Pondicherry

For our weekend break yesterday, we took a two hour drive to a little beach town called Pondicherry that sits right on the edge of the Bay of Bengal.  We were looking forward to a leisurely break and some nice shopping but we had no idea what was waiting for us when we got there.  The second we stepped off of the vans I was completely surrounded by Indian people.  They were all talking excitedly and staring at us.  I smiled at one lady who had been staring at me for sometime, but little did I know I was opening a gate.  As soon as I smiled at her, her and many of her friends were next to me with their arms around me yelling, 'photo! photo!'.  I scanned the crowd and saw that the same thing was happening to the other volunteers as well.  Being surrounded, I couldn't really move so I just sat there and smiled for a million cameras.  When one group was satisfied, they would switch and in a matter of milliseconds I was surrounded by a new group.  People always wonder what it would be like on the red carpet... well now I think I know.  I mentioned in a previous blog that they love white skin, and I wasn't even almost kidding.  After quite some time I was finally set free by my new admirers, only to be swarmed and followed by some annoying peddlers selling a bunch of stuff that wasn't worth half the price they were asking.  These salesmen were more relentless than I've ever seen.  You can say no a hundred and one times and they still pester you incessantly.  And, of course, because we are suckers, we may or may not have (but definitely did) end of buying some little trinkets from street salesmen... not before some good bargaining though.  In one case one man wanted me to buy a necklace from him for 2000 rupees (which is about 30 dollars) and I was able to talk him into giving me 2 for 1000 rupees.  :)  I was fairly proud of myself.   We were finally able to move on down the street away from stalkers and street salesmen and onto cute little shops and boutiques to finally enjoy our leisurely shopping day.  Walking down the street is always dangerous no matter how you go about it.  The streets are so narrow that even when you're on the 'sidewalk' you're at risk for getting nailed by moped or a tiny car and on the off chance that there isn't a car coming, you're likely to trip over the uneven bricks on the sidewalk. While shopping we found quite a few little shops to buy some nice Indian clothes and souvenirs.  I got four pairs of these amazingly comfortable (but kind of ugly) genie pants, a couple of chudidhars, and a saree.  I also found some nice bengal bracelets.  Apparently this town is an old french and italian district so we were able to eat something besides rice and curry for the first time all week.  Spaghetti never tasted so good!!  I spent the day wandering with two of my awesome roommates, Melissa and Paige, and it was nice to just wander and shop.  When we were finally done shopping we went back to the beach to meet everybody else and go home.  But, naturally, we were swarmed again, both by the salesmen and admirers.  One group of men in particular asked to take at least 4 or 5 pictures with and filmed us for roughly 30 minutes.  It was bordering on really creepy before we finally got in the vans to go home.