We just left Chennai and have three days before we get to Malaysia. How do you describe India? Its really a place that you have to go to in order to really understand what people are telling you. I did a service project the first day at a Dalit school, which is a school for the lowest class, the untouchables as we call them. That was a lot of fun. The people were so thankful that we were treated as celebraties for the 3 hours of work we put in. The group of 18 split off and did different painting projects inside and outside of the school. That was our first taste of India where more than half of the people walking down the street do not have shoes, but they might still pull out a cell phone to talk. Or you may see a cow pulling a cart in one direction and a BMW coming at you in the other. It was really crazy just to see how unstructured their society seemed to us that first day that goats, dogs and cows roam the streets and people are riding bicyles with water jugs attached to either side taking clean drinking water home to their family.

The next 4 days of India for me was the home stay. The first two nights were with my assigned family through SAS, and the last night was with Krishnan, the man Allison did her home stay with. My first family was wealthy. They lived in an apartment flat and had two house keepers and a driver to drive the wife and kids to where they needed to go. The house was 2 stories but was nowhere near the house a CEO in America would live. Krishnan's house was not as nice as my first family, but his was more "homey" because of how much he wanted me to stay with him. I found an ant in my coffee the morning after sleeping there, and a cricket jumped out of my backpack when I opened it on the ship. He has other extended family living with him. He is also a professor of business at a college so he makes a decent salary. He has been hosting SAS students for 12 years now and it seems that he saves his money for the 2 times a year he gets to host and spoil his guests.

The food was good, but I am glad to be back on the ship eating "real" food. Their food was a lot of breads (tortillas) dipped in gravies (sauce/chili) and it was mostly vegetarian. I just got tired of the rich taste of the gravies and there wasn't really any that I could say I liked best. We did some shopping, I played badmitton with Krishnan and his friends and got my butt kicked. The traffic was unvbelievable. The best way to describe it would be like driving in a video game, a very crowded video game. Cars going everywhere, disregarding all of the rules we follow at home. It was absolute madness, but they never get angry with the other drivers which is the funny part. The smells were different around every corner, some good, a lot bad.

I went to the port reflection tonight for the first time to see what other people thought of India and people who went to the Taj took a tour on the Ganges river and saw people washing a drinking in the filthy water and then all of the sudden they heard a thud on the side of their boat. I dead child floated into the boat. A couple people broke down talking about it at the reflection tonight. The thing that sets India apart from all the other ports is that you can't choose to see the poverty like you could in Brazil, Namibia, or South Africa. Its all around you. Every hour of every day.

I will have my journals out asap since we only have 3 days to Malaysia!