Our last 10 days in Auroville were filled with gift and souvenir shopping, trips to Pondicherry, eating pizza from New Creation and ice cream from Richy Rich, packing, making pancakes at the program coordinator, Abbey's (newly remodeled) house, optional and required seminars and discussions, picture taking, our Farewell Dinner, spending time together, and finally our last teary dinner and good-bye before driving off to the airport.
Sunday night (December 19), we ate dinner with Abbey and our German friend, Friedhelm. We signed off the program and then talked about all the non-negotiable's we broke (we're not even allowed to dive), reminisced, sang a few songs, took back a natural object from home that we gave on our first day in India, and tried to hold back tears as we hugged our teachers, faculty, and two students behind. They were travelling for another month before leaving India. We pull away from Youth Camp at exactly 8:23 pm, then started the 2 1/2 hour journey to the Chennai airport.
We lost someone else at the airport, because he was staying in Chennai with friends for a few days before leaving. The airport was typical India, chaotic and unorganized. They couldn't even get me one of my boarding passes. One girl was leaving a couple hours later because she was going to travel through Europe, so they wouldn't let her through security. We were down to 8 of us.
Finally, we managed to get on our flight to Frankfurt. We were a little worried about what we would do once we got there because of all the weather problems that had been going on, but luckily all our flights left, even if some were an hour or two late. We had to split up in Frankfurt because we were leaving from different terminals and you have to go through security again to get to your gate. So I said goodbye to three more people, and 5 of us made our way to our gates. I had some trouble getting my second boarding pass because of a flight leaving for Tel Aviv from my gate, but I was finally able to do that. I flew to Boston with two other people from my group, and then said tired good-byes to them before my cousin Kim picked me up to take me back to her house in New Hampshire where I was going for Christmas. As I pull into her driveway, I looked at the clock and realized it was 8:23pm of Monday! So after 34 1/2 hours of travelling and very little sleep, I made it. And the next day the Frankfurt airport closed.
The End.
Sunday night (December 19), we ate dinner with Abbey and our German friend, Friedhelm. We signed off the program and then talked about all the non-negotiable's we broke (we're not even allowed to dive), reminisced, sang a few songs, took back a natural object from home that we gave on our first day in India, and tried to hold back tears as we hugged our teachers, faculty, and two students behind. They were travelling for another month before leaving India. We pull away from Youth Camp at exactly 8:23 pm, then started the 2 1/2 hour journey to the Chennai airport.
We lost someone else at the airport, because he was staying in Chennai with friends for a few days before leaving. The airport was typical India, chaotic and unorganized. They couldn't even get me one of my boarding passes. One girl was leaving a couple hours later because she was going to travel through Europe, so they wouldn't let her through security. We were down to 8 of us.
Finally, we managed to get on our flight to Frankfurt. We were a little worried about what we would do once we got there because of all the weather problems that had been going on, but luckily all our flights left, even if some were an hour or two late. We had to split up in Frankfurt because we were leaving from different terminals and you have to go through security again to get to your gate. So I said goodbye to three more people, and 5 of us made our way to our gates. I had some trouble getting my second boarding pass because of a flight leaving for Tel Aviv from my gate, but I was finally able to do that. I flew to Boston with two other people from my group, and then said tired good-byes to them before my cousin Kim picked me up to take me back to her house in New Hampshire where I was going for Christmas. As I pull into her driveway, I looked at the clock and realized it was 8:23pm of Monday! So after 34 1/2 hours of travelling and very little sleep, I made it. And the next day the Frankfurt airport closed.
The End.
No comments:
Post a Comment