Bring nothing.

I made it to India!

To begin to tell about India, I have to begin in Chicago. We flew Chicago to London to Mumbai to Cochin. Unfortunately, our flight left Chicago late, so we missed our London flight and had to rebook all of our other flights. The next flight to Mumbai wasn't for another 9 hours, but they put us up in a swanky hotel and we got super-nice, free meals there. However, when we got to Mumbai, our luggage was missing. It took so long to fill out the paperwork that we would have missed our flight to Cochin if it hadn't been delayed. But we got to fly first class to Cochin, which was nice. Didn't quite make up for a year's worth of lost luggage, though. Fortunately, my bags have been found and I will get to pick them up tomorrow. There is one guy who has one bag that is still missing though. He's been wearing the same pants for a week now. Poor guy.

So, our first (half) day in India consisted of buying clothes. Onam, a huge fall celebration, begins this week, so clothing stores are currently swamped with customers. It was quite the experience buying our churidar in all the confusion. Churidar is basically a long tunic worn with pants and a scarf. The women each bought two, and are having two made. Men here mostly wear pants, but mundu and lungi (skirts) are very common as well. The guys in the group are very excited about trying them out.

On our first full day, we attended a Hindu wedding. It was held outside at a small temple. The bride wore a green sari with gold trim, with lots of flowers in her hair and gold jewelry. The ceremony lasted no more than 10 minutes - very odd for us Americans. They lit some lamps, tied a string around the bride's neck, poured some seeds and it was over. The reception afterward was nice - we got to eat a huge, delicious meal off of banana leaves! It was our first time in public to eat with our hands , a task that has proved to be very challenging. I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of it, but I still see people snicker at me when they see me eating. Try eating rice with sauce with just your right hand sometime - it's difficult! You're supposed to squish it into a ball and pop the ball in your mouth like candy. Very hard. But fun, too.

We are also still getting used to being stared at a lot. At the wedding, we were asked to take a picture with the newlyweds, an honor that none of the other guests were extended. We also got to spend about 5 minutes during the reception sitting in front of everyone, letting them ask us questions and take our pictures. It was very strange to be treated like a celebrity just because we are American. I suppose that we will never really get used to this, but at least will be less surprised by it over time.

Yesterday evening, our group returned from a retreat in Tirivulla, where our coordinator, Thomas John, gave a talk about "Life, Faith and Education" to students from Kerala. While most of the conference was spoken in Malayalam, it was really great to get to talk to students who were our age about life in India. And what we did understand of the conference was very insightful. Driving there was also quite an experience. We made bets as to how many times we would face death on the drive back - Cat won with 3 times. I'm sure this comparison has been made before, but driving in India is a good microcosm of Indian life - there are boundaries, but they are more suggestions than rules and can be broken at any time, even when there is a car coming right at you. Despite all that, we are very impressed by how crazy the driving is and yet how little road rage exits here.

Today, we got to go to Thomas John's church. Afterward, we went out to eat and then rode elephants! ... and now it's tea time, and I must go.

Keep your fingers crossed that we'll get our clothes tomorrow - my t-shirt and skirt are starting to smell pretty bad...