Speaking of: Happy Father's Day, Daddy! I love you lots and lots and lots and miss you tons. Thanks for being the best daddy ever and teaching me new things every day as well as sharing your quirky humor with me. You always make sure that I get the most out of life and encourage all of my explorations. From Haiti, to India, to Europe, you make sure I am living my life to the fullest. I love you so so so much. Love, your littlest girl-baby!
On that note, here's what I did yesterday:
In the morning we went to a church that was actually spoken in English, which was very refreshing! We were told that it was a Catholic church, so I personally was very excited to attend a traditional mass. Much to my dismay, it was really a branch of the Church of South India, which is not Catholic but just generally Christian. They did have communion though, so that felt like a little bit of home.
After church, we didn't do much of anything except play cards and watch some movies. But at 4:30 pm, the fun begin! We visited a nearby village! On our way there, we stopped by to see how some of the agriculture works in Tamil Nadu. The government will pay for the electricity used to maintain the agriculture, which is pretty amazing. However, the agriculture of India is slowly dwindling because it isn't very profitable. If a family buys land for agriculture, they must split it between their sons when they become of age. So eventually, the land size is so small that it isn't really worth having anymore and they will sell it so others can build houses there. Often people will grow a crop like sugar cane that can grow year round as well as a cash crop/rice patties. During the hot seasons, they will grow the cash crops and during the rainy seasons, they will cultivate rice patties in the same place where they were previously growing cash crops! Pretty nifty in my opinion...
Next, we continued our trek out to the village! This village is part of an extension program for Bishop Heber. Through this they sent students out to the schools to help teach and to also help educate the village about the dangers of alcoholism since the rates are very high here. Anyways, as far as the village goes, I feel like pictures will do the talking best!
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| They are growing sugar cane here |
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| If you look closely, there's a cow back there hiding! |
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| These are government buildings where they give out rations to the people, such as rice which would usually cost about 30 Rs in the cities |
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| I think that little guy may have been overheated... But in general in this village, the dogs hated us. I've never been scared of a dog before, but I honestly thought these ones might bite us... |
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| Yep, this scary contraption is to keep anyone from stealing the water spicket. |
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| They were pretty excited to see us. :) |
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| Cricket is the most common sport I have seen here! |
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| They had these pigeons kept here as pets |
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| You'll see that this little guy is a huge camera hog, so here's his close-up! |
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| And here he's being super silly. |
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| I kept trying to get good pictures of this little girl because she was precious, but she was pretty scared of us and wouldn't really let us take photos of her. |
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| My selfie with this cute little girl with super white teeth. |
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| They gather the rice and then leave it out in the sun to dry. There were ants all over it, but apparently they don't care and the ants will just die or something... honestly, I wasn't super convinced of the ant situation. |
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| This is a neem tree, it acts as a vegetable and also has medicinal and pest control values |
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| Little baby cows! |
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| One good one we got of her! |
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| Sometimes they paint the chicks so they will be worth more. Craziness! |
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| They love seeing their pictures on the camera |
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| These symbols (among others) are seen all over as symbols of political parties. |
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| Our entourage |
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| Another woman drawing a kolam. They draw them both in the morning and the evening. |
It was a great experience to see this village and meet some of the people and the children living there. I have decided that I would really love to live in a village for at least a week if not an extended period of time. I think it would be amazing to see how those people really live and just learn from them.
Anyways, these are some random facts and thoughts that I have accumulated since my last long post:
-Some of the cars in India have back up noises that are like songs. At first we thought it was an ice cream truck, but then we found out that it was really the noise that the cars made when they are reversing. It is really quite strange.
-The drinking age in India is really 18, but it is not enforced at all. There are wine shops all over and they will sell to children as young as 12-years-old and if these children are caught drinking, there is no punishment.
-We all have had very strong food cravings recently and have really just been constantly hungry. I've really been craving lots of fruits and veggies, as well as Mexican food and salad! They eat a lot of carbs over here which explains the high rates of diabetes that we see in the clinics, so I've been craving a lot of healthier foods, minus the Mexican food. Parents, my request upon my arrival at home: a huge bowl of salad and a fruit salad. Thanks!
Anyways, that's all for now! Until my next post,
Marissa
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