it up, so Vel, one of the RSO drivers, and I posed.
I decided to continue the trend of goofy poses.
There were these amazing hindu temples carved into the rock faces. It was amazing to see the different depictions and the detailed work that is literally thousands of years old!




On Sunday, I took the two hour drive to Chennai to go to church. The Popes (a wonderful family that is volunteering for the next month) the Gates (Pam and Jim who are the directors of RSO right now) and Becky Douglas (the president of RSO who was in town last week) all went to church as well. The car ride was amazing. Listening to Becky tell stories about many of the experiences she's had here in India was truly inspiring. She has changed so many lives and faced unimaginable obstacles. The car ride flew by listening to her talk. Before we knew it, we made it to church. The church is currently held in the basement of an office building. It's fun to attend church all over the world and still feel at home.
After church, Becky recommended we have lunch at the Marriott with Padama Venkatraman, a partner of rising star, a well-known social activist and the daughter of the eight president of india who was imprisoned with Gandhi. First of all, the buffet lunch at the Marriott was delicious and I ate myself silly. They had some extraordinary desserts as well that I just couldn't say no to. Secondly, meeting Padama was an incredible opportunity! She's an amazing beautiful woman, who has literally changed the world! She has changed the very course of some many individuals lives especially those effected by leprosy, the poorest of the poor. I feel so honored to have met her.
On the way back to Chennai, we passed by the new LDS church building being built for the members here. It's an amazing looking building and its almost done! I hope to attend at the new building before I leave. We'll see how that goes though. I've been learning a lot about India and how it handles time. Time is very flexible here. VERY very flexible. It gets to the point where you just say "well that's india" and expect things to show up late.
Speaking of things showing up late, we made one additional stop on the way back to rising star.... we stopped at the airport to pick up.... MY LUGGAGE! I was so thrilled to get my luggage. It made me really happy. I feel like I'm ready to take on india that much more now that I have my stuff.

This week has been the start of my schedule working in the school. It's been exhausting and wonderful being around the kids so much. It's so hard to learn all their names and keep all of them straight, but I'm working really hard at it, and I'm already making a bit of progress.

Any requests on what you want me to post about out there? Let me know. I'm open to suggestions :) I do plan on doing a post soon about the kids.

2 comments:

  1. Diana, I've loved everything you've shared. I feel like I've already received quite an education. Tell us about the food you eat. :)

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  2. I can't believe you were at mamallapuram! I have been studying the great relief in my art history class all semester!

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