Finally in Lucknow !

Well, the travel gods and goddesses have not been very kind to us so far.
First, a five-hour limo ride from Hotchkiss to Newark, in drenching rain through Friday evening traffic: they were closing the counter as we arrived !
Then, a the twelve and a half hour plane ride - which actually was not as bad as we feared..
We were received at the airport by Rashid and Zubin's aunt. Everybody was garlanded, and hopped into a bus to the hotel. We had a pleasant dinner in the hotel rooftop, but it was past midnight before anyone retired.
We woke up at 5 a.m. to walk to the train station. The train ride is normally under six hours, but there were electrical failures due a power grid problem a couple of days ago, and we got to Lucknow in 11 hours instead !


Needless to say, we are all very happy to be able to unpack our bags, settle into one place for the next week, ad catch up on sleep !

We have lots of pictures, here they are:

Good night !

(from Chenyu March 9th, 2008, after eating a delicious Indian home-made dinner and playing BS :) )

FINALLY,We got to Dehli at local time 9:30pm! And most importantly, we are all SAFE! It took us FIVE hours to get from Hotchkiss to Newark aiport because of the traffic and bad weather. We actually only had one hour to check in~(such a rush but we MADE IT ^_^)
When we flew through Dehli, I was excited to see the night scene of Dehli. But it wasn't as exciting as NYC. The whole city was dim and I could see cars moving on the street. When I saw NYC on the flight one night, it was so bright and promising. Anyway, that's just an interesting difference I noticed. (Oh by the way, I really liked the vegetarian Indian meal they offered on the plane. I thought "being an Indian is so lucky, because they get to eat Indian food everyday! (even though, I am Chinese and eat Chinese food everyday at home. :D))

We passed the custom very easily and Mr. Sharma's sister was welcoming us with handmade garland necklaces---it's orange and so pretty. Then we had phtoshots at airport.
We carried 19 pieces of luggage to the big bus and then the workers helped us to load them to the back of the bus. We got on the bus and it took us to the Ajanta Hotel(Anjata is the name of the most famous rock cave in India with some of the most beautiful paintings . ) The girls were paired up and two boys were together, one boy had his own room. After settling down, we went to the penthouse and had a nice buffet. (spicy though) The wind brushing us was like a natural AC, feeling cool and fresh!

This morning we got up at 5:00am and left the hotel at 5:20am to catch up the 6:00am train. We walked for 500 meters from the hotel to the railway station. On our way, we saw people peeing on the street which wasn't very pleasant to see! It was very very dark outside.
When we were stuck at Maripat Station for three hours, we got off the train and took pictures with local kids. The cute kids were looking into the train for a long time and from their eyes, I saw a feeling of excitement and anticipation. They offered food on the train--breakfast, snack, mango juice box and spicy potato chips. Anyway, we were all very cautious about what we eat. And we were like " Ms. Morin, can we eat this?" We saw monkeys, peacocks and wild boars from the window. Outside the window,it was yellow and green. The green is the farmland and the yellow is the color of the earth. We also saw some in-process red-brick buildings.

Wherever we go, we draw a huge crowd. When we got out of the Lucknow train station, we were almost circled by local Indians.
When we got to Zubin's grandma's garden, we had a very delicious Indian vegetarian dinner with beans, rice, bread and potatos. It's not that spicy!

Okay, now I am going to upload some pictures and take a shower! We will get up at 8:00pm and eat breakfast at 8:30pm. Tomorrow, we will head to the school to work with the kids~ so excited!!!!!!

x.o. Chenyu