If you've never seen an 81-year-old do crazy yoga poses...

This is my friend Santosh's grandpa.  He is a yoga master.  He started doing yoga 15 years ago.  He is now 81.

enjoy. :)

 

Is he not the cutest happiest little old man?  Yeah... some of these poses look simple, until you try them and find out that they are not.  Indian people never cease to amaze me...

So this week we went back to the Sikh temple to watch their worship services.  Here are a few pics...

 (we're making BYU with our hands... get it??)

(trying to look like I know indian dance poses... hahaha)

 these girls are kinda cool I guess.... I mean I guess I kinda like them... (chances are sarcasm just might be a large part of our daily conversation)

 (sorry Em, I had to. just be glad I didn't put up the others... bahaha)

One of my favorite people below [vvv] the sikh priest (with the yellow turban) such an incredibly humble, kind, and patient person... you can't help but feel something special while being in his presence.  Honestly one of the most Christ-like people I have ever been around

look at him!  he's just adorable ^^^




 




So after they fed us and we got to watch them play and sing, we all went outside and grouped together.  Of course nothing was in english and we had no idea what was going on......... this is what ended up happening: 

 yep! a protest.  So in case you didn't know, the state in which we are living is currently undergoing a split by the government.  The people don't want the state to split, so there are strikes and protests every day.  The sikhs of course just happened to decide to do one the day we visit!  They tried to hand us some of those flags and have us protest with them... as if we hadn't already gotten enough attention in the city for being white!!  We kindly declined and told them we weren't allowed to, haha

 it was fun though, and even funnier that all of the photographers took breaks from photographing the protest..... to photograph us. 

Their protest was much better than others we have seen.  Usually people crowd the streets and stop traffic, then force people to get out of their cars and autos and sit with them on the ground, haha.  Instead, they formed a big circle in this big junction and all held hands--symbolizing the unity that is desired within the state. 

We made it out safely... we kind of had to sneak out because we didn't want to offend any of the Sikhs who probably thought we were protesting with them (we told them we would just take photos instead of holding flags haha).  But remember all those photographers that also took photos of us?  Yes.... this was the result of that.....

  

 Yep.  Made it in the newspaper again.  Only by myself this time.  Don't worry, only like 10 people texted me, facebook messaged me, or told me in person that day that they saw me in the newspaper. Hahahaha.  The caption reads 'At Gurudwara Junction a foreign lady takes photos of protest'.  Oh India... you will forever be in my heart :) <3

P.s. we started dance classes today.  This is the type of dance we are learning.  Of course this lady is CRAZY good.... but still.  Be jealous. :) 

 

Film + Fun

Mmmmmk.  So life has been pretty great here in the I-N-D-I-A.  Because my little blog has been neglected, today you get an overload of phooootooooooos! Yes little blog. You're welcome. 



We have gone on many adventures lately!  Some of my very favorite places that I've been here in India.  Most of these photos were shot on film.  A few weeks ago we went to some Buddhist ruins called Totlakonda and then we went up to an adorable little fishing town called Bheemli.  (these will look much better if you view them in slideshow view so you can see them bigger!)

 the men tying fishing nets

 you are going to see lots of Emily's yoga poses in random places... sorry! hahah.  The other day our translator Rajyalakshmi called Emily the 'yoga bunny'. Yep. New nickname!

 our lovely translators :) they put up with so much from us... hahah.  That's Maddhu doing his signature hand gesture as he tells us 'shanti! shanti!' which means peace or basically 'calm down' hahaha.  He is so hilarious. vvv

 these kids were so nice! we randomly ran into them in 3 different places in this little town that day

 Recently was a big festival here in India for the god Ganesh--he is the remover of obstacles and has the head of an elephant.  Everyone has been doing rituals and lighting fireworks, singing, dancing, etc. every night in honor of the celebration, and for days after the holiday people take their statues of Ganesh and go out to the beach and push them out into the ocean.  This was puja one day at the Krishna temple near our house in honor of him.

 Puja (which is just a ritualistic ceremony) always involves many small and symbolic rituals, always involving flowers, fire, and fruit for the gods

 We went and toured an awesome university called Gitam University where Professor Krishnayya's brother is a faculty member.  He took us all around the school and showed us everything!  We went twice and it was such a great experience.  When I got my film processed the film lab messed up the development and a lot of my photos have sprocket marks... I may not be trusting that lab with my film again, haha.  But at the same time I don't mind it because that's the funnest part about film... never knowing what you're going to get!  The good thing is that it's all just 35mm film so I don't care as much if crazy things happen to it, haha.  I'm just glad I can get it developed here for cheaper and will only have to take care of all my 120 and 4x5 when I get home!

 this is the cafeteria in one of the boys' hostels (dorms) at Gitam... we ate here and it was delicious!!

 These are manuscripts--they are chants written out on palm leaves and preserved.  Cool!!

 another boys' hostel at Andhra University, where my friend Vijay lives

 I am in love with this photo. vvv

 sorry for the overload of similar photos here.. I'm not taking time to cut any out haha but this is the beach near our house.  These cute girls came up to us and hung around for a little while as we were photographing one morning

 two of my favs ^^^vvv

 braids braids

 a jelly coconut!! first we drank all of the milk out of it with a straw and then he sliced it open for us and sliced out the actual coconut part for us the eat :) this type of coconut is just picked super prematurely which causes the coconut to be a lot more full of juice and the actual part that you eat is much softer. Sooo yummy!! :)

 yum. (I know I know, great picture of me right??? haha)

 For Telugu class we went to the market to learn the names of fruits and vegetables. Above is one of our teachers Madam Lakshmi with Emster and Becca Boo!

Soooooo, this is Araku Valley!!  WOW.  What an adventure!  First of all, it is BEAUTIFUL here!

 poor little Becs got car sick on the way up.  She looks so sad! :( haha

 we went with some friends from our branch--this is who we drove up with

 just your typical herd of goats in the road. it's whatever.

 WE SAW WILD MONKEYS. seriously. and this guy was so funny, he was just chilling there forever and he let us get super close! (look at how big he is!! like, the size of a toddler!)

 on the way down to the Borra Caves. Amazing!! (this is me saying 'chala bagundi' which means 'very good' in telugu... everyone makes this sign with their hand when they like something or think it is good.  I do it wayyyyy too much now, haha)

 with Satish.  Somehow we lost Vijay and Santosh on the way... hahah

 poor little Satish trying to be just a little bit taller...... hahah

Ok so here begins the adventurous story.  This is me and Santosh on the craziest jeep ride you can imagine.

Please notice below the special bond that I have with my lovely iPhone. This is just shortly before my poor little baby was stolen by two mountain-scaling tribal boys. :( :( :( :( 

 Yep.  You read that right.  STOLEN.  The first time I have ever gotten anything stolen!! Here's how it went down...

 Our friends wanted to take us up to this ^^ waterfall.  So because the way to get there is first by traveling through the jungle on a crazy rocky dirt road, we had to hire a jeep driver to take us there.  (unfortunately the best video I had of this crazy jeep ride was indeed saved on my phone) It beat any roller coaster I've ever been on.  SO fun, and maybe just a little bit dangerous and scary.  I'll spare the dirty details so mom and dad don't worry, haha. 

 So, we reach the point where we have to get out and start walking.  But it's raining! (tender mercy from God, seriously) so I decide to leave all of my camera equipment in the jeep with our other friend who wasn't going to hike up to the waterfall with us.  Bless his heart for watching my stuff for me... otherwise I would be missing a lot more right now rather than just my phone!

 So we hike all the way up this mountain... at first it's a walk, and then it becomes uphill switchbacks (you all know how much I just loooooove hiking right?? that was sarcasm, btw.) But it's ok because it's worth it--the waterfall is beautiful!! So here we are, 3 hours away from home, way far away from civilization, halfway up a mountain, in the middle of the jungle that is only surrounded by some small villages filled with tribal folk--most of which don't even speak the state language of Telugu here, let alone English!  You know... we're just here in the heart of India, exploring.  Your typical jungle safari that you would ever imagine to have in a country like India... filled with trees, pathways, monkeys, birds, crazy jeep rides, and indigenous tree-climbing tribal folk in loin cloths. (ok. they don't all wear loin cloths. but sort of... haha) [btw just a quick caption for the photo above. we attempted a jumping picture.... this is the best we got. haha]

 So once we see the waterfall we all jump in and start playing around, right?! It was so fun!!  Here we all are sitting on a rock--Satish, Emily, Vijay, Santosh, Rebecca, and myself

 Literally, during this exact moment of when these photos on the rock were being taken, is when it happened.  So our jeep driver hiked up with us and was kind enough to take these photos for us.  We were all just enjoying the waterfull so much that we didn't even notice him take off after he finished taking these photos.  When we were ready to leave we walked over to our stuff and realized something: Emily's backpack was gone, and so what our driver.  Nooo, our driver didn't steal it, he is actually a hero in this story.  What happened was earlier, two tribal folk (2 teenage boys) had walked up to the waterfall and walked past it.  We didn't think anything of it... in fact, we just greeted them as they walked past.  But while our driver was taking our photo, he looked over and they had taken the backpack and started climbing up the mountain.  So he started chasing after them.  Now when I say chasing, I don't mean running.  I mean literally climbing up this mountain. Like, scaling it.  There was no pathway.. these guys were scaling the mountain!!  Then when our 3 friends noticed what had happened, they also started chasing after them!  So here we are, us 3 white girls standing by the waterfall, and 4 indian boys (one of which we had just met that day and couldn't even communicate with because he didn't speak english) are chasing after 2 tribal folk by scaling up this mountain in order to save our backpack (which by the way contained some of Emily's and Rebecca's clothes, Emily's pocketknife, and my iPhone).  Unfortunately, the teenagers are professionals at this kind of stuff (these tribal folk are like monkeys and literally climb the trees and the mountain and everywhere... that's how they live!) and they made it up to the top and split up so that our driver couldn't chase them anymore.  :(  Even though they weren't able to get the backpack back, I am so grateful for those 4 noble boys who scaled the mountain for us!! Haha.  If that wasn't enough, Satish and Vijay stayed in the valley late that night with the jeep driver, talking to all the tribal folk in the villages in order to hunt down the thieves and find the village on top of the mountain that they were from.  They rode around on their motorcycle in the dark in the rain and hiked through jungles for us.  They didn't have any luck, and even returned days later to try again, but had no luck.  Talk about good friends!!!

Soooo, that was a great adventure.  Definitely never gonna forget that one. :) I'm sad I don't have a little camera to take pictures with (I used my iPhone for that) but mehhhhh, it's just material!  If I'm learning anything here in India, it's the importance of being non-attached to the world and to material or carnal things.  It takes a lot of control over yourself to be able to let those feelings go and not worry about what your body says it 'wants' or 'desires', but it's worth it because those things really don't matter much.

 So another happening the other day was district conference.  Elder Larry Wilson came and spoke to us and it was awesome!  This is us above with Ravvi (ohhhh Ravvi. Such an interesting fellow.  He doesn't speak english well but he still manages to express that he is 37 and unmarried still every time he sees us hahah. He follows us around a lot, and some of the other members kind of laugh at how much he is always trying to talk to us and sit with us, hahah. Poor guy.) and the other guy is our friend Ganesh who is a great piano player!

 I don't know who the woman on the right is... she just came up and asked for a picture with us (story of our lives) hahah but the girl on the left is our friend Nilima.  She served a mission in the Philippines and we got home at the same time!  She is awesome.

Then the other day we went to the beach early in the morning and shot some yoga photos.  I shot mostly film, but here are a few digital test shots I took...

 and these are a few shots at Gitam University

 on our way home we fit 12 people in a rickshaw... this is us hanging out the back. Hahaha. I love India. :)

K folks that's all!!  Sorry for the picture overload... just had to catch up a bit :).  Our time is passing by quickly.. it's almost been 2 months, which means only 2 months left! :( :( :( I am seriously heartbroken just thinking about going back to the states.  I love my country, but I love India so much and feel like I could spend a lifetime here and NEVER get bored.  There is just so much to see and feel and experience and learn.... I know that this is where I need to be right now and I am learning things that I specifically need to learn.  God is pretty great. :) K chau-cito!