Hindu Temples, Mangos and True Beauty

Today has been one of those days where I don't feel like there's enough time or space to write about everything that happened...so I'll try my best.

My day started off somewhat rough. Dana and I slept on the roof last night to try to cool down, but I only ended up being able to sleep for about 2.5 hours. I proceeded to sit on skype and facebook from about 330 until someone I knew came on (luckily, that side of the world was evening so it was very likely I could find someone to talk to while everyone here was still sleeping).

The morning ended up being wonderful. I was able to skype with some close friends, and also my mom and her friends and they were all able to meet some of the children and Thomas, which made me so happy because then they could get a little taste of the joy that these kids bring to me everyday.

I spent most of the morning on Skype and then after breakfast was informed that we were going to be going to a Hindu Temple.
We got ready and after a very bumpy car ride, we arrived to the first temple. Something about the god of snakes or...i dont really remember. I'm not good at remembering that kind of detail.

Anyway...after that we went to a huge temple where the architecture was beautiful and where we also did not fit in in any way.
After a while, i noticed that people were very excited to see us. I had assumed that they would have negative thoughts, but forgot about them loving Americans. If you look in my flickr, there are some pictures with random men standing next to Dana, Breana and I. That was because we became like a walking tourist attraction. We stopped to see and elephant and they were asking us to have pictures taken with us and wanted to write about how Americans came to their temple.

I even had little kids running up to me wanting to shake my hand. It was crazy.
After we left the temple, we went to a place in the country area where they had cashew trees and grew chilis, mangos and tobacco. We met the nicest couple who lived there, and they cut down fruit and sent some home with us.

Apparently OAFA has goats, so we stopped by a very small village to see them.
It's amazing to me to see the differences in the way people live there. There are some huge, beautiful houses, but most of what I saw where hand-made huts, or we even drove by a mother pushing a big wagon-like thing with a baby and all of their belongings, other children in tow, to go stay in the trees, because that was all they could do.

After driving around and seeing these different parts, I thought back to what it was like to live in Grand Rapids, and my last night before I left, when I stayed in Chicago where it was all about beautiful buildings and materialistic things.

These Indian people are probably the most beautiful I've ever seen, especially the older ones. It's all natural beauty and their skin ages so differently than American's, it's almost like they're a work of art.

I usually spend a lot of time editing photos but this time I want you to see the raw beauty, so I will not touch any of them with any editing.

Please email me or leave me your feedback.

Grace and Peace be with you all,

Jenna