Day 13

Turns out it’s just as hard to find wifi in India as you’d think it would be. We’ve been without for a few days and now that we’ve made it back to our home base hotel we still are out of luck because we can’t pick anything up in our room and the tech guys gave up on us. It’s definitely nice to be back though. We were on a five day excursion to various other cities which I described in my last few posts and to Cochin. Day 13 we met up with Costford headquarters and they were excited to see us. Video cameras in the face kind of excited. We listened to lectures from them and then did a few site visits. 

One of these site visits was my favorite of the whole trip so far. We went to a school at which they are sponsoring a lunch program and these kids went insane for us. We walked into the school yard and it was a complete mob of kids with every single one wanting to shake out hands and ask us our names. They thought meeting us was just about the coolest thing ever, except taking pictures with us which was definitely the coolest thing ever. I was shaking an average of about 4 hands per second and almost got knocked over a few times but I definitely enjoyed it. My prof thinks I should come back and teach English. I tried talking to a few younger girls in Malayam but they were too shy and just stared back at me like I was an alien. Christian was too cute with them and was picking some of the boys up. He’s pretty much a giant here so we weren’t sure if they were enjoying the ride or terrified. I wish we could have stayed longer but I almost got left behind in the mob anyway before someone had to come pull me away. We all went through a long of hand sanitizer when we got back on the bus.

We ate lunch near the ocean and of course since we couldn’t read the Malayam warning to stay off the beach we charged right into the surf. It was gorgeous and I really enjoyed messing around on an empty beach with my awesome classmates. 

After lunch we made the drive to Fort Kochi within (or next to… I never know where I am or where I’m headed in this country) the city of Cochin. This is a historic area and super touristy. We saw something we hadn’t seen in quite a while… other white people! Of course most of them were European but it still was nice to be able to wear a spaghetti strap top and pretend we just didn’t know better like the rest of them. We got there at night when it was too late to shop so the Iowa kids decided to do what we do best in a dry country, find a bar. They serve no cocktails here and only one brand of beer which tastes just as bad as the stuff high schoolers at home get their older brother’s to buy them from a gas station. (I’m also curious about how the hotel in Trivandrum can make such a disgusting pina colada in a country that has fresh pineapples and coconuts on every street corner). Regardless we still had a good time socializing and were all responsible and got back to the hotel safe.