Tuesday March 8th 2011- Home Stay First dayyyyyyyyy

We arrived at the Erode train station around 6 in the morning.  Seems like I had not slept at all the night before because of the constant stopping and starting of the train waking me up.  We drove in a van to our host’s house which was about 35 minutes away from the station.  When we arrived, we were introduced to our hosts who turned out to be the nicest people I could have asked to show us around the town.  They had a beautiful house which was built open like a courtyard with rooms off of it.  Not what I expected at all when going into an Indian home stay.   Matt, the other boys in the group, Brittany the ship photographer, and I took the guest house which consisted of 2 bathrooms and 3 bedrooms set about 25 yards from their house.  We had a nice authentic Indian breakfast followed by a trip to a local small elementary school where we were able to wander around by ourselves to different classrooms and meet with the children.  The reason why I loved this SAS trip so much is because we had so many opportunities to meet with children in schools.  I am convinced that Indian children are the cutest little kids in the entire world.  They were all so excited to see us and as much as they tried to concentrate on their teachers who were still speaking, they could not help but be distracted from everything happening.  Indians are not used to seeing white people in Chennai and other big cities let alone a small town in central India.  When the people see us there they literally stare at us, and if that is how adults react, you can only imagine how surprised and excited little kids get.  We stopped in one English class where one student was reading out loud from a book and could not stop laughing every few words because the other kids were laughing and we were laughing.  It just spread and his teacher kept giving him dirty looks even though she herself had a smirk on her face.  We also stopped in a classroom for young kids who preformed many songs, which I now know everyone in the world knows; everything from “Itsy Bitsy Spider” to “Wheels on the Bus.”  And every time you take a picture of them, they want to see it right away…fascinated by the fact they can see themselves on the little camera screen. It was at this time that I realized I had forgotten my One World Futbol back at the home we were staying…it sucked because this would have been the perfect opportunity to give the ball to the little kids in the school.  It was pretty clear that they were not able to afford nice balls based on the looks of the school.  Luckily I had an opportunity later on in India to give it to a kid so it all worked out. 
After leaving the school we went back to the host families house and had an opportunity to eat lunch and take a much needed nap.  Afterwards we visited a local marketplace…very cool but it was mainly just a few hundred Indians staring at us like we were freaks.  I decided to make things a little wild and broke out about 15 “Flight 3407” wristbands to give out to the kids.  Instantly, no exaggeration, about 35 people crowded around us when they saw me giving them to kids.  I had to put them away and rip my arm away from some man who got way too aggressive about trying to get one.  After we cleared the group out, I was able to snag a few pictures with the kids I gave wristbands to.  They loved them.  They also loved WWE apparently because they kept telling matt he looked like John Cena..and doing his signature “you can’t see me” move. Quite funny quite funny.
So that night we eat some dinner.  Good of course.  Its funny the way we ate while at the home stay.  They sat us around the outside of the room and served us on a banana tree leaf.  No forks.  No Spoons.  No left hands(apparently that is the hand you wipe your ass with) too many rules for eating in India and eating rice and other sloppy foods with your hands seems barbaric but they are so used to doing it every day that eating with utensils seems weird.  While eating, a conversation came up between me and Purne about the differences in head nods in India and the United States.  In the US, we nod our head when we want to say yes to a question.  In India, they do this head bobbing type deal back and forth to say yes.  It is almost the same as if someone in the US were to say maybe or sometimes….you know how you would kinda bob your head from side to side???  Hard to describe but yeah,  it is so confusing when you ask an Indian a question because it is easy to forget that it means yes so they almost look like they are saying they don’t know.  As I type this out I realize it makes no sense so everyone will have to ask me when I get home, but it went something like this on the first day in India.  Before the cricket match we asked the taxi driver if he knew where the cricket stadium was, he bobbed his head and we took it as a no.  We tried to move on to someone else but he kept on stopping us…we would ask again…another head bob.  It went like this numerous times every day in India as it took place everywhere.  During the conversation, Purne and her daughter were both telling us that most of the time they nod their heads instead of bobbing them.  Seriously not 30 seconds after the convo ended, I asked them if they eat with their hand for every meal and both of them bobbed their heads back and forth at the same time.  We all started to crack up as they realized they had just done exactly what we were talking about….HAHA makes me laugh thinking back on it but to them they were saying every meal we eat with our hands, but to Americans,  we take it as “sometimes we do and sometimes we do not.”
After dinner we went swimming in some 40 foot deep swimming hole.  Not too much to say about it except for that it was a high jump and felt good after a long day in the hot hot heat of India.
That night I helped Purne’s daughter on her school project.. More a story I have to tell in person but it was one of those moments where I was really able to immerse myself in the culture as I spent about an hour sitting with the 2 of them late at night trying to do a project that she had saved for last minute.  I made it so much better.  Went to bed late that night.
Oh and one more thing, Matt and I booked a plane ticked last minute today for a plane ticket from Cochin to Chennai for the last day.  We had absolutely no clue how we were going to get from Erode to Cochin the next day but it was exciting to plan something for the last minute.