Monday Morning

Well,

It's Monday morning and we are about to start our first morning in Rajkot with our gracious hosts. I haven't posted yet, so I wanted to talk a bit about our trip in, and hopefully I don't duplicate much with my teammates. We left Atlanta around noon on New Years and flew to Detroit. The flight was uneventful, save for a snorer next to Whitney sleeping off the night's revelling. After a brief layover, and de-icing the plane, we were off to Amsterdam. I couldn't sleep, and I was in good company, as most everyone had a hard time sleeping, except Amy who could sleep through a war.

We arrived in Amsterdam around 4 in the morning local time, and everything was closed, save for a few little eateries. We boarded around 10AM, and there was an additional level of security at our gate, as this was the origin of the Christmas terrorist. It took about an hour to get through this, despite already being in the airport. The second to last leg, to Mumbai, was where everyone finally crashed and got sleep. I managed about five hours. Thankfully, Delta/Northwest had an abundant selection of free movies to entertain. Just when we thought we were in the home stretch, we exited into India, and another 3 1/2 hour layover with little to do, since it was 2AM. It was definitely disorienting to fly through two nighttimes.

The flight from Mumbai to Rajkot (pronounced Raj-coat), was about two hours, on a rather large twin prop commuter plane, and it actually had the best food of the trip, with vegetarian Indian food, which had a little kick to it, and the textures and flavors were excellent. Didn't hurt that it was the nicest, most accomodating flight crew yet, either. We got little lemon juice drinks that were really sweet, and salty. The after dinner mints were like a tiny bag of mint and licorice flavored sunflower seeds. Strange, but good.

We exited the airplane and it was definitely a different environment. It was snowing big fat snow flakes in Amsterdam as the sun was coming up, and here with the dawn just breaking, it was warm and humid. On the edge of the tarmac facing the dark perimeter of the airfield was a guard with an assault rifle that had seen better days. It was a reminder that this part of the world also deals with terrorism. In a lighter moment, Amy tried to take a picture of us and the airplane, and the guard, who had only been looking at us curiously, suddenly scolded Amy in loud 'No's!'. Bill, our team lead, then informed us that you aren't aloud to take pictures of the planes for security reasons. As Amy has already spoken about our reception, I won't get into to great of detail, but we were overwhelmed with hospitality and welcome, and we took many pictures with the banner, and our fragrant flower necklaces, and our new hosts. We packed our bags into a large Mahindra SUV, and split up for the ride to our hotel. Bill pointed out several cows along the way, before deciding aloud he was going to stop pointing out cows now.

The drive itself was a little terrifying, as the driver swerved in and out, using the whole road, while honking away and dodging motorcycles, trikes and the ubiquitous cows that seem to roam the streets like stray dogs, unaffected by the crush of humanity. We passed a dusty open park, and even in the weak light, people were playing cricket. I hope we get to take in a match, and someone can explain it to us. The hotel was a short drive from the airport, and we were sat down in the lobby for chai tea, and our hosts welcomed us again, and explained what we were going to be doing over the next couple days. We were given the whole day to rest in order to be, as Bandu Sharma said, 'springy' today. I think I cumulatively got over 12 hours of sleep, and we feel pretty good today, so it was well spent.

Well, we are about to begin our day, so I'd better wrap this up. Hopefully we'll be able to keep y'all well informed. I think I've already written 10 pages in my journal, and it's been an amazing experience so far, and I'm sure it will continue to impress.



Take care,



Blake