Thursday October 16th

Today was spent pretty much completely away from our families. Chris and I got up at 7 because we were to be dropped off by 8am at the stadium we met our families yesterday to go on a tour of a group of shore temples. Priya was very nice and made us a very authentic Indian breakfast. We had idaly, which is a porridge made of 2 types of rice, pongal (rice and lentels), sambar (lentel and teameron- tangy taste), tomato chaudney (thick gravy), and lastly coconut chaudney. She made these fluffy Indian pancake things, which were just fluffy moist bread with no taste at all, but they were meant for dipping in the gravy.

We met the other SAS students around 8 at the stadium and we all piled on a bus and took a hour drive or so out of the city. It just so happened that Allison's Krishnan leads the shore temple trip every year so I got to spend all day with him, which I know made him very happy. There is no definite line to Chennai, it just sort of blends from urban poverty to rural poverty and you cant even tell much of a difference. We stopped at a restaurant for a potty break and Krishnan offered to buy us some tea and dosa. We all said no so we could keep the trip moving. He disappeared and after 10 mins of standing outside the bus in front of this restaurant, Ari and I went inside and found Krishnan and the other tour guide and we sat down with them and had some food while they did too. It was funny because everyone else was so confused with what was going on but if the guides are going to eat we might as well too. The LLC (R.A. from the ship that was basically in charge of the home stay trip) was all in a tizzy because we were just hanging out but to Krishnan's defense, he has been doing this for the past 12 years and had everything scheduled. But after about a half hour we got back on the bus and were on our way to the "Five Rathas" and the shore temple.

The first stop was the five rathas. It was five different temples along the shore line that sit down in an excavation site. I couldn't really hear what the guide, who was an Indian woman member of the rotary club and volunteered to come along, was saying about the temples so we will have to rely on pictures for them. They were all carved by hand out of solid rock. It was very neat to see. You need to buy tickets to go in and see them and men were lined up at the gates like animals waiting to try and sell us little trinkets and souvenirs. After fighting our way through the mob, I even stepped in cow poop because this guy was waving something in front of my face; we got back on the bus and went to the shore temple.

The shore temple is just a big temple carved out of rock again. Only 1 remains out of 7 that were supposedly built. It was not damaged at all during the tsunami but since then they built huge stone walls to protect it because it sits right on the beach. We again had to fight through the mobs of sellers to and from the temple. After the shore temple we went and saw a huge rock on a downward slope of rock, which is amazing how it hasn't moved at all. We also saw huge rock faces with very intricate carvings on them. I really wish I had remembered more information about these places but I can't recall what the guide was saying. It was very hot outside and standing and listening to her talk for 15 minutes at a time was tough.

After seeing all of these temples we went to a member of the rotary club's house for lunch. It was sponsored by the rotary, but this surgeon offered to host it. He has a beautiful house and we learned it was his get away house. The lunch was buffet style and was all of the classic Indian foods that we had the night before at the Rotary meeting. We only stayed for an hour or so and then we were off to a crocodile park!

At the crocodile park we obviously saw tons of crocodiles but we also got to hold a python, and see the staff of the park show us the 4 deadliest snakes in India. They put on a little show for us which was nice but you had to pay to take pictures and I didn't pay so I will have to steal pictures from other people as usual. We got to see the staff feed the crocodiles too, basically they go crazy when meat is thrown into the pen. It was fun but after a long day we were all pretty tired and we headed back to the stadium to be picked up by our host families. We were supposed to be back at 6pm but didn't end up getting back until 7 or so. Raj was taking us to a business dinner for a software company for the evening, I think really because it was an opportunity for us to do something and they didn't know what to do with us at night because night life in India does not exist.

We were picked up by Raj at 7 and rushed home to get changed and go. Chris and I wore polo's and jeans and when we got to the dinner found out we were very under dressed. The meeting was over when we got there and everyone was standing around having drinks and eating. We spent the evening there drinking wine and talking to a lot of high powered business men. I saw the SAP logo on the power point presentation that they were looping as people socialized. Chris and I were having fun and met a lot of interesting people that all loved drilling us with questions about America and what we thought of India. My response to India was that it was very busy, and very crowded…I left out the smelly dirty part of it.