February 22

Saturday Sarah, Fr. Felix, James, and I traveled to Pondicherry to meet with Matt, the in-country director of Communities Rising. He is a few years older than us, and he has been involved in India for a while. Right now he is teaching English at a school in Pondi and his younger brother Danny is going to school for the semester at the high school. They showed us around the town, and took us to get some supplies we needed (like toilet paper—they don’t have any toilet paper within half an hour of where we’re living because the people here don’t use it).

Pondi lies along the Bay of Bengal on the east coast of India. We walked to the shoreline and saw a famous Gandhi statue, did a little shopping, and visited two Hindu temples. At one temple dedicated to the god Ganesh, depicted as an elephant, they had an elephant standing outside the temple who would put her trunk on your head to bless you if you gave her a coin or a banana to eat. The temples were ornate and decorated with all of the gods on the outside and had many real gold and silver statues and chariots inside.



After our adventuring through the town we went to see Danny’s “School Day” celebration where the kids perform different acts and talents for the parents. Many kids did dances to songs, there was some asian fusion dance, yoga performance, and a play in Tamil (the local language). Danny played the drums with two other kids, it was really impressive. We ended up having dinner with some of Father Felix’s priest friends and then drove back to Vickrivandy after midnight. It was quite a day!

Sunday there is an out-of-school program for the kids at the small school so we went and played with them, watched Sarah give her art class, and figured out some projects that need to be worked on. I brought out my camera for the first time and the pictures that follow are the result—the kids love the camera!