Mahabillipuram

Well after two weeks of training, the entire group was looking to get away and relax. (Oh I know I said we wanted to work, but come on!) :)... Some people headed up to Mahabillipuram on Friday night and others headed there Saturday..

I was in the saturday contingent. I left my hostel and caught an auto and met Jess and Nicole at the Pandian. We jumped in the same auto after shrewdly bargaining and made our way to the bus station.

Once we arrived, we settled at the Siva Guest House (which is a really cute little place in this small neighborhood that is rather chill and designed for tourists... its in the Lonely Planet for those of you who might visit!)

We then had breakfast at this little French/Indian place called "Le Yogi" which, is one of my favorite places...Ever! I got crepes with banana and nutella and a black tea... Their menu was just what I needed after 2 weeks of poori masal for breakfast.. (The restaurant is pictured at the right... it was so relaxing inside, just a fan and good music...everyone sitting on the floor or on small benches.)

We ended up doing a lot of really nice, relaxing things... Walked around, saw some of the sculptures that are now housed in this large park. Later, some of us took fishing boats out and went swimming in the ocean. (The waves kicked my a$$!) In the late evening, we had dinner.. some beers..and just hung out..it was great...

The next morning some of us walked along the beach for almost two hours and took pictures and talked. (Pictured below are Christian and Jessica. Right now I don't have time to adjust the HTML, so just pretend they are in a row instead of scattered randomly throughout.) We eventually made our way back to Le Yogi, where I had a lovely meal of meusli and mixed fruit (mmm!). Then four of us, Sybille, Christian, Jess and I took the city bus back to Chennai. It was really hectic to figure out how to get on the bus. (Traveler's note: auto drivers and everyone else will tell you to take an auto to the main road to increase the likelihood of catching a bus, but in fact, they do come right into the bus station area on the main road.) It was great, Christian and I sat on the steps of the bus in front of an open door pretty much the entire way. (I have some good video of the road, that I will eventually put on youtube.)

this weekend was a lot of fun..and super relaxing.. im glad we did this!

Back in chennai...

In the evening, we four met up for dinner at Vasantha Bhavan - easily my favorite place to eat in Chennai. Why? because theres this nice "uncle" who came over to our table and began chatting with us. Once he found out I spoke tamil, he was really excited and would try to enter our conversation to ask random little questions. We went back later that week and he is always so nice, asking questions, making sure had everything we needed. The bus boy started to call me "akka" (big sister) which is a nice way to demonstrate respect/affection. (What was funny about this man, and lots of people that we encounter is that if they know that I speak Tamil, they suddenly "cannot understand" the other people at the table, especially if they aren't Indian. Therefore, they will talk only to me and ask for "clarification" when others are ordering even if they said the EXACT same thing. Ie. Jessica says "I would like a MA SA LA CHAI" and the gentleman would look at me and say "enna chonna?" (what did she say?) and I would repeat verbatim "she would like MA SA LA CHAI" and suddenly the foggy expression would be a knowing smile "Oh of course!") hahaha..totally psychological. :)