First Day in India

On the first day in India Evergreen had a SAS trip so Jen, Laura, Katherine, and I went out together.  We hired two motor rickshaws to take us to the town center we said.  The driver Jan and I were with seemed to be the leader and took us to a church and two temples then a store.  At the store were several other sas students, we left without buying anything because it all seemed to be overpriced tourist items.  We asked our driver to take us somewhere to eat so we drove around the corner to a restaurant where there were several tables of other SAS students eating all with rickshaw drivers waiting for them.  We ate there despite this and it was good and there were a few locals eating there as well.  All four of us wanted to get Kurta’s made (or sometimes called Kurti) so we asked our driver to take us somewhere.  He didn’t understand what we were trying to ask so he called the other driver over and we told him then they consulted for a little while and said ok they would take us somewhere.   They drove us to another tourist store that had SAS students and premade clothing we again left without buying anything.  We talked to our driver again making sure to use the word tailor.  They drove us some more and we ended up at the silk house.  The people there explained that there was a tailor in the building but we had to buy fabric first so Jen and I picked out silk for kurtas while Laura and Katherine looked at scarves.  The two of us bought silk fabric and went to look for the tailor.  At first they sent us upstairs (4 flights) but there were only more silk shops.  Finally one girl understood what we were looking for and took us down the lift to the basement where there was another store and a tailor.  He measured us and asked about the neckline and the length and whatnot.  When we were done we looked around and realized that Laura and Katherine were gone.  They had gone to pick out fabric because they now wanted outfits made too.  When everyone was happy we got back in our rickshaws and asked to be taken back to the ship to get Evergreen who had been on a field trip all day.  On our way there we ended up stopping at one more temple and one more church(?).  On the last stretch back they told us that we each owed them $60 US dollars for the ride.  We of course told them no that they had originally said $5 each but they would not listen.  Finally they stopped the rickshaws and the two drivers and Jen and I bargained.  We finally got them down to $35.  They dropped us off and just a few minutes later evergreen appeared.  This whole time we were swarmed by people trying to sell drums and people begging and trying take us somewhere on their rickshaws.  By this time though we were simi use to it so we dragged Evergreen with us through the people just talking to each other because while this seems mean it really worked.  By the time we got to the atm the number of beggars and rickshaw drivers had decreased dramatically.  We all got money from the atm and then negotiated with a rickshaw driver to take all five of us in one rickshaw to a restaurant for 150 Rupees.  The conversion rate is approximately 44 rupees to the dollar. 

After eating we got in another rickshaw for the same price and went to the movie theatre and got tickts to a movie that was showing at a different movie theatre at 10:20pm.  But it was in walking distance so we walked to this place which turned out to be a brand new mall (just opened a few months ago) with a really nice movie theatre.  The movie tickets were approximately $3 a person and the movie theatre was nicer than the one on Turkey Creek at home.  We saw a Bollywood film called Anjaana Anjaani.  It was really good and almost exactly three hours long with a 15 min intermission.  It was surprisingly easy to follow the plotline even though they hardly ever spoke a whole sentence in English.  We now have the soundtrack.  We got back to the ship at 1:30am.  It was a good long day that we learned a lot from.