Off to the market/By Marney Phillips

Off to the market

Starting off, about my last blog, the monkeys might have been a little much. Sorry about that. Anyway, I told you all about the hike to the top of a mountain that was gorgeous, but Monday was so fun. We went to a temple not far from our hotel and did yoga outside. It was a little bit hard, but I think when I get back, I want to start doing yoga because it was so cool. It was very relaxing. After we did yoga, we went into the temple and had a bracelet ceremony, which they just put a bracelet on us that was for safe travels. You aren’t supposed to take it off, it is just supposed to fall off naturally. The only thing about that is when I got it wet, it stained my wrist like yellow. Anyway, after yoga and the bracelet thing, we came back to the hotel and had lunch, then went to “the longest zipline in India.” It was SO COOL. It went across a huge canyon, and then came back to where we started. So, there were two ziplines. But anyway, the hike up from the second zipline to where we started was KILLER. It was super steep, and I had to bear crawl because I was so winded. It was rough, but so worth it. I really wasn’t that scared of the zipline itself, but I got a little shaky getting off. After the zipline, we went out to eat at this Italian place, and it was so good. Eleanor and I shared a pasta and pizza, which was delicious.

Yesterday we went to all the schools to give them a bunch of stuff, to say goodbye, and to have our cultural exchange. We gave them school kits, hygiene kits, blankets, chocolates, track suits, and last week we gave them new shoes. They were so cute and grateful for everything; it made my heart so happy. Before Kira’s and Madi’s school came to ours, all the moms of the kids had come and were sitting around and wanted us to try on their own traditional clothes. It was so beautiful and so sweet that they even wanted to do that for us. Once the other teams got to our school, we did our dance for them and sung our song. To be honest, our kids looked terrified but it’s fine. After we danced, all the moms did a dance for us and had all the girls join in. It was so much fun and cool to be a part of that. We said our goodbyes to our kids, and then we went to Madi’s school. We danced and sung to them, they said goodbye and then we went to Kira’s school. Their kids were. So. Cute. When we walked in every one of the kids would come up and say, “Hello what is your name.” There was one kid who had a PubG shirt with his face on it and it was hilarious. We danced for them, and then when we were going to sing our song Kira started playing Baby by Justin Bieber instead of Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, but everyone went with it. We sung it and then had a dance party with all of the kids for like 20 minutes, it was a party. I can now say that I’ve moshed in India. After they said goodbye, we came back to the hotel and started to pack our things, and then had dinner. We had another huge bonfire and played a ton of games with the group. Some of us played blackjack and I lost all my toothpicks. It was bad. Now that leads us to today, we are about to leave to go to Manali and to our second hotel. We are going to go to the markets today, which I am so excited for. Well, that’s all I got so see you all when I get home Saturday!