Happy last day of 2010... in India!

We will be celebrating the new year ahead of everyone in the United States!  We are 10.5 hours ahead all of you friends on the East coast and 11.5 hours ahead of Texas friends.  I guess you could say I am writing to you from the future :)  Kishore has rented out a club for us so that is how we will be bringing in the new year.  Everyone is still tired from flying here and some are worried we will not make it until 3 or 4 am, the predicted hour of sleep.

Today we are not doing anything major, maybe because it is new year's eve.  We are going to a massage parlor (maybe...... last night I also heard only boys can go and that the girls have to go to a salon, which would probably mean we can get our nails done. Everywhere in the world men are favored, just a little more in some countries). After that we are going shoppping. We have to rent cars for the day but it should only be about $20 for the day, split by 5-6 people.

I missed a few things because I got here a day late but apparently we are not supposed to go anywhere without one of the boys on the program.  Kishore is afraid of us women travelling alone - even in groups. It is hard because the majority of us are women and there are only a few males!  We are also supposed to say we are from Canada so we do not attract unwanted attention to ourselves as a large group of Americans. It is different because I am not used to travelling with large groups of people. Often I travel alone.  I am also lucky to be able to blend in in a lot of places. It is definitely a different experience travelling in a group, especially a clearly foreign group of tourists.

So far all is well. Indians do not start their days early, which is nice.  The earliest start on our syllabus looked like 10am.  However, this also means it is hard to find coffee in the morning! There is one place that opens around 8 or so but the other is closed until 10:30 am. Rough for addicted Americans who drink coffee at 7am or earlier every day. There seems to always be a group wanting to get coffee from that little shop in the morning, they will be making quite a bit of money from us this month!

Of course everywhere we go there are beggars and small children trying to get money from us or sell us things. It is no different than almost any other country I have been to (I have travelled mostly in the developing world), which is unfortunate.  Still, I can't imagine living life waiting for someone to buy something from me.  There are people who wait around every day by the side of the road waiting for someone like us to give them a small sum of money.