Day 11: Pongal and Power Outages

The power went out about three times last night and once today in the afternoon. In this part of India, power outages are regular occurrences. People expect them and live with them. But last night was definitely a strange one! Without fans on Indian nights sound much, much louder!

Because of our restlessness night we all slept in a little bit, and when we woke up our professor announced that today we would be going to the beach! Exciting right? Well in all our heads we were kind of thinking... aren't we not supposed to go there?? The beaches we have seen so far have been... unpleasant. Anyways, we are always up for an adventure so we got in a rickshaw!

Our professor brought us to a village by a much nicer beach then we've seen so far. And lucky for us, since it rained last night, the day was nice and refreshingly cool! So since this is the week where Andhra Pradesh celebrates three festivals we got to see a lot of people on vacation :) I guess the beach we went to is a good spot to celebrate the Pongal, one of the harvest festivals. This is what we saw:

We started the day off with some kind of cow ritual. Lots of chanting and lots of flowers. These ladies were really sweet and let us watch.

This was the view from the top of one of the temples we went to. This was one of our first stops and it was crowded with people spending their day off with their families, visiting the temple.

Our second stop was a dutch graveyard! We had to stop at a catholic convent to get permission to go in and eventually they gave us the keys. It was pretty neat.

Our third stop was at a beach village that was established by the dutch! It seems to be very popular because some of the people we met weren't Telugu speakers which means they must be from somewhere up north. There were lots of statues and little markets along the beach... oh and so many people stopped us to take pictures with us. Its strange at first but we are getting really used to it. 

Not only did people ask us to take OUR pictures but they WANTED us to take pictures of them. I was more than happy to do that :) Look at these beautiful people! Anyways, this lady brought her kids to us and they were so shy! But they told me their names eventually and their mom told me that they are twins. 

During pongal and sankranti (the festival that is being celebrated tomorrow) people paint "muggu" (I think that's what they call them) in front of their homes. This is one that I saw today. It's tradition!

Here is the family that was painting it. They kept saying, "Happy pongal!"

And I just have to keep adding these beautiful pictures of the kids/people we met today. The kept pointing at me, then at their kids and saying, "Photo!" haha

 I just loved this lady! She had the sweetest smile and though I definitely wouldn't eat street food I love corn on the husk!

Finally we finished off the day with a trip to some old buddhist ruins. 

Here is one of the stupas we saw! I'm starting to realize that my Asian Humanities class may have been one of the best classes to prep me for this study abroad :) 

Happy Pongal!

Stéf