Saturday October 18th

Today is our last day in India. Ari and I got up around 8 and had coffee and tea. I found an ant in my coffee so I dumped a lot of it out and didn't drink anymore. Krishnan plays badminton every evening for 3 hours. He took us over to the place plays so we could all play a game or two. Ari wore shorts which is a no-no in India for girls to wear them. The place was similar to our YMCA. There were cricket fields, tennis courts, and a gym. Also under a pavilion there were a bunch of badminton courts. Only I played with Krishnan, and I got my butt kicked. They are pretty serious and very good! After working up a good sweat we went back home. We had breakfast when we got home…more breads and gravy.

Usha took Ari and I to a local post office a few blocks away to get stamps to mail some postcards home. Krishnan bought us a pack of 10 postcards at the temples on Thursday and they were terrible quality but it was all we had. There was water all over the roads because it is the monsoon season. Sure enough while we were at the little post office, which was just a cutout in a building, it started to pour. The good thing is these showers only last 10 minutes or so. Our walk to and from the post office was very interesting. We walked past a lot of little shops selling the most random things from groceries and personal hygiene items, to little kid toys. We saw a few cows just roaming the street. Usha said that the cows actually do belong to someone and they wander around all day but they go home at night. I don't know if I said it before but cows are holy in Hinduism and every part of them, and everything that comes out of them is considered sacred.

We left the house around 1:00 and had a lot of shopping to do and Ari and I were worried about timing. We went to a huge market that was very crowded and we managed to find everything that we were looking for within a decent amount of time. Krishnan wanted to get some lunch but Ari and I told him we didn't have time because it was already 3:00 and we had to be back to the ship by 4 so we could make sure we didn't get dock time and we could call home if we had time. So we left the market.

Sure enough all of the roads along the coast, and around the harbor were closed for a political parade. We sat in traffic for almost two hours and finally got back to the ship at 5:30. On ship time was 6 so we just made it in time. It is a good thing we allowed for extra time. We said our good-byes to Krishnan and Usha and boarded the ship.