Home stay

This weekend we had home stays. We were paired with another person from our group and Jessica and I were the only ones who left Coimbatore. We got to ‘bunk’ (skip) class and drive about an hour and half to the city of Tirapur. We stayed with Reverand Timothy and his wife Annie who were so nice and welcoming. The majority of our home stay was us being shuffled off to various church people who were also business men. We toured many people’s factories and offices where they designed, made, and sent off lots of clothes that are shipped to Europe and America. We saw a Gap shirt and Levi jeans!

                Another huge part of our trip was eating delicious food. We were fed SO much! For one lunch we had fried rice, mutton, 2 kinds of chicken, and 2 kinds of rice. Then, when I was almost done with that, they asked if we were ready for the white rice course. So we got a huge scoop of white rice with a sauce on it. Then there was another kind of sauce so we had to get some more fresh rice. I think we were give 4 servings of rice! And the wife of the house would just stand right over our shoulders while we were eating and keep scooping things on our plate! So just when I thought I had almost accomplished and was almost done eating the chicken, several more pieces would be scooped onto my plate! Sigh. Keep going.

                We also went to Don Moen concert. Who? He’s very famous in America. Or at least that’s what we were told. However, none of my group had even heard of him before but all the Indians knew all of his songs. It was cool to see several thousand Indian’s worshipping God together.

                On Sunday we went to a Tamil church service. NO idea what was going on. We were supposed to eat breakfast at the church but since the person was late taking us to church there was no time to eat before. So after 3 hours sitting there we were getting pretty hungry-after all, it was 11:30! It was communion that took so long. The men formed a single-file line and went up to the front and kneeled down and were given a piece of bread and then a drink from the same goblet that was just wiped in between. Then the next person came up. After all the men had gone, the women started. Our host asked us if we wanted to take communion…after a couple thousand people had just drank out of that goblet I politely declined! I did enjoy seeing all the beautiful saris while we were sitting there.