day 2

Great breakfast. Got to the airport around 10am. And waited until noon. They found my bag. I grabbed my phone charger to charge my dead phone. Called home, updated them on the situation. Called Kayleigh and Sarah for the last time, and went on my merry way. I unfortunately had to dump the 2 water bottles I was carrying… bummer. Made it through security. Eventually boarded the plane. Yellow and orange seating. Reminded me of a 70’s movie color scheme.

Here’s where it starts getting funny/weird. So were the only Americans on the plane. Nbd. First snack comes. 2 half sandwiches fruit and water. 1 half sandwich is cucumber and co-slaw on wheat with the crust cut off. And the other is cucumber and tomatoes on white, with the crust cut off. I watched 3 movies. Unstoppable (highly recommend) Mr. Troop mom (highly don’t recommend) and chronicles of Narnia. Dinner came which was curry chicken with rice. Yum. A veggie stick salad with seaweed dressing. Mango and water. The mango tasted what I imagined a rotten diaper would taste like… worst mango I’ve ever had. Everything else was good. I took a 6 hour nap and by the time I woke it was breakfast. It was an egg like thing with mushrooms in it and chicken nuggets that made McDonalds nuggets look like chicken cor don blue. Veggie sticks, fruit and a strawberry creamy cake thing. Please mom, don’t get that for my next birthday cake.

We landed in New Delhi after 15 hours of air time. Mary Ellen and I grabbed our luggage exchanged some money (exchange rate is 41.28 rupees to 1 USD) and rushed to the gate. Rechecked our luggage, got our boarding passes and went through a very rigorous pat down security. Excuse me, please don’t touch tHATT. While in New Delhi, our passports were check 8 times and our boarding passes 7 times. And I thought US was strict. Finally on board I passed put until another dinner/ lunch came. Fruit, chocolate cake, water and….. An orange tear drop thing and a green tear drop thing, with grill tofu in the middle. Dorothy, were not in America anymore… I got hot tea, which was the best part of the meal, then the cake followed by the tofu. One tear drop was a spicy corn which was not edible and the other was a seaweed and olive green rock which triggered my gag reflex. Oh boy, this might be an interesting 10 weeks….

We landed and immediately notice every there has no regard for personal space or saying excuse me. But that’s just how it is. We quickly learned to stand our ground while waiting for our bags. Grabbed our luggage and met our host Fr Paul. He spoke English. And English we were able to pick out every 3^rd or 4^th word. We hopped in the Toyota pickup truck and jutted out into traffic… on the left hand side of the road. It was about 730 pm and the sun was completely set. There were vendors selling all kinds of stuff. Fruit, pastries, bikes… so many people. Being white skinned, we were already drawing many stares. Traffic was intense! It felt like we’re going to crash, constantly, there are no lanes. U fill all empty spaces. The bigger the vehicle and the more it costs, the more authority it has.

We made it back to the compound. Which was gated. There is a sense of security with that. We got inside, were sown our rooms and washed-up for dinner. We had a flat wheat bread and a beef stew. There was also a spicy vegetable curry, which I favored more. We chatted some and went off to bed. It was 10pm. Although, my body didn’t know that, it was just tired. I climbed into bed. Pulled down the mosquito net and listened to the music of the bugs out my window and the cars on the byway. Thankfully my room was somewhat air-conditioned. The temperature outside was finally settling to about 97 degrees. “Very pleasant” we were told.

Day 2 complete