traveling in the Nazarenemobile

The next morning I got up and was allowed to go running, which was absolutely amazing!! The fact that there’s even space here to run without being hit by some sort of vehicle was a miracle. I got some awesome looks in my running tights, but everytime I would smile or wave the kids on their way to school would get these huge smiles on their faces and start giggling. We left for somewhere that I can’t remember the name after that to head for our elephant safari. On the way we stopped at this Chinese restaurant that played Kenny G music! The drives here are always absolutely amazing and I can remember thinking that I would be perfectly content if I never got out of our little Nazarenemobile. When we got to our safari site a monkey immediately stole Meret’s snack, then we were whisked away for our elephant ride. The problem was that we all had to pee like none other, so the safari leader talked some random people into letting us pee on the floor of this little building in their yard… can’t say I’ve ever peed while using the person in front of me for support until this trip, but it’s a memory I wouldn’t trade!
The elephant ride itself was fairly uneventful and the fact that the poor thing frequently got beat by a man walking behind made it not really that amazing, but it’s still cool to be able to say I’ve ridden an elephant I guess! After that we went on a bus safari and mostly just talked to the little boys sitting beside us, because the safari basically had a few deer and bison on it, and a “wild” elephant that was chained to a tree. After dinner Kingsley let me drive his stick shift car through the forest, and at one point we even saw a real wild elephant. Apparently they are very dangerous though, so our hired driver drove after that, and we eventually came upon at least 8 more elephants! The next morning we heard that elephants and bison were outside our door at 6 in the morning, but we were fast asleep… the minute we woke up Kingsley had us wading through a freezing creek… Meret fell in and grabbed me, to which I kindly responded, “If you pull me in I’ll punch you in the face.” Let’s just say we were all a little edgy. Meret was able to fashion a skirt out of Kingsley’s shawl though and we headed on our way with her jeans flying our the window to a stand full of more types of amazing bananas than you could ever imagine! Pretty much for the rest of the drive home it rained, but even that was amazing… it was just so beautiful and peaceful and I didn’t want to be anywhere else. We also stopped and got homemade chocolate, fresh plums, mangoes, and carrots… who knew carrots could taste so good?! When we got back to our little cottage we ate the various foods we’d accumulated on the side of the road and gave each other pedicures… definitely one of my favorite days in India!!
The next day we visited the self-proclaimed best rose garden on earth… it was pretty awesome, but the best part was being invited to play a way cooler version of duck duck goose with a huge group of Indians, ages ranging from children to older adults!
When we got home we went back to the wonderful church/house and celebrated Jen’s sister’s birthday there… love those kids!! We also found out while we were there that’s it’s totally cool here to marry your cousin… hmmmm
The next day we thought we were leaving Kotagiri but Kings changed his mind and decided we would paint a church! So after a lovely 4 mile run we headed to begin the biggest scraping job of our lives. Kingsley had it in his head that we had to get every single bit of paint off… it was looking like Jesus would come back before we finished the job but thankfully a delightful lunch came first. Really though, I was getting rather discouraged, but then Jen started singing hymns and it was like the time flew by… Brian Lee, you were right all along, you can have fun doing ANYTHING as long as you’re with the right people! After lunch we went to work in the fields picking beans with these hilarious ladies! They were just sure we would understand Tamil if they spoke a little louder, but quite unfortunately that wasn’t true! One stuffed a leaf of some sort in my mouth, which I tried to chew, but was then hit by another lady and told to spit out, because apparently it was some kind of drug, and “Christians, no!” accompanied by very exaggerated hand movements! Eventually it got to just be us picking and an audience of people watching us, while occasionally they asked us to show off our dancing skills.
We were told before we ever left for Mumbai that we would have an opportunity to do laundry, but that was actually a lie, so underwear and other clothes now have levels of dirtiness for us… Jeffrey you might not love it here. It really is amazing though and Kotagiri has been such an amazing part of this trip, and so much of our team bonding has happened here!