The next day, Dec 26th, our friends the Metzners came over to load our attic with boxes and help run errands (like sending the Guinness World Record evidence to London via FedEx), but we still had 67 ToDo's on our list by the end of the evening. We continued into the night, now cramming for our 5:30am departure...trying to print school quizzes, make emergency contact lists, email instructions, and, oh yeah...pack!
At 5am, Barry & Christy hadn't slept a wink, and we were now feverishly throwing things in boxes. Whether ready or not...it was time to GO! Hopping in the van and pulling away from the house, we would leave our ToDo's behind and look ahead from here.
Arriving at SFO, we each had 1 backpack to carry everything we would need for 5 months, in many countries and climates...sandals for India, down jackets for Iceland...you get the idea. In addition, 3 of us would carry a day pack on the plane with our protein snacks and journals and the fourth would carry our mini travel guitar. Before we knew it, we were buckling our seat belts to start our Adventure. We were most definitely the only blonde-headed people on the plan, surrounded mostly by Indians and Middle Easterners. After 16 hours of movies and uncomfortable naps, the pilot announced were descending over Abu Dhabi. Shayla opend the window shade, astounded at the vast extent of sand as far as the eye could see. In the airport we experienced what felt like the convergence of past and present -- men donning long white tunics and head wraps, conducting business on smart phones.
Our second flight of 4 hours went by fast, and we touched down in India. We did a double take when we opened the stall door in the airport restrooms to find a "squat hole" in place of a toilet. We headed for customs and passed through an Ebola screening station. Once we retrieved our bags, we stepped into the balmy air or Chennai (on the south-eastern coast), and squeezed into a taxi to get to our hotel. We crashed right away so we could explore the city of Chennai the following day. We awoke and delighted in the array of foods for our breakfast buffet (including Shay and Trevor's favorite--the tiny bananas!).
For 2300 Rupees (approx $35), we hired a driver to explore Chennai. For 5 hours, Maya graciously answered our curious questions about the people, the customs, the language, and the sites we were seeing out the window (while honking every few seconds, which is what you do on the crowded streets of India!). One of our most vivid memories on that rainy day in Chennai was on our visit to Saint Thomas Mount (the site where the disciple Thomas was buried). Maya walked us about with a plastic bag on his head to shield the rain as he insisted on holding his umbrella for us.
There was an Indian family also visiting the site -- aunts, uncles, grandma, nieces and nephews. They approached us and wanted to take a picture with us. The children and women gathered round us as their husbands lined up to snap photos.
It was like the paparazzi, and it felt so odd to be treated like celebrities...like royalty. To us, the little girls in their colorful dresses seemed like princesses, and the women in their exotic saris were like queens. We felt honored that they would pose in a photo with us. We all smiled and nodded at each other, and smiled and nodded some more (there's a lot of nodding in India!). We could feel from the inside out that our time in India was going to be absolutely amazing.
After a full day of taking in the sites and smells and sounds of Chennai (what a Birthday to remember for Christy!), we looked forward with excitement to the day ahead when we would meet the magnificent children of Little Flock!
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