Friday March 11, 2011- Last day in-DIA

Woke up early…4 am no taxi/rickshaw…the panic starts because none are around anywhere as Matt and I are walking through the town.  We have a flight at 630 and the airport is over an hour away.  We finally see a car driving down the road and manage to flag it down.  I hopped in and tried to explain the story to him.  Thank god he helped us look around town for a taxi but still 10 minutes of searching we still could not find one. 0430 rolls around, Cochin is absolutely dead but we finally see a rickshaw with a man next to it on the side of the road, convince him to take us and hop in.  These things are significantly slower than cars so Matt and I were quiet the entire way there thinking about the possibility that we may miss our flight.  We have never flown independently in a foreign country before…we have no clue where the airport is and put total faith in the driver’s hands.  Of course he would have to stop for gas on the way.  Thank god we get to the airport at about 0540 and made it in and to our gate in plenty of time.  Stressful morning gets better when after 2 hours our plane lands safely back in Cochin. 
This day kinda sucked a little…Yet again just like in Mauritius my package from mom and dad did not arrive.  Sucks to talk about but I spent about an hour and a half trying to track it down just to figure out it is at the Cochin airport where I had just been this morning…unfortunately that is an hour away so I let it go.  Yeah I was mad.  My package had made it to the opposite side of the world from Buffalo, New York to India in just 4 days.  It had been traveling through India alone for 11 days and still had not been delivered to the post office in the correct city.  Shows a little something about business and how it is run around the world compared to the United States.
I returned to the ship, grabbed a quick lunch, and returned outside, this time by myself.  I spent the next 4 hours before on ship time just driving around the city by myself.  Allowed me some time to once again think of how fast this trip is passing me by and although I am not taking it for granted I feel there is so much to take in in such a short amount of time.
I ordered a flag from a sports shop which had to be made by hand…turned out to be my best flag yet but while it was being made I tried to go to a few shops… unsuccessful considering my driver wanted to take me to shops where he received petrol coupons…I refused to go in the store until he took me to a real local market…unfortunately I never made it there but I did see a puppy running happily behind two girls on the way back to the flag store.  I yelled for my driver to stop and went to pick him up.  No one gave him any attention and the girls were clearly scared of him so he was so happy when I scooped him up and brought him back into my rickshaw.  He stayed with me for a few stops more before I had to go back to the ship and left him back off where I found him.  He trotted off happily…it made me laugh because I thought of Colby and Schatzi…I miss them…
Whellppp obviously India was great…I am sitting in preport for China right now and the Chinese student are absolutely blowing their presentation.  Everyone is looking at eachother not knowing what to think about it.  Terrible.