SUNDAY!
In case you haven't already figured it out, I am posting two blogs in one day. One from yesterday, and one from today today (Sunday). Both days were really busy, and I can't wait to tell you about what we've been up to today.
Today, we woke up at 7 to go to the Srirangham temple! It is the biggest temple in India, and has one of the highest towers in Asia. It was built a while ago (unsure of the exact time) but was highly regarded in literature in the 6th-9th centuries. Though many pieces of the temple compound were built earlier, and many built in the 14th-16th centuries, the most recent Gopuram (the tall ornate towers) was built in 1987. I will show pictures of all of this when I have the broadband! Pinky promise!
It blew my mind to see such a compound, and we only saw a small section of it. It apparently spans over 156 acres and the fence surrounding the temple grounds is 6 miles around. Its huge! The pillars were all so ornate and the ceilings painted beautiful, bright colors. It was also just interesting to be in a place of worship other than a Christian Church or Hebrew temple. So many people were praying to so many different deities and performing different rituals and buying different talismans in order to worship and pray. It was really cool to witness, though many of the most sacred places in the temple were for Hindus only, and they were very specific about that (they also didn't like cameras either, though I paid to bring mine in in the first place, so I had to take some pictures as sneakily as possible). But regardless, it was a beautiful and amazing site to see today.
After the temple, we went through some small stalls just outside and found some neat Hindu crafts and traditional Indian items, such as games, utensils etc. Just to play opposites, we then went to a modern supermarket, which is almost identical to that of an American grocery store, but it contains many more Indian food products than back home, such as Ragi flour, pounds and pounds of rice, and traditional Indian veggies and spices. It was really cool to compare the two and buy some nifty food items as well to bring home.
We then came back to a delicious lunch of rice, chapatti, baby corn chili but with potatoes and yummy soup. It was the perfect end to an exciting day!
The rest of our day looks slow and relaxing, consisting of catching up on blogs and hunting for internet like Ahab hunted for Moby Dick. Tomorrow marks the beginning of our last week in India! I don't want it to end already!
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