Excurision #1: Cannanore & Cochin

I made it back safe and sound from my first excursion to the state of Kerala. We went to Cannanore and Cochin. Shanthi’s family lives in Cannanore and so we stayed with them for 2 days and then in a home stay in Cochin for the next 2 days. We fit a lot in and it was a lot of fun.
Our trip started late Friday night as we left Mangalore Train Station to head to Cannonore. We were in the 3-tier sleeper cars and it was different that what I was expecting. The last time I rode a train it was when Thomas the Tank Engine was at Strasburg and I was taking pictures of thousands of little kids and their parents and grandparents. Oy vey. Before that I don’t know when I was on a train. Either way, the train was interesting. We arrived around midnight or one o’clock early Saturday morning and then we woke up around 6 a.m. the next morning to start sight-seeing! We needed to get up because we were trying to see a celebration at this one Temple. When we arrived we had missed the grand celebration but we did get to see 3 of the gods. There are professional people who come and dress up as various gods and then dance around a fire and then you can give an offering to them and they will mark your forehead with a coloring and give you a blessing. It was cool and very different to see how a another culture and religion do their own rituals. For the rest of our time in Cannanore we saw 2 more temples, went on a boat ride and saw martial arts. The one temple we got to see elephants dressed up with people playing instruments and everyone walking around the temple praying to their gods. The other one we dipped our feet in the river that was outside the temple because it was seen as more holy since it was directly outside of the temple. The martial arts thing was really neat too because it was just 15-20 kids from between 5 and 25? and they performed various fighting methods. They fought with daggers, swords, sticks and just their hands. It was really intense. I’ve never been to a martial arts thing in the U.S. but now I kinda want to because this was so cool.
Anyways, we went to Cochin for the last 2 days of our excursion. We went to an old synagogue which was in a touristy part of town and a church where Vasco de Gama used to be buried. That seemed a little weird to me that the church was so famous even though he was only buried there for one year and now he resides in Portugal but it was a big tourist place. We took another boat ride and it was funny at times because we got close to a lot of boats with fishermen and some other guys on the edge of the water and they’d all look up surprised to see a bunch of young white girls looking at them. Hahahaha I’m pretty sure they are used to seeing either Indian people or elderly white people on tour boats-not white students. Many waved and looked very happy, we made a lot of friends. I did a little shopping and had to barter but it was hard because I had to barter things from $6 to $3 because $6 was really ripping me off even though some of the stuff was handmade in Cochin or atleast stuff that you’d pay good money for if you bought it in the States. Oh my. We also got full body massages which was definitely a cultural experience as well as a relaxing one. We ended our stay in Cochin by going to the movies. The popcorn was 10 Rs/- for 1 small bag! That is less than 10 cents!! So we went and watched ‘Body Guard’ see link for trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m5kApwr59k
It was ridiculous. They had random musical selections and it had romance but it was very violent in some parts and there were no subtitles. It was in Malayalam-Kerala’s main language. I followed most of it and it was definitely an experience that was fun to watch. Also the movie was 3 hours long-after 1.5 hrs they had a small intermission programmed into the movie. So they get 3 hrs worth of film for a couple of bucks where we pay $8-12 for an hr and a half and the same price for popcorn. Where is the logic in that?! Oh well.
So I just read an article that has nothing to do with my trip in India but I read it on Trevor’s status and I enjoyed reading it.
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/somali-pirates-say-theyll-play-robin-hood-in-haiti/19340183
It is about how Somali pirates are saying they plan on giving money they have stolen-at least some of it-to help the people of Haiti : ) How cool is that?!
That is all for now. I hope you are having wonderful snow days, I know my family had a 2 hour delay, I did not. Tomorrow my roommate said it is supposed to by 90 degrees with 75% humidity-and this is a good month-April and March are gonna be the hot ones! Ohhhh boy!
Love to you all from here in Mangalore, Bissy