I don't even know where to start. So much has happened in the last 6 days!
We departed from the Bangkok airport at 1:30 am on the 30th of April to head to Kolkata. I walked right by the place my Summer Thailand team and I spent overnight in the Bangkok airport while we awaited our flight. After a couple hour flight and the long process of getting through the airport customs and such we got on a bus that Megacities had for us (along with Megacities directors) to take us to our sleeping locations.
India is like no place I have ever been. It's poverty level is incredibly high (like Haiti on steroids). Most of India looks like someone hit the stop button on the country and they haven't upgraded since. For example: Their taxis are totally old school- like something out is the 50s. The presence of men is so much higher then women. It's strange being in a culture where women are not expected to have jobs. There are literally men everywhere and it was a while before i saw a women. We dropped off our music team first. It was strange to leave them behind. We arrived at our sleeping location around 5am (it was already totally bright at this time!) we all went into our non air con room (killer when it's 100+ degrees outside ) and just slept the morning away while Manuel and Gabie tried to figure out train tickets. As we feared night train tickets were not available but praise The Lord we were able to get tickets for the next morning! So we ended up staying the night in Kolkata. With that we headed out to exchange money and buy Indian clothing. We had to take 2 taxi's. Unfortunately my taxi dropped off me, val, Andi, and Kayla at the wrong location and we had no clue where the money exchange place was. Thankfully I had taken a picture of the address of the place we were staying so we were not lost! We ended up walking around Kolkata for a couple of hours looking for a place to exchange $$ and we also got dinner. While we walked around we ran into another YWAM team from Kentucky that was helping with Mega Cities. They had a girl named Brittany on their team. We were able to get a Taxi back to our hotel "easily" and while there was multiple times I thought we might die on the way back (drivers in India are NUTS!!) we made it back safely. We later found out that it is usually very hard to get Taxi's to take you the area we were staying in because the crime rates in our area used to be so high. We were so blessed to find a taxi easily!
We started our 10 hour train ride at 9am the next morning. That was an adventure...100+ degrees, three of us (one being some random guy) sharing a small bench seat, no air conditioning, one of the team members phone was stolen, venders and beggars walking in between the train cars. It is seriously a experience. Thankfully after being on the train for about 4-5 hours the guy sitting next to us got off and the weather started to cool off. By the end of the journey the weather outside was wonderful and the last hour of the ride a thunderstorm hit! We arrived in New J-something that night and after dropping off the team at a restaurant Manuel and I headed to look for hotels in a little rickshaw. A rickshaw is a bike that a guy rides with a cart for 2 attached to the back. We looked at a couple of hotels and decided on one and then we headed to bring the team back. When we arrived back at the hotel a traditional Indian wedding was in full swing. I almost knocked out part of the wedding party as I carried luggage through the doorway haha! After leaving the luggage in my room I went down to the lobby to watch the wedding. The hotel manager took me to wave to the bride and he explained the whole Hindu/Indian wedding process to me. I got to watch the grooms big arrival and watch them carry (literally) the bride out to meet the groom.
We departed from the Bangkok airport at 1:30 am on the 30th of April to head to Kolkata. I walked right by the place my Summer Thailand team and I spent overnight in the Bangkok airport while we awaited our flight. After a couple hour flight and the long process of getting through the airport customs and such we got on a bus that Megacities had for us (along with Megacities directors) to take us to our sleeping locations.
India is like no place I have ever been. It's poverty level is incredibly high (like Haiti on steroids). Most of India looks like someone hit the stop button on the country and they haven't upgraded since. For example: Their taxis are totally old school- like something out is the 50s. The presence of men is so much higher then women. It's strange being in a culture where women are not expected to have jobs. There are literally men everywhere and it was a while before i saw a women. We dropped off our music team first. It was strange to leave them behind. We arrived at our sleeping location around 5am (it was already totally bright at this time!) we all went into our non air con room (killer when it's 100+ degrees outside ) and just slept the morning away while Manuel and Gabie tried to figure out train tickets. As we feared night train tickets were not available but praise The Lord we were able to get tickets for the next morning! So we ended up staying the night in Kolkata. With that we headed out to exchange money and buy Indian clothing. We had to take 2 taxi's. Unfortunately my taxi dropped off me, val, Andi, and Kayla at the wrong location and we had no clue where the money exchange place was. Thankfully I had taken a picture of the address of the place we were staying so we were not lost! We ended up walking around Kolkata for a couple of hours looking for a place to exchange $$ and we also got dinner. While we walked around we ran into another YWAM team from Kentucky that was helping with Mega Cities. They had a girl named Brittany on their team. We were able to get a Taxi back to our hotel "easily" and while there was multiple times I thought we might die on the way back (drivers in India are NUTS!!) we made it back safely. We later found out that it is usually very hard to get Taxi's to take you the area we were staying in because the crime rates in our area used to be so high. We were so blessed to find a taxi easily!
We started our 10 hour train ride at 9am the next morning. That was an adventure...100+ degrees, three of us (one being some random guy) sharing a small bench seat, no air conditioning, one of the team members phone was stolen, venders and beggars walking in between the train cars. It is seriously a experience. Thankfully after being on the train for about 4-5 hours the guy sitting next to us got off and the weather started to cool off. By the end of the journey the weather outside was wonderful and the last hour of the ride a thunderstorm hit! We arrived in New J-something that night and after dropping off the team at a restaurant Manuel and I headed to look for hotels in a little rickshaw. A rickshaw is a bike that a guy rides with a cart for 2 attached to the back. We looked at a couple of hotels and decided on one and then we headed to bring the team back. When we arrived back at the hotel a traditional Indian wedding was in full swing. I almost knocked out part of the wedding party as I carried luggage through the doorway haha! After leaving the luggage in my room I went down to the lobby to watch the wedding. The hotel manager took me to wave to the bride and he explained the whole Hindu/Indian wedding process to me. I got to watch the grooms big arrival and watch them carry (literally) the bride out to meet the groom.
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