Friday October 17th

Today Chris and I were able to sleep in a little bit and we got up at 9. We had another great Indian breakfast with similar foods that we had the day before. It was very good, except by now I am getting tired of eating Indian food. Although it is all very different, to me it is like having the same thing every meal: some sort of bread dipped in a different kind of gravy. Today was our last day with the Raj family, and he was going to take us around to see different parts of Chennai, and also do a little bit of shopping. The game plan was to meet back at the house at 2 for lunch and then go to the ship.

Raj, Chirs and I were driven around by the family driver. First we drove to a large Chariot which is next to the largest auditorium in Chennai. The chariot was huge and made of stone. We took some pictures and were back on the road. Next stop was the San Thome Basilica. One of the 12 apostles, St. Thomas came to India in 52 A.D. He was killed on St. Thomas mount and his body is buried under the San Thome Basilica. It was a huge Gothic Revival church. (I learned new architecture terms in my history of architecture class). Gothic revival is churches or building with very high pointed steeples and towers and a trademark of Britain. We were able to go in the church and it was huge! I took a lot of pictures and notes because I was going to do a write up on it for my architecture class. After a short time here we went to a huge Hindi Temple. The temple was very very colorful and had thousands of little statues on it. Only pictures can describe the look of it. There are a lot of small neighborhood temples but people come to the big temples on holidays and spend all day here, praying and doing other activities. Everywhere we go there are people trying to sell us stuff. I lot of drums and had carved stone elephants.

Our tour of the temple and church took up a lot of our time because traffic was pretty bad and though they were not far apart, it still took us a while to get from place to place. We finished off our trip with shopping at a plaza called Spencer's. It was a huge indoor market. They had formal stores but also make shift carts selling things. This was our first opportunity to actually go shopping and we only had less than an hour. Chris and I had an idea of what we wanted to buy but one of the cool things about going to all of these countries is just taking the time to roam around and if you see something interesting, then you buy it. So because of our time crunch neither of us really bought anything and we returned home for lunch.

Lunch was very good, but once again very similar to all of the other meals…at least according to me. We had bananas, papaya, upama (basically Indian rice pudding with vegetables), coconut chudney for dipping breads, Poori (deep fried flour tortilla that looked like a puff of bread), potato gravy, and vada dipped in samba (spicy doughnut). Amog had come home from his exams and had lunch with us. We still have not seen much of his sister.

We waited for Amog's sister to come home from school and we left to go see the ship around 4:00. We gave them a tour of our rooms and the rest of the ship. It was especially exciting for this family because amog was able to show them a lot of things since he was with us since cape Town. He was very enthusiastic in explaining what he did on his trip and showed them where he did it. After our long tour of everything we said our good byes and they left. Now, I had to track down Ari and Krishnan, so I could go on my sleepover at his house. I found them up on one of the outside decks and told them to come get me in my room when they were ready.

We left the ship around 7pm. Krishnan's aunt Usha was also with him on the tour. Krishnan lives with his aunt, uncle, mom, and dad. His dad is blind and his aunt, uncle, and Krishnan himself all are not married. I did not want to ask why but Ari said that Usha (aunt) said she was some sort of person that just doesn't get married but didn't explain it much and changed the subject quickly so Ari did not continue to ask why. On our way home we stopped at a 4 star hotel and had dinner at krishnan's favorite restaurant. He said he brings all of his students there, so I'm sure Al was there at some point. It was very nice and had live music. Ari and I had a crab and chicken Chudney, Krishnan and his family are vegetarians. They brought out a vegetable plate and chips for an appetizer. The chips were interesting and I grabbed a chili pepper thinking it was a green bean and took a nice big bite out of it…mistake! It was the hottest pepper I have ever tasted. It is funny too because Krishnan's dinner was these green chili's in a gravy, which would be death for any American. Krishnan also invited a friend of his who is going to be going to grad school in the U.S. somewhere on the east coast. Krishnan knows anybody and everybody everywhere he goes. He has two cell phones and is always talking on them. Oh, I also had my palm read at dinner (Kishnan said he strongly believes in it) and the reader was dead on until he said that I would have a job in economics. So he better not be correct because I understand economics just as much as I understand Spanish.

We finally made it home around 10pm. Krishnan's house was not as nice as the Raj family. He had the bottom floor of a house. There was a living room as you walk in and krishnan's, Usha's, and his uncles bedroom on the left as you walk in the door. The bathroom was in their bedroom. All of the floor was tile. The "American" bedroom was the next bedroom on the left. It has two beds pushed together in it and he said as many as 7 have slept there at a time. They have a rule in their house, no thank-you's or sorry's. The kitchen was straight ahead and there were other rooms past that but we did not go in them. We only saw his dad briefly, but his uncle was old and very quiet and just kind of wandered around and smiled, never said anything. We got on the computer and transferred some pictures from my camera onto it because krishnan's camera died during the ship tour. He is like a high school girl when taking pictures. We went to bed around 12. His house was interesting because the walls have some cracks and paint missing, but he has a very nice SONY TV and stereo system. I think he save a lot of his money to spoil his guests twice a year, not to mention support the rest of his family.