Traveling Home

Today we left the RSO campus at 8:12 and headed towards Chennai. We arrived relatively quickly and made it in time for the wonderful breakfast buffet! After gorging ourselves a group of us headed into the city to do some last minute shopping. Amanda and Alexander had previously arranged a member of the branch to take us around the city. He only had room for 4 in his car so the rest of us rode in “took tooks” or “motos”. We went to a nice mall first and was very large and westernized. After that we went to the famous Spencer’s plaza. It’s amazing that in the distance of 1 KM the quality dropped enormously. I was still able to find some things I wanted though and we called it a day. By this time Brittany, Jessica and I were on our own so we bartered with a moto driver to take us back to the hotel.

What a ride! Baba was our driver and he was Bytium! (crazy) He kept talking in a super high pitched voice and moving swiveling the steering wheel. He mentioned he was drunk and that freaked us out even more! He was taking us through all kinds of crazy streets and we didn’t know where we were heading. He tried explaining another plaza to go visit that was on the way but we kept saying we were done shopping. Finally he got serious and said, “you don’t understand this man gives me commission on shirts” haha so we agreed to stop. I think we spent all but 2 minutes in this upscale store that sold scarves for 1800 rupees. ($45) Finally we made it back to the hotel, but not before Baba could drop this line, “I give you my number and when you come back I drive you one by one- one by one okayS?” No thanks Baba.

Steve and Jess were nice enough to let us crash in their hotel room with them throughout the day and into the night. We watched TV got somewhat decent internet access and chilled for most of the day. We ordered Pizza Hut once again and it really hit the spot. (I usually don’t like Pizza Hut in America but here anything remotely American is divine.)

Britt and I didn’t feel comfortable completely taking over their room so we showered and de-liced in the health club. It was nice there was two of everything so it was perfect (showers, toilets, sinks, changing rooms etc. ) The process took much longer than we thought but we felt we were very thorough and don’t have any bugs! We were advised to do this process one more time a week from now—looking forward to it :D

I fell asleep in their room on the couch while Britt skyped Stan in the lobby. When she came back up I woke up and we decided we better leave so Jess and Steve could sleep. We are now in the lobby awaiting or Taxi to the airport. It is 1:17 AM and our Taxi comes at 2:30 yipee it’s going to be a long 30 hours home!

Three days ago I was dying to get home. Today I’m going over plans to how I can get back here as soon as possible.