Curry and Sunshine: Blessed By An Elephant

Well, it's been a crazy few days, and rather than make a blog entry for all of them, I am just going to sum it all up

Friday: Today I built a house....with my BARE hands....ok it was a community effort, and I just threw a lot of bricks at Indian construction workers . Ooooo that did not come out right, but it's kinda funny so I'm just going to leave it haha. What actually happened is we were adding a second story to one of the buildings at Rising Star, and as a service project we assisted the construction workers in making it. I was assigned to a corner of the building, and was put in charge of supplying the men building the walls with as much kal (brick) and kalicum (clay/mortar/cement) as their hearts desired. Many of the construction workers were yelling constantly, but the men I was helping were these two sweet old fellows with rather distinguished snowy white beards. When they needed something, they would gently point at what it was, and I would hand it to them. They would smile in return, and then continue with their labor. It was a fascinating thing to watch and it almost made me want to forget my college plans and spend the rest of my life as an Indian bricklayer.....that was almost a joke :) At one point during the construction process I found myself standing on a pricarious 5 foot pile of bricks, throwing bricks and handing large bins of kalicum to the workers above. I now had 7 men working in my area, and after a while I started getting confused with who wanted what, and soon had 7 men yelling at me in Tamil. I realized at that point that it didn't matter what language they were speaking because when I help with construction in America I still don't understand what people are saying even though it's all in English.

It was really gratifying work though. I got absolutely filthy. Straight Up, head to toe dirt and grime. Twas beautiful. I am also a professional at carrying heavy loads on my head, which is a good skill to know.

Kaylee basically rocks in every way possible.

Inside the building we were adding another story to.

Go Team Scorpion :)

I got wonderfully dirty

Saturday--- I received my first elephant blessing! We spent Saturday at Pondicherry as a break from the work we did this week. Pondicherry is a city located on the eastern coast of India, right next to Chennai. It is the burial location of several famous spiritual figures in Indian history, and has this incredible French influence. From the architecture, the food, and the people everything was distinctly a bit more French. There was this old elephant named Lakshmi who gives out blessings. You stick money in her trunk and then she touches the top of your head with it. She seemed like an older elephant , and had these incredibly sad, intelligent eyes. I really hope that she is not abused. Her owner did not appear to be a kind soul.

The man under Lakshmi is her owner....Lakshmi, now may be a good time to get your business done....just sayin.

I love my fellow volunteers! :)

After the blessing we walked to the bazaar where I got my first taste of an Indian fresh market. It was smelly, noisy, and crowded. There were dogs and flies everywhere, and I swore off fish for the rest of my stay in India. We went on our first ride in a rickshaw, and ate food at an italian restaurant, where we all ordered "Nocurry"(pronounced Knock-hurry. Said really fast). Basically that means anything that is "Not Curry." My choice of food was a cheese pizza...which ironically was spicy. We spent several hours shopping and seeing the sights, and then happened upon a spiritual bookshop. It was basically the Deseret Book of India, and had so many interesting things about the religious culture. After the bookshop, we went the The Mother and The Father's grave.

These two have played a huge part in the religious culture in India in the past century. They started a "non-religion" in which believers forsake all organized religions and join a group that believes in peace and harmony. It's kind of like Indian Hippism. When we got to the grave site, we were asked to remove our shoes, and put away our cameras. Signs directed us into a courtyard filled with flowers and people. It was totally silent, and many people sat quietly meditating. A man directed us to a corner of the courtyard where we were allowed to sit. As I sat there watching the people around me, I was touched by the stillness and beauty of it all. The sarcophagus sat in the middle of the courtyard, and flowers were placed over it. People went up to pay their respects by kissing it and bowing their heads in prayer. We sat there for 30 minutes, enjoying the stillness and smell of jasmine. (Jasmine is now one of my favorite flowers. Women commonly pin it in their hair so they smell nice, and many people buy fresh jasmine flowers to put in their cars as air fresheners. It is incredibly strong, and one of my new favorite smells. Note to my father: You will probably not like India. Just kidding, you would love it, but you'd just sneeze a lot.:)

Well, my computer is about to die. I can't wait to tell you the rest of what has happened. I have had some incredibly cool experiences, that are just kind of difficult for me to put into words. I love you so much, and you can expect to hear from me very soon :)

Peace-----Becca :)