"Everything's possible in India...

...it just takes time". True story.

Recent happenings in my life:

• I got to see a friend from high school on Thursday. He’s doing a study abroad program around the world, and stopped for 1 night in Pondicherry. It was great to see him, but a little weird to have two completely separate worlds collide!  

• Friday I was invited to my very first Indian wedding - beautiful invitation and all! The actual wedding took place at 6am that morning, but I went to the reception with some other people from my internship. One of the Tamil women who works in the after school program (this was the first time I had met her) kept grabbing my hand and saying, “come, come!” and dragging me around - to give a gift and get our picture taken with the couple, to talk to other guests, to go eat dinner. We sat in rows and were given banana leaves, and then multiple foods were dumped onto our plate. As usual, way more than I could eat. There was chapatti, rice, what is basically a curried doughnut without the glaze, many different curries and sauces, a soup, 3 different desserts, and a banana. On our way out, we got the typical party favor of a coconut and a bitter leaf. Still not really sure what they’re for.

a random google couple, but exactly like every wedding here! the newlyweds are on a stage, and people line up to give them gifts and get their picture taken

This is what the meal looked like!

my wedding clothes, minus the shawl

• I discovered a wonderful little ice cream shop/cafe in my own little Kuilapalayam! I’ve ridden past it every day and never even noticed this little gem! I also discovered that their cold coffee is the best I’ve had yet. Every time I try one at a new place, they just get better and better (aka worse and worse for me). First, it was just cold coffee with milk and sugar. Then came the iceberg coffee with a scoop of ice cream. Now my favorite is the place that blends the ice cream with the coffee, but it is still essentially coffee. But at Richy Rich (it’s a franchise, but doesn’t seem like it because it’s in a village), it’s a coffee milkshake, there’s no denying. Oh, cold coffee will be the downfall of me.

• We did a workshop yesterday called awareness through the body. One of the things we did was walk around with our eyes closed, using our awareness to avoid other people/walls. After a while, we had to reach out and find somebody else’s hand. We explored everything about their hand, until we were sure we could “pick it out of a thousand hands”.  We then walked around some more, and then had to start feeling hands again until we found our partner’s.  I had my friend Julian’s. His hand is about 3 times as big as mine! We only have 3 guys in our group, so it wasn’t too difficult to find.  I’ve never really given much though to peoples’ hands before! We did some other breathing exercises as well. It was really relaxing and nice to experience how we felt without so much stimulus, and without relying on our vision and our mind, just our awareness.

• We’re halfway through our last week before traveling! I will miss the people at my internship, but I am SUPER EXCITED to change up life a bit and see some new places! Not to mention our sacred solo, where we are alone in the woods for two days on a spiritual quest.