A Little Bit of Shopping

We woke up and left Ranni and our wonderful host family. Always so crappy.

I’m sure they were happy to see us go since they hosted all six of us. It was a little loud in there. We left right after breakfast and headed to another city. I’m embarrassed to say that I have no idea what the name was and we were there for less than 24 hours. When we arrived, Kannen (our driver) made the massive mistake of parking in front of a very nice silk store. So, naturally, we wanted to check it out for “just 20 minutes.”

I walked in and immediately found the cloth I liked and was getting my measurements taken within minutes. I’m not a good shopper, I loathe browsing.

It turns out that there are a lot of parts to a saree. I had to select the material for my blouse and get measured for it to be created. I had selected my saree material, but I had to also get a skirt to wear under it (who knew??). This pretty much stretched the limits of my matching abilities and patience for minute decisions. Luckily I survived thanks to the help of this gentleman:

Other ladies in our group turned out to be big time shoppers. Mainly these two:

Within minutes, they were waist deep in cloth and sales assistants.

After an hour and a half I got voted to round them up and get us out of there. I hate being the bad guy, but they finally selected their saree material and we left. We went right next door and had a traditional Kerala meal:

Unpictured: Four heaping mounds of rice.

After rolling out of there, we finally go to visit a mosque.

We couldn’t go in, but Jennifer got to visit the Imam. I was so glad that we all fit in the room because I learned so much. I am consistently impressed by the way in which all of the religions of India get along so harmoniously. It never ceases to impress me.

He was very generous and spent over an hour with us. After the mosque, we went to see the original church that St. Thomas built. For the record, we have been to about three of these “original” churches.

After, we were drug out to the middle of the boonies to see his original landing place. Again, seen a few of these spots. At least it was pretty.

Oh hi Vanessa, so surprising to find you posing. Eventually we moved on to our new host home for the night. It was a very large and traditional home, but it featured this unique artistic rendering:

Every time I saw that woman I about jumped out of my skin. Just a little bit creepy. We were told that we had the night off and there was no Rotary meeting. Lies, always a lie. We didn’t go to a meeting, but a meeting came to us.

For five hours. And guess what they wanted to do? Get us drunk. Unfortunately for them, they obviously didn’t get the manual on getting girls drunk because they gave Yajaira and I our wine in a shot glass. Gonna take a little more than that boys.

The men proceeded to take shots and several hours later they eventually got drunk enough that we could slip off to bed in peace. Jennifer is very very happy about this party. Very happy.

I also slipped in the shower for about the one hundredth time. The floors here are typically some kind of marble and super shiny granite (or rock or something, I’m not a geologist). There is no shower area with a border, so the water runs all over the floor before it gets to the drank. I’m gonna die bathing, I just know it.

Danger danger.