my quickly moving time abroad

I have only been here for two weeks, but it is settling in how long/how short of a time that I am going to be here. Two weeks down, which also mean that half of one of the three months that I am going to be here has already flown by, which is just a little bit insane to me. From my time that I spent in France, I know how it can seem like you have been somewhere your whole life till you are leaving, and then you are practically positive that you got there yesterday. You know that I absolutely hate to give a laundry list of what I did in a day, so I will bust out some highlights from this past week...

We had originally planned on going on an overnighter this week, though it got canceled due to a gas shortage in Chennai, and I feel a little guilty saying that I am so happy that it did, but you know how I like to shoot for honesty. I just couldn't bear the thought of a gazillion hour hot car ride. Plus! Staying behind meant that the volunteers got to stick around for Sports Day at Rising Star. It was so fun to see the kids in their races and games, but it seemed a little cruel that they had to perform in 100+ heat.

We also visited a hospital, that had lots of fans, that kicked up dust, that gave me angry eyes, which I hate having (and if you don't know what "angry eyes" are, go talk to someone who has contacts and they will know exactly what I am referring to here).

For the weekend trip, we took the volunteers to Auroville and Pondicherry. Auroville is a small religious/meditation...something like that town that was rather uneventful and featured a large dome/temple that looked mostly like a golden Epcot to me.

this is two of the volunteers Sarah and Hannah, hanging with me in front of the...golden temple?

After our adventures in Auroville we moved onto Pondicherry, where we discovered an Italian restaurant owned by a the funniest Italian man ever. But, the best part was the cold diet coke. I had two. Of course.

double fisting like a champ

 In Pondicherry we also enjoyed a lovely Gandhi statue and witnessed the filming of a Tamil Movie. Good times, eh?

Another big highlight! I got to cross "cut somebody's hair" off my Life List today after one of the other long term volunteers allowed me to shave his head. He does this every other week so it probably wasn't too tough for him to hand over the clippers, but I appreciated that he assisted in letting me cross something off of the list. It's getting a little too short now! I'm might have to start pondering a few more things that I should add on.

peace. love. and Gandhi

p.s. excuse the frightening grammar errors that you are probably finding in these past few blog posts. I take whatever short amount of time I can to write these.