Melanie - GIM

Today we arrived at GIM and had the most beautiful/ embarrassing arrival possible. We pulled onto the campus and there was a group of men with various instruments from hand drums to who knows what, and off in the distance there were small fireworks going off. Further down the road the women off the college were lined up on both sides, we started walking down the path following the men with the instruments. As we passed the women they then joined in the procession and as we got to the top of the road the men from the college lined the road. We were greeted by almost the entire college; it was just so moving that they all wanted to be here to meet us. I say it was embarrassing only because I am not used to such lavish displays such as this one was. As we entered the building we were greeted with lays made out of jasmine and sent to a reception where we were given giant coconuts that had been drilled to fit the straws, this was quite the experience. I had tried coconut milk before but the coconuts here look so different and are so much larger than the ones that I have gotten in the states.
The next thing that happened was that we were sent to the women’s quarters where we each were paired up with a student, it was sari time, and I was so excited and hoped that I wasn’t going to have the same sizing problem as yesterday. I shouldn’t have hoped so highly because; surprise surprise there was a problem. The sari is made up of three different parts, a cropped top, a skirt and the long piece of fabric. The skirt fit perfectly as did the pants yesterday and of course the long piece of fabric was fine because well it is a really long piece. But the top, it didn’t fit so well, our host here was fabulous and came to check on me before I even knew that a problem was going to arise and had me try it on, it was too small so she took it to let out the seems and gave me and gave me as much extra fabric as possible, but unfortunately that wasn’t enough. So we had to make ado and luckily the shirt I had made here was gray and black stripped so it didn’t clash too badly for my taste with the yellow that I was wearing. Ha the next issue came when we tried to put the bangles on, first attempt not so much second attempt with soap and water not so much so we gave up. Third issue was with a necklace that we were given was too small and so it was pretty much like a chocker, I didn’t want to be insulting after all the other issues I had so I wore it for the time being but then took it off. Oh and the hair, these of course are all small issues but my girl tried to brush my hair to put it back and well since I have curly hair it would have turned into a large afro. I mean some of the women have curly hair here and they defiantly brush it because some of them their hair is really bushy, but their hair is longer and mine is shorter.