Northern India

Spent the last three days going at a crazy pace as we tried to fit everything in. We left Rising Star campus at 3:30 a.m. friday morning to start our crazy adventure up north. We endured an early two hour bus ride to the Chennai airport where we boarded an early flight to New Delhi. Once in New Delhi all 17 of the volunteers in the group got on a large orange tour bus and headed around Delhi. We drove through the Embassy's which was really cool to see the different designs and architecture of the buildings. After the bus tour we headed to Old Delhi for a rickshaw ride to a spice market and a stop at McDonalds.

After our ice cream cone from McDonalds we loaded back on the bus for a 5 hour drive to Agra. We arrived in Agra about 9 o'clock friday night and enjoyed room service while we watched Glee.

Saturday was another early morning. We were up and ready to go at 5:15 a.m. we headed straight to the Taj Mahal from the hotel to be there at sunrise. It was amazing the architecture is beautiful.

After spending time enjoying the beauty of the Taj Mahal we moved down the river to Agra Fort. The public is only allowed in one small section of this large fort because it is still in use by the Indian Military. Again it was another amazing building - I liked the Taj better but the red brick of the fort was an interesting contrast.

We finished our sight seeing around 10 a.m. leaving just enough time to get back to the hotel for breakfast. We were supposed to take the next few hours to catch up on sleep but, instead we went swimming. Later in the afternoon we went to a rug making shop, it was really fun to see how these amazing rugs are hand made.

We did some shopping then went to Pizza Hut for dinner. Then that night we went disco dancing at the hotel. Despite being a long day it was so much fun and I loved all of it. This morning we got to ride elephants - it was awesome. Then we travelled by bus, plane, and car to get back to the campus of Rising Star - to get home. There is a saying that is popular around Rising Star TII (This Is India). Usually it has a negative connotation like when the bus broke down, or we had to rent more cars to go into Andrapadesh. This weekend was a TII weekend for me, everything we did was Indian (despite a few American food stops). The long days didn't matter because India was showing me the beauty of the world.