A Fresh Start

What happened after Mumbai: we got on the plane safely and sat behind a huge scary man. The flight went well and we arrived in Chennai. The man from Marriott was there with our names on s board so he got us in a van we drove about 45 minutes to the hotel. We were silent on the trip- just taking everything in. It was a bit frightening to see the slums at night time. It was also very sad to see how poor everyone is. The houses are nothing more than Little shanties and what buildings there are are all run down with broken windows and doors. It was pretty scary to see what people were out at as well. I certainly wouldn't want to be out at all past sunset. We got to the hotel and Marissa (another girl from our group) took care of everything and got us in our room. The door closed and me and bri breathed a huge sigh of relief. We had made it! On our own. I'm glad we had each other. Doing that day alone might have been the end of me.

We took showers - careful not to get the water in our mouths! Even in the super nice hotel the water is still not drinkable. It is really frustrating. Simple things like brushing your teeth is difficult. You have to use bottled water for everything.

I read some scriptures out loud so it would save us some time to get to bed faster. I was in 3 nephi 17. I read about how much Christ loves us all and how He tarried with the people. I read about angels encircling the children and that is when I cried for the first time in the last 48 hours. I know I was blessed and protected. I know the Lord helped us along the way and placed people to help us on our journey. I know prayers are answered because mine surely were. It was a scary and intense situation but we survived and made it but only because the Lord listened and helped us.

After we calmed down and were ready for bed, I ran to the toilet to throw up. The malaria meds we have to take make me really nauseous and I had been so stressed that I couldn't and didn't eat all day. I think throwing up was both because of physical and emotional factors at this point.

Then bri runs over to throw up. While throwing up we both start laughing because really!? After all that our bad luck streak continued and we were now taking turns throwing up. Awesome. We eventually got to sleep

This morning was a fresh start. we woke up and went down to breakfast where we finally saw everyone! It was when Cheryl and Karen gave us hugs that the final sweep of relief came. We now had someone else in charge and we were safe. It was so good to see everyone. We had eggs and French toast, fruit, juice, and donuts. Everything. Our final meal.

A girl in our group us pretty sick so we delayed going to Rising Star until later. We all packed up and put all our luggage in one room and headed out to the city. Our first rickshaw ride... Awesome!! And super scary. Traffic lines mean nothing to these people. Our driver was the craziest of all. We call him "super driver". He called himself that once so it became his name. These rickshaws are like a moped with a box around it. Crazy ride for sure!

We fit four girls in one rickshaw - tight!

We walked around a street with shops on it. We bought some scarves and chudidars - everyday Indian clothes. It was fun to be with everyone and experience the normal lives of Indians. There were many beggars that followed us and it is hard to say no but handouts aren't the answer. We have one girl in our group who just graduated and came last year to rising star so she has served as a sort of guide. She said the women with children she turns away because if they make money off of it their children will never go to school and will be taught to beg but the women who are trying to sell something, those are the ones you try to support.

It was a great day and we got some lunch from a restaurant called the Sea Shell. We had traditional Indian chicken butter Marsala with Naan (a flat bread) and rice. It was very spicy but good over all. Then we got back to the hotel and loaded the buses to rising star.

The bus trip took about two hours and we had a blast! It was really good to get to know some of the girls better. We arrived at rising star and it is awesome. We got settled, ate dinner more rice with spicy sauce/curry, and were oriented to the program and rules. I took a bucket shower and now it is bed time.

It was a great day, hot and sticky, but great. Tomorrow we are going to the leprosy colonies.

I'm excited to be here and think it is going to be an awesome experience, hard, but worth it. I'm so grateful for the blessings I have received so far and know that I am never alone,

Pray for me! Love you all!

Getting to India

It is a horrible no good very bad day. And when I say very bad I mean VERY bad.

At the moment I am sitting in the Delhi airport with just Bri and Rachel while the rest of the group is in Chennai. How did this happen? it's a long story for a long day...

London: we get up we get ready we are checked out and then we go to use the printer in St pancras' business center to print our boarding passes but it does not work. We filled everything out and hit print (several times so I hope it wasn't sent somewhere else) and nothing happened. We asked the very nice concierge to help us out and he does... Just very slowly and thoroughly (helping us check boxes and reading every line). Eventually we print them at the front desk and rush out the door. We are behind on our schedule and it's a problem so we have to skip going to platform 9 3/4s which was a bit of a bummer but we made our plane so that was a plus.

We get on the plane and fly to Istanbul... super random but definitely an adventure. We had to go through security again because the plane lands behind the security line = time consuming and pointless in my eyes. We eventually find our gate after some gross bathroom experiences and we see that our plane departs an hour later than planned.
Also in security we had to pour our clean water into a trash bin. We are really thirsty by that point so Bri decides to go ask a man at a cola shop to fill up our water bottles. As he is about to turn on the water he says "unclean?". NO! Not the water we want. So we decide to buy a coke just for some refreshment and the tag says the price in euros, pounds, and something else we didn't recognize and we happen to have some left over pounds from London so we thought, "perfect!".... He didn't take pounds.

We were getting a little discouraged at this point so we pull out UNO. UNO is now our happy place. Soon we were in much higher spirits and we could forget how many eyes were looking at the "blue eyes".

I've never been a minority before and in a completely unknown place like that, it was a little scary. I was intimidated and anxious about the whole thing. I'm very grateful for UNO and as Bri put it "time flies when you're playing UNO!" We started boarding in no time and our positive moods were only slightly damaged when we had to board a very very full bus with mostly Indian and Turkish men in order to get to our plane.

Our flight to Chennai was moved up 6 hours so we were really tight on time so we talked to one of the flight attendants about it, trying to get some help with getting out faster but she was not a very happy person and turned us away. No one on that flight was very nice.

During that flight the plan was to do homework but with the mood we were in it just wasn't going to happen. Instead we picked a fantastic funny simple movie called Ramona and Beezus. It was hilarious and we laughed the whole time. Dinner was nasty but I ate as much as I could then drank water and ate the roll. We tried to sleep for the next 4 hours but I'm pretty sure we got a total of ten minutes between the two of us.

Then we landed and the race began. We ran and pushed and shoved our way through people, got through customs, got our bags, exchanged some money and asked a billion people to tell us where to go. We thought we were in the right place: the ticket counter of Spice Jet airlines outside of the airport where it said domestic departures (because you can't enter without a ticket and our professors had our tickets). ... We waited. We were early so we kept waiting. A nice guard man came to ask if he could help us. We were apparently in the wrong terminal. We had to run to catch a shuttle... They told us it was ready to leave but we sat there for 15 minutes waiting for more and more people to get on and then he had to go around collecting money from everyone, fortunately since we were transferring we got a free pass. Then we left and along this long road we had to stop and pick up every police/guard/soldier we saw walking. By the end there was about ten to fifteen on the bus, with VERY large guns, all staring at us. A little nerve wrecking? I think so. We finally arrive at the terminal and we go to the ticket counter and they say there are no tickets. We continue to explain over and over again what happened then they finally print out our group's ticket and we run through to check in. I then heard the most beautiful sound in the world, my name being yelled by a girl in our group. Beautiful. She then went to the check in desk with us and took charge apparently they had everything ready and set but they wouldn't let us in because it was "too late". Our flight didn't leave for another 25 minutes. They yelled, we yelled. There was a really nice airline worker man trying to fight for us. A mean lady said no. Then Maddy left to ask Karen (our professor) what to do.... Bri turns to me and asks "did we just get left?" in one of the saddest voices I've ever heard. True fact: we got left. But in all fairness they had to catch the plane too. So we go back to the ticket office and they tell us our group ticket is nonchangable. We need to buy a new ticket. ....I think I said the word seriously out loud. We go back to checkin desk guy and he starts fighting for us again. The answer is no. We go back to the ticket office to buy new tickets. At this point we only know that we have to be in Chennai (all the way across this foreign country) by the next morning or the bus taking us to the middle of the jungle would leave without us and that would be difficult to deal with.  After many attempts to find tickets there are none from any of the airlines. The last airline in the airport had tickets to Mumbai which is about half way to where we need to be - closer is closer - so we try to purchase them. The credit card wouldn't go through so after moments of panic we have to use a different card. We finally have our tickets but the plane leaves in 8 hours so we wait. We finally let ourselves have a bit of emotional time but Bri reassured me and I reassured her. I knew we were strong enough and smart enough and being protected so all would be well.

While walking around I felt someone kick me in the hind area. I was a little concerned for sure. I turn around and it is Rachel from our group. Looking a bit flustered. She had boarded the plane and was taken off by security for having a "metal cylinder" in her checked bag. She pulls out an otoscope and they apologized but she has missed her plane now. She had a flight leaving at the same time so we all waited together.

What did we pull out?? UNO! Of course! Our happy place. It was a very long wait and I'm pretty sure people were taking our pictures and video recording us at some points.

We got on our flight. Actually slept!!! It was lovely. We sat next to a very nice girl, what a blessing.

Got to Mumbai. Yep we are now on the west coast of India. Crazy. Again we have to go back through security and when we do the lady guard sends us back out bc our gate isn't there. Someone sent us there bc our gate was not posted yet so we went through security with all the pushing and shoving of not following proper line rules that is so common here at the wrong place. Being two little polite girls means it takes a long time to get anywhere. We are getting better at pushing though.

So we go to the new place she sent us and go through security...again.

We find our gate and camp out. We are NOT missing this flight. I think we were almost taken as chumps for a bit by some girl trying "help" us get wifi. She was sadly mistaken, something fishy was definitely going on.

Yes.  We played UNO again but you can definitely tell by this time we have had it.

Right after I typed that sentence above, our flight number disappeared from the board. Gone. It's getting close to being time to go so that was a little scary. I went and asked a worker to help us and he was great. Went off and looked it up then came back and told Bri to stay at this gate  - when he came back he started talking to Bri - thinking it was me....apparently all 20 year old white girls look the same when you've never seen one before - I don't blame him :)

Now we are sitting here just waiting. We will get into chennai at around 9 where there will hopefully be a driver waiting for us... hopefully. If there is not I am not sure what we will do.  Here's to hoping and praying that nothing else goes wrong!!

Side note: there are many very kind people here who have tried to help us as much as possible. Even though things haven't gone as smoothly as I would've liked and we all have very different customs, there are good people everywhere. I'm grateful they are looking out for me and I know some things have happened for the better and people have been sent our way.

"keep calm and carry on!"