today was our second day here at the vijnana kala vedi center in kerala. today we were assigned a treasure hunt!! woo hoo! so far, my partner, amber, and i have not found anything on it. shannon has found a carving of the mahabharata, and david bought soap and candy!! david also found some chaapals– sandals. his feet thank him….anyway. my dance class this morning was SWEATY and smelly. shannon switched to singing and aashika also decided to go with shannon, so i have private dance lessons with the strict teacher. it is very hard on my feet!

other than dancing, today we ate parle-g…i have been living on these biscuits for the past week because they taste very good and i love to snack. meals are…ok…sarah had a stomach problem today, however.

shannon and i had aurovedic massages today. that was a very interesting experience, because it is basically an oily, naked rubdown. amber had one yesterday and didnt like it, but shannon and i quite enjoyed them.

just now, we all had individual appointments with an astrologer. he did a reading similar to runes, but with cowry shells. i am apparantly blessed by god in everything i do, but must pray to god. also i will be famous all over the world later in life because of my studies.

shannon has had some…trouble..with her name here. all of the indian staffers have a different nickname for her because they cannot pronounce the exotic name “shannon”. instead, she is reffered to as “shan” or, more recently “mica”. why this is, no one exactly knows….

yesterday, a couple interesting things happened:

chris mistakenly [we hope…] locked david into their room for an hour in the middle of the day yesterday. megan was around, but didnt know that david was stuck in his room, so david waited until chris returned to escape.

also, some of us had a very scary encounter with an insect. megan, sarah, amber, and i were in megan and sarah’s room last night, hiding from the plethora of moths in sarah and megan’s bug nets. megan was alone on her bed inside her net, and amber sarah and i were on sarah’s bed. we were discussing the giant moth near the door when amber suddenly looked above her head and shrieked. i looked up, expecting to see another moth or another firefly or something dumb but was instead horrified to see a GIANT black, hairy spider with huge menacing legs. i screamed and jumped onto sarah’s lap, where i was immediately joined by amber. we shrieked and floundered about for about five minutes, then finally mustered up the courage to run behind megan past the huge fluttering moth and out the door. marcie luckily did something with the enourmous spider, but it was an unforgettable experience. evidently everyone downstairs heard our commotion loud and clear.

everything else here is fine, but we all will be glad to be on the road again, and we all really miss Imo!!

anyway, hello to all at home and we hope things are going well back in the states.

ps. if anyone reading this wants to send us popsicles, it would be greatly appreciated.

lovelovelove,

sonali

shannon

&

daveed