Pongal and the Eclipse

Pongal is the celebration of the harvest season here in India. It's a week long celebration where Hindu families participate in traditional routines to worship the sun god and other who have helped the harvest to be successful. A few friends and I were able to visit an Indian co-workers house one evening during the week of Pongal. We were there on the evening when she was thanking the cow which supplies her with milk every day. She feed the cow some treats when the owner brought it by and slipped a gift around it's neck, I think for the owner of the cow.

Also in the same week we got to view an eclipse! In my memory I have never seen on before... the school purchased special glasses so that everyone could see the eclipse. I put on these silly, 3D looking glasses, and gazed up at the sun not really expecting what I saw! It was the "coolest" thing ever! I reacted like one of the children, "WOW... oh my gosh... that's so cool... did you see it... this is so cool!" It was so cool, that about sums it up ;)


**Check out more pics of the eclipse here!

MIA... Singapore and Thailand

So sorry it's been forever, I have so much to catch up on so I'm going to do it as quickly as possible...

December/the end of November was full of some great holidays!!!

Singapore Chapter...
Over the Thanksgiving holiday break Mimi, Kate, Ruth and I took a much needed girls weekend to Singapore. Singapore was like everything I had heard the most expensive city I have ever been too... surprisingly we stayed in an extremely nice hotel for an amazing price! Everything about the weekend was so needed the city was absolutely 100% oppostite of Chennai, the streets were almost sterile looking, the food varieties were abundent, and the shopping, oh the shopping was over the top! Mimi and I were able to meet up with one of her friends who is a local and they showed us some local foods and explained the massive amounts of money behind Singapore was coming from the major port which are a pass through for China to other parts of the world. We did a little sight seeing but mostly hung by the pool relaxed, ate good food, shopped, and the best part was having a typical night out with the girls, dinner and dancing (not easily accomplished in Chennai)!

*for those of you who have not seen pictures on facebook check these out!!!

Thailand Chapter...
Thailand was the trip of a lifetime and I could use pages and pages telling about all of my little adventures as I did in my journal as I traveled. As the sequence of photos it shows adventures through the country.

We began in Bangkok... We stayed for a few days in a lovely guest house. We quickly learned on our first day there (ie. shops were closed, people were all over the place, fireworks, parades, people dressed in pink (the kings color of choice) and celebrations all through the day and next few days) The king is so loved in Thailand, we were never able to get an answer as to why he was so loved but everyone loved the king, his picture was everywhere we went in the country. The most memorable part of Bangkok was watching fireworks on the rooftop. They were so close I could feel the heat when they exploded in the sky! Check out the pics from Bangkok, the beginning and end of the trip.

Our next stop was Chiang Mai and Pai in the north. Chiang Mai was full of adventures we rode elephants, well more like cared for an elephant for the day, we fed, cleaned, rode, played with, and befriended an elephant at an elephant rescue camp. My elephant was pregnant too! It was quite scary at first sitting up ontop of the elephant and even later as we traipsed through some of the steepest and narrowest paths I've ever seen. The elephants were amazingly stable walking on these extremely unstable paths. We stopped for lunch at a waterfall and had traditional Thai food, the best I had in all of Thailand! Check out the pics!

The next adventure in Chaing Mai was whitewater rafter and zip lining through the rainforest. We spent one day whitewater rafting, the scenery was absoulutely beautiful, spent the night in a homestay, which was backpackerish of us ;) and then the next day got up to go zip lining through the rainforest. The zip lining was so much fun... check out the pics! Also included in the pictures is our quick trip to Pai, a small town north of Chiang Mai, it was so peaceful at the place we stayed. The most exciting part of this adventure was the 12 seater plan we took from Chiang Mai to the trailer (literally) sized airport in Pai! We did some shopping in town and the next day flew back to Chiang Mai. Pai was such a small place, we literally walked into town from our "out of town" resort, walked around the entire town during the morning and by afternoon walked to the airport to catch our plan out of town. :)

The next stop was the islands, Krabi, Ao Nang, and Kho Phi Phi. Ao Nang was on the mainland part of Thailand, on the west coast. Kho Phi Phi was an island we took a 3 hour ferry to reach. Once on the island there were no rodes so our only mode of transportation from one place to the other was boats around the island. We got in some good beach time, ate good food, did some snorkeling (I found Nemo... haha) and all in all just got to relax. This part of the trip was over Christmas so it was quite wierd for Ruth and I to be spending Christmas in our bathing suits, swimming in the ocean! Check out the pics!

The last stop before returning to Bangkok was to the River Kwai. We stayed in a "Floatel" it's exactly what it says! We were staying in a hotel which was floating on the River Kwai. As the boats went by and made waves we moved with the waves, when the water was calm so were our rooms :) We woke up in the morning to Elephants tooting their trunks as they were washing off on the river shore behind our room! It was a great adventure, there was no electricity so we used lanterns at night and no hot water so taking a shower was a bit of a shocker the first morning! We took one day to go out and explore the town of Kanchanaburi, about 1 hour east of where we were staying. Here we viewed some historical locations from World War II. The Kanchanaburi Cemetery and the Bridge on the River Kwai which was constructed by POW's (british, american, australian, and dutch) during WWII. We also went to the Tiger Temple where we were able to pet full grown and baby tigers. They were absolutely beautiful! Check out the pics!

Our last stop was back in Bangkok, we took a bus from Kanchanaburi back to Bangkok where we spent New Year's Eve. We had the best of intentions to head out on New Year's Eve into the city, there were big concerts and parties happening but all of our adventure from the rest of our travels caught up with us. We ended up staying in our amazing room, which had an entire wall of windows viewing the entire city and watching the fireworks go off all over the city at midnight. Surprisingly it was a great way to end the trip!