Day 8: Fashion and Film

Another day, another goal accomplished! Today we went on our first outing... BY OURSELVES! We went from our house, to the mall and theatre, bought some new clothes, bought our own movie tickets, watched our first Tollywood film (completely in Telugu) and bartered for our own rickshaw to take us back home! It felt great!

So the day started with a few trips to things for the new students here. We got their internet set up and ran into some LDS missionaries while we were at it. Both were from America so we talked to them for a little bit about spreading the gospel in India. Supposedly, the Bangalore India mission (this area) has the second highest rate of baptisms in all of south asia (maybe it was all of continental asia? I can't remember). 

In the afternoon we were feeling adventurous so we decided to do something we had never done before! And it turned out to be super fun! The movie we went to see was called Nenokkadine. It was a Tollywood thriller featuring this handsome guy: 

Mahesh Babu

Sadly, the movie was only being shown in Telugu (which makes sense) but we decided that we still wanted the cultural experience of going to see a film! The cinematography was AMAZING and the music was even better. But we really couldn't understand enough to get it. We could understand the storyline but by intermission we realized that its one of those movies with a few big twists so in the end we were quite confused. But people were laughing so we assume it was pretty good :) When we came home, Sailajha, one of the kitchen girls was so excited to hear that we had seen that movie because Mahesh is her favourite actor. He kind of reminds me of someone-- I'm still trying to figure it out. 

Here is the big mall that we went to! Not everything looks this nice here but this mall is pretty fancy. There was a KFC, Pizza Hut and Dominos pizza inside! Its strange that those would be the three things people are interested in eating here haha

Other than that here are some Saris and some awesome people that help us every day! Tonight our first saris will be finished at the tailor's. I'm dying to try mine on tomorrow. Then i'll add a picture. 

This is Sudha! She is one of our translators and she is one of the sweetest people we've met so far. She is soft spoken and she is currently finishing up her PhD. Sudha is very intelligent and when we need someone to be gentle and motherly with us we will definitely go to her. This sari that she wore today is amazing. Its got tiny little mirrors hand-sewn into the pattern. She said it was given to her as a gift... maybe that's what I will give her as a gift!

This is Rajya-Lakshmi. She is another one of our translators. She is kind of the opposite of Sudha in some ways. I wouldn't go to her for her gentleness-- I would go to her for her bold answers and her tenacity. She's very good at bartering and she always knows how to solve our issues. Today she told me she loves children and thats why she likes this job. So I like her a lot :) She's very helpful! The sari she wore today was brown and gold. SO pretty! 

This is another lady that we saw in a store today. I know its kind of a creeper picture but I couldn't help it! Her sari is amazing. And the great thing is that everyone wears beautiful saris! Its hard to tell who is rich and who is poor because they all dress the same and they all seem to have very nice saris.

 And to finish it off here is a picture of Visakhapatnam. Lots of trees, lots of smog and lots of people. But for some reason it was pretty quiet today. If you look at that hill to the left you can kind of see that it looks like there is a hollywood sign on it. It actually says Kalasakiri Hill. I'm really liking this city :) It feels more and more familiar every day-- and we've only been here for a week!

Till tomorrow!

Stéf