After skeedattling from Anbuannan’s place, we sprinted back to Chennai to catch our train to Salem. You might have noticed on the news that there have been several bombings in bigger cities over the last couple of days (don’t worry, moms, we’re pretty far from big cities, or the cities where the “action” has been happening), and so I was interested to find that while we entered the train station, security personnel were x-raying all the luggage. I’ve never seen that before, but was glad that things were being taken seriously. Anyway, we loaded our gear onto our train, and then settled in for what was supposed to be a 4 hour ride to Salem. After multiple delays, however, our 8 pm arrival time progressively stretched on… and on…. and on… until our actual arrival time was more like 10:30 pm. Erg!
After we finally arrived in Salem, however, we were greeted by Raj and about 20 others on the platform, all bearing traditional Indian flower laurels as a welcoming gift. From there, we split our luggage up into Medial and Conversational English teams, and then loaded separate buses as each team was heading to different villages to begin their work. In order to be more centrally located, Raj and I will be staying in Salem proper at a hotel (yes, I feel guilty because the teams are all sleeping on the floors in their villages, but no, not too guilty as I’ve slept on plenty of floors in previous trips :- ) and then making ½ day jaunts to each village to check on each team’s status.
Shown here are both team’s buses parked in the train station lot, ready to depart with each team tired, but happily entering the last stage of travel before they can begin the work for which they have so diligently trained.
After skeedattling from Anbuannan’s place, we sprinted back to Chennai to catch our train to Salem. You might have noticed on the news that there have been several bombings in bigger cities over the last couple of days (don’t worry, moms, we’re pretty far from big cities, or the cities where the “action” has been happening), and so I was interested to find that while we entered the train station, security personnel were x-raying all the luggage. I’ve never seen that before, but was glad that things were being taken seriously. Anyway, we loaded our gear onto our train, and then settled in for what was supposed to be a 4 hour ride to Salem. After multiple delays, however, our 8 pm arrival time progressively stretched on… and on…. and on… until our actual arrival time was more like 10:30 pm. Erg!
After we finally arrived in Salem, however, we were greeted by Raj and about 20 others on the platform, all bearing traditional Indian flower laurels as a welcoming gift. From there, we split our luggage up into Medial and Conversational English teams, and then loaded separate buses as each team was heading to different villages to begin their work. In order to be more centrally located, Raj and I will be staying in Salem proper at a hotel (yes, I feel guilty because the teams are all sleeping on the floors in their villages, but no, not too guilty as I’ve slept on plenty of floors in previous trips :- ) and then making ½ day jaunts to each village to check on each team’s status.
Shown here are both team’s buses parked in the train station lot, ready to depart with each team tired, but happily entering the last stage of travel before they can begin the work for which they have so diligently trained.
1 comment:
Those are some huge "lei's!" You all look fairly rested!!! That's a good thing.
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