Update...cant remember! 12?

Hey all,

its 1:10 on monday, and our 3rd last monday in chennai. this weekend has been a busy one, as we travelled 6 hours on friday night to bangalore, slept on the girls' roof for a few hours, then 3 hours on a bus to a place called mysore, where all the marharajas (sp?) of the south used to live in luxury. i think a marharaja was a local king or ruler of sorts....there wasnt any info on display at the huuge palace so dont know much! the place they lived is pretty huge, and has lots of huge indian lions carved in stone looking very angry and ferocious. it would be a cool place to have a huge old-fashioned party or ball, as there are loads of interconnected rooms/halls/open 'quads' as i think sometimes their called. mysore itself is quite a chilled out place, by india standards! we arrived and paid 15 rupees (a bargin after 30 rupee minimum in chennai!) to get to a hotel, which we took 2 of the cheapest rooms, which resembled a prison! long corridor painted in two prison blue colours. metal doors, and 2 sades of brown painted walls in the room with rock hard but surprisingly coimfortable beds. the lonely planet guide had described "antique furnitiure"....but we found this to mean just 'old furniture'. had a decent indian meal in the evening, after steve decided he did not want to have western pizza, and after me talking about how much i wanted a pizza throughout the day! next morning we were planning to get up and walk 1000 steps up a hill, which is one of the main things to do in mysore. after waking myself up with a nice shower, tried to turn it off, to find the taps had lost all control over the shower. upon our return to the hotel later today we found the shower still running after the indian in charge had looked at it and promised to fix it. quite a waste of water! it was still running when we left i think....after 5 hours or so on!

after having a quick look at the big catholic cathedral there (another occasion of sad over-catholocism with a slight mix of hinduism resulting in a dead depressing cathedral) before heading back to bangalore, almost without out luke, who had sat down and not noticed us leaving to catch the bus! back in bangalore we went to the girls version of the fruit shop -a place called juggies which has bean bags and sells food and ice-cream.

the most distinctive part of the day however was a day of more classic screw-ups from myself. earlier in the day i had left my bag in the auto, and only realised when the auto driver returned it 40 mins later! that was josh stupidity number 1. number 2 couldve been a lot worse also. having said our goodbyes, we lft to catch our 9 30 train. half way to the station it occured to me that i hadnt actually checked the time of our train at all......after sitting in terror fora few seconds i slowly reached into my pouch for the tickets.......i slowly looked for the time of our train, fearing that it had already gone of something similar, to find it left at 12:00 that night! stopped the auto driver and explained we wanted to go back to the place we had just come from, which brought a few chuckles from him. i was very annoyed with myself to say the least..but the josh stupidity had one more slight twist. got out of the rickshaw back at the girl's flat, proped my bag up on a post, paid the auto driver, and walked off without my bag again! it was a bad bad day for me....hehe

last week we had more huge tunderstorms, with a mix of incredible lightning and terrifyingly loud cracks of thunder. went to kk pettai with vijay again, and arrived to find that the boys' ball was punctured and being fixed. vijay not a happy bunny about this, so spent a hour doig abcd with a few kids we played with the pervious week. then another massive rainstorm hit, and we had to take shelter under an old ripped umbrella and a wall, which was fine, until the wind changed and the wall stopped protecting us from the downpour. waited ages for a bus, now without the umbrellas which vijay had sent back to the community with another boy who had come to the bus stop with us. another few hours on a wet bus back to the flat, where we were supposed to be taking ruth cox, the oasis international vocational training director (or something like that) to sparkys for the evening. met swamy who kindly informed me that she wouldnt actually be coming, and when this was told to luke and steve, they were not best pleased having cancelled previous plans for the evening and had been waiting for the Oasis person to turn up at any moment. went to sparky's anyway and had a very interesting debate with tom about monastisim and hermits and so on (luke is very interested in this!) and he again amazed with his knowledge and understanding with God. i overate again...ordering a large chips aswell as my meal. like the way we never learn to book cinema tickets in advance, i never learn that ordering an extra chips is too much and results in me feeling ill! hopefully next time i will remember this....

that is all for now, i need to get some lunch in before a visit to SM Nagar. i am pretty sick of the food here now, i have to admit it! or at least, our cooks cooking. it all has the same taste! and the meat always worries ne after getting a few more hearts and bit of liver in my meals.....

hope everyone is well and having fun in their countries (so many people travelling atm!) and are well,
thanks for reading,

josh