Helping On the Other Side of the World: Beeeach Day!

Today we did my all time favorite thing to do! We went to the beach! Every morning it seems as though I wake up a little earlier each time... I guess that's what happens with jet lag.

At around 8:10 we were off to our first stop on this wonderful and amazing adventure ahead of us. The drive to mamalapurum, India was a bumpy, rough, beautiful, and of course very crazy 2 hours. When we arrived in mamalapurum I was shocked and did not expect anything of what I saw. We drove straight down the road and started to slow down and we had arrived in mamalapurum! Mamalapurum is made up of a little shops, homes, restaurants. The shops are everywhere you look and the store owners try to convince you to buy everything. They often have stone carvings ( I wanted to buy EVERYHTING), clothes shops, and cute handmade sandel shops! Mamalapurum had cow poo everywhere you looked and I got the lucky opportunity to step in it!

The first thing we did after stepping off the bus was go to a sandal shop. The sandal shop, of course, had so many sandals everywhere. They would pin the shoe to a board with little holes just far enough between each other so that they would hang up. The shoe maker could make special orders for you or you could choose from the sandals that were already made. The options were strappy, flip flop type, slip on, regular sandals, etc. everything you can think of! Our next stop was at a stone carving shop! This was simply amazing! The carvings varied from small to large or engraved to carved out! They created necklaces, elephants, incent holders, big carved circular formation, braclets!

As we turned around to walk down to other shops a beautiful view caught my eye.

This is when we actually stopped shopping for a little bit and headed down to the beach and what I saw was not what I was expecting! I was expecting garbage but not this kind of garbage!

The beach was covered in seashells, nets, boats, motors, tires, fish. The smell of the beach was pretty stinky and not my favorite thing. However seeing the beach made me SO HAPPY! As we were walking across the beach we found so many dead puffer fish, crabs, fish, and the shellfish animals. It made me kind of sad. I figured the people there needed the food...

We had to walk around this Seashore Hindu Temple to shop and see the the temple a little because we did not want to pay to get in. The walk around the Seashore Hindu Temple consisted of climbing up a few rocks then a very hot walk in the sun around the temple. Then we were on the other side of the temple and able to have more options to shop. I felt like a very big tourist, just a small note. We wandered across a big patch of sand again towards the shop which was basically tent stands with little fans in them. Most of them had little bangals, bindi's, hair clips, chep bags, etc... I did not really like the majority of the things they had in that area of the shops.

As we were walking down the sand pathway girls came up to us and tried to have us buy very cheap necklaces. They basically shoved them in your face. When I got to the end of the line of shops they had a line of ice cream shops and guess what I got?! Ice cream sundae! It made me so happy, cooled me down for about 1 minute. The ladies were laughing at me becuase I walked away without taking the spoon, mostly because I just didn't see it. Then when I was done eating my ice cream I asked if I could throw it away in her little cardboard box. Of course that was weird to her because nobody throws anything away in India so they laughed at me again.

Now we had to hurry back to the other side of the beach so we could go to lunch at Moonrackers! We hurried back to the other side and it was super hot yet again! We got to the restaurant and we were on the very top floor of the restaurant. We sat down and they handed us the menu.

I was out of water so I had to order a bottled water! I was looking through the menu and I was really confused of what to get because it was all Indian food and I didn't know what I would like. I was just going to get Kellogg's cornflakes but I was like um no, your in India! So I got Godi Mamphuir (something like that) it was cauliflower covered in spicy sauce I really liked it! Also something called potato 65, basically fried potatoes with amazing seasoning.

A common drink in India is the Mirinda, it's an orange drink! I haven't tried it yet.

We walked down the stairs to the basement of the restaurant and there happened to be some fish on display!

We left the restaurant to go to the beach! The beach only took about 15 minutes to get there. The beach was a private beach and it was called Ideal Beach Resort, it was soooo nice! We got off the busses went into the office and each payed 500 ruppes to get in then we went and changed! The bathrooms had a changing room, a bathroom, and a side with showers. I changed in the bathroom! It had an WESTERN TOILET!!! Made me soooo happy!! I got changed and went to the beach, the feel of not having the long pants and dress on was so nice!! I was so excited to run into the ocean and be cool for at least an hour! A small note about swimming for woman in India they usually will just swim in their clothes for the cause of modesty however we for to swim in our bathing suits because it was a private resort!

When the excitement at the beach had to come to an end, we got the cool experience of going to a grocery store! We went to the grocery store and it was the coolest experience! We got to just go look around and buy our own stuff. So I bought American Style Sour Cream and Onion Chips, Oreos, Sprite! I have already ate everything! The store had produce apples, oranges, pineapples, limes, peppers,chips, juice drinks, Pepsi drinks, chocolate of all varietys from everywhere, lots of things!!