We had a bit of a late start, but it was for a good cause. We spent the morning getting our journal up to date. If you missed it, we were able to post our second day in Hong Kong and all of our days in India so far.
Lunch time at Hima’s grandparents consisted of their homemade cereal which is corn flakes with a bunch of different dry lentils and peanuts in it along with some bread and butter. Kevin ate some of the oatmeal we brought from home, because he’s still not feeling great. Since he’s not feeling great, he decided to stay at home instead of going into town with Hima and I. So that means I’m going to write about two different days since we spent the entire day apart:
Jessica’s Day:
After lunch, the ladies in the family (which included me) walked around the village to personally invite everyone to the local wedding ceremonies. We passed out gifts and envelopes (which I presume is for them to give back to Hima). This is for the guests that aren’t traveling to Baroda, but probably will attend the local ceremonies. It was quite an interesting activity, since we basically just walked into the houses unannounced. Nobody seemed to mind, and many invited us to sit down and served us drinks.
After walking all over the village, we headed back to the house only to turn around and head out to Surat again today. Hima had some more errands to run, and I decided to tag along. We went to countless knock off jewelry stores and clothes stores. We also walked all around an Indian market, which really was pretty cool to experience. Even though Hima thought I was going to get lost, so she kept making me hold her hand.
In the area that we are visiting, there are not a lot of tourists, and so I have found that people are always watching me and the market was no exception at all. Even when we went into the clothing stores and it was said out loud that I was the one looking, we would get preferential treatment. Hima said that had it only been her shopping, we would not have gotten the service that we did. I had three salespeople waiting on me…. sat us down and just started pulling things off the shelf and bringing them to me to look at. They also all seemed pretty disappointed when I didn’t buy anything.
Other random errands that we ran included picking up wedding jewelry from a real jeweler (there were guards with guns and everything), and we had to pick up some of Hima’s outfits.
After quite a long day of shopping, we headed home to eat dinner (some rice and vegetable mixture that is made when you don’t feel well… kind of like our chicken and noodle soup. Hima is not feeling well at all, and either is Kevin however Kevin didn’t eat it). It wasn’t too bad.
Kevin’s Day (as described by Kevin but typed by me):
After lunch, I sat with Hima and the men in the family while the other ladies walked around the village. Then Jessica and Hima left to shop. We watched some Indian TV and I took a nap. One of the village weddings began, and we all walked outside to watch the Groom’s processional (Baraat) which consisted of a band, fireworks, music and a parade. Hima and Jessica came home, and then we walked back to our place.
Again, I didn’t take many pictures today, because we were so busy!
