Continued from here.

Friday morning came, and with it, the realization that we were finally in the home stretch. Once again, we loaded our butts into a caravan of, well, vans, and headed to the second-to-last site. As I was settling myself into my conference room chair (the BEST chair of the entire two weeks; I was keeping track), I figured out that my Blackberry was missing. Considering it was my only link to home, panic set in quickly. You know – the clammy hands, the buzzing head, the heart palpitations. Oh, wait. The head and hands things may have been the hangover from the evening before, but yea, it wasn’t fun.

An all-points-bulletin went out. Luckily, one of the drivers found it on the floor of the backseat. My heartbeat was back to normal and lots of water cured the rest.

Another 12 hour day ended with another dinner. Indian food again!

*****lalalalala*****

Saturday was supposed to be our rest day. Until, that is, those plans changed and we were told to be down in the lobby for a short visit to an Indian cultural center. “Short” turned out to be 6 hours of presentations and sightseeing – complete with quizzes to test what we learned. I was not amused.

I had planned on sleeping in, checking out the hotel grounds, and reading. Instead, I spent the day battling exhaustion and stabbing pains in my abdominal area (which, if they had been caused by, say, crunches instead of 10 days of Indian food, probably would have made me feel virtuous instead of slothy and gluttonlike).

Instead, I saw these musicians:

They were very good, but it’s not likely you’ll be hearing their music on the Top 40 anytime soon.

and these dancers (and no, I didn’t dance, I only posed):

I nearly fell over trying to stand on one leg. I grabbed the guy’s arm. Ewwww. Sweaty.

I got dressed in a sari:

Yes, it was comfortable and beautiful, and No, I didn’t buy one. It doesn’t work with the office dress code.

Saw this historic church:

One of only three in the world built over the grave of one of the 12 Apostles. (St. Thomas, in case you didn’t click the link.)

And the temple I showed you here.

I sniffed the salty air of the Bay of Bengal:

where this guy tried to sell us horseback rides.

and we all hoped that the typhoon predicted to hit the next day would pass us by. (It didn’t, but nicely waited until Tuesday evening when we were on our way home.)

After all of that, I begged off from eating dinner and went back to my hotel room. Within 10 minutes of pulling up the covers, I was sound asleep. I managed to wake briefly – long enough for a quick conversation with Mr. Hot (thank gawd for G00gle Talk) – before calling it done for the night. The next time my eyes opened, it was morning.

—- Sunday. A new hotel. One last vendor visit. Ten days down, just over two to go. —-

Trackback URI | Comments RSS