Rising Star Outreach

Our flight to Chennai was delayed by two hours but we managed to arrive and found a cute driver with our names on a homemade sign who took us on our journey to our final destination.  We saw typical scenes along the way as well as lots of rubble:

We stopped at the supermarket nearest where we’ll be staying, which was about the same size and selection as Maverick.  Except not quite the same products:

We were starving and stopped at the finest restaurant in town called Genesh.  It was actually really good food, but we were the only ones the restaurant using spoons!

What a thrill we felt as we approached the property of this amazing Humanitarian project about an hour and a half south of Chennai.  After being in fascinating places full of smog and tons of rubble, we drove through hurt-your-eyes-green rice paddies and were delighted to find an amazingly beautiful project here at Rising Star!

There are new buildings under construction and a darling school, playground and NO rubble in sight!  There are about 150 adorable kids here who have been lifted from the leprosy affected colonies and are being given a wonderful education!

New buildings are under construction and plans are to double the occupancy to make room for the older children as they progress:

There is an absolutely gorgeous new facility for the volunteers who are coming faster and in greater numbers all the time:

And just in case Charity, Dani and Sara get to the Internet before they arrive on Wednesday, this will be their room:

Everything is beautiful and clean but the very best part is the wonderful people who are hear to help and to run the program. Today we had a very special sacrament meeting which was a first in this beautiful new building.

Every one of these people are truly remarkable. Two young families just came, one with five children 11 and under and one with four children 7 and under (the mom, is taking the picture).  Unbelievably terrific families!  The current directors are found on the front right…both graduates of Stanford and both with the exact talents needed to make this school a success. The cute boy on the back left is the athletic director and the son of Becky and John Douglas who started this truly miraculous project!

But of course, the stars are the kids!

Of course, Dad immediately started pulling off his thumb and doing magic tricks, which they were mesmerized by!

Tal (and Anita) once again, fit right in! 

Have you ever seen such bright faces?

Tomorrow morning we are headed for the Leprosy Affected Colonies where these kids came from and that will be a another new and probably startling story!

Massive Mumbai

After four days in incredible Udaipur, we boarded the plane for Mumbai, the biggest city in India. It was shrouded in smog like Shanghai and Beijing, even though there were signs for the airport advocating “being green”. I will say that it was MUCH cleaner than Udaipur. There were even street sweepers!

Serendipitously, (and with a lot of help from dad through our YPO friend in Monaco, who is from India and has friends in YPO Mumbai) we were invited to do one more session with the YPO chapter there. What fun we had after four days “on our own” and about six weeks for Tal and Anita (on their own) to be picked up and driven to a beautiful hotel complete with an fabulous breakfast buffet!

On our first night there we were picked up by a remarkable couple and their two sons and were treated to a fabulous Lebanese meal at the most famous hotel in India, The Taj, the site of the terrorist bombing in November 2008.

Incredibly, our hosts were in the hotel at the time the terrorist took stormed the building. As soon as they heard gunshots they were told to hide in a backroom where they listened to gunshots and small explosions for 9 hours! The terrorists were going from room to room, just shooting everyone in sight…men, women and children. Their boys (who were home and didn’t know their parents were there until it was over) said they lost two of their teachers from school and two of their friends also. At one point couples were told to separate presumably so that at least one of them would survive to take care of their families. Finally they were able to jump out a window to safety. The entire siege lasted for 48 hours!

After that horrific story they told us the delightful story of their “arranged marriage”! He was 36 and voted one of India’s “Most Eligible Bachelors” and she was 24 (and was recently voted one of the 30 most influential women in India). Her parents told her that if she hadn’t found someone to marry by the time she was 23, they were going to arrange a marriage…which they did. Interestingly, they both said that they knew they were destined to be together the minute they saw each other…and they do certainly seem to be a wonderful, compatible couple!

Talking to the kids was great fun also, but the 8 year old fell sound asleep half way through the main course.

What a fascinating and unforgettable evening!

The next morning, after a lovely breakfast, Tal, who has been fascinated with the Indian Baliwood movie stars, convinced us all to go to the latest movie mega-hit called “The Three Idiots”.

It was three hours in an old style theatre with blowing fans while we were desperately trying to figure out what was going on because it was all in Hindi (no English subtitles anywhere). In the end, we figured most of it out and I thought it was a fantastic study on the modern family in India. This guy on the left is a star beyond normal stardom all over the country. The newspaper claimed that 3 BILLION people have seen this movie (are there 3 billion people in the whole world?) Still, the kids from the night before said they had seen it three times.

Dad and Anita opted to go back and enjoy the hotel about half way through while Tal and I finished the movie and afterward we had some great Indian food and then walked down to the magnificent old Victorian Train Station, built by the British in their glory days.

The outside was beautiful…

But alas, it was only a facade. Inside we found only a massively crowded train station with advertisements for The Three Idiots…which Tal took a picture of anyway!

That night was again an unforgettable experience as we met 66 people who came with only one week’s notice and filled the chairs covered with white linen in an outdoor garden by the Arabian Sea to talk about “Raising Responsible Kids”. Tal and Anita were a terrific addition to the discussion and the parents were unusually bright and receptive. Many had already thought of the ideas we presented and everyone there had a fascinating story (many had also lost friends in the terrorist attack).

About the only picture we got at this really fun event is this one which is terribly hard to see. I’m hoping that Shawni or Josh can fix it in Lightroom when I get home.. It was just so dark and the guy taking the picture was far away but it’s a night we want to remember. Tal and Anita were a wonderful addition to the meeting as they added their insights! It's so fun to see them be just as comfortable with these great people as they are with their own friends in NYC!

Such a splendid evening! On to Rising Star!

Wildest Things We Saw Today

Cows and their friend, a dog, waiting patiently for the shops to open:

A Holy Man (?) at the Hindu Temple

Many more women dunking, slapping and wringing their cloths at the river in full color:

 

Huge “tickets” complete with detachable post cards for each venue:

Humungous hair growing out of our driver’s ears!

The most horrendous traffic jam ever! Can’t imagine how two tuk tuks and a motorcycle can all pass each other in about an 7 foot span. That ride was unbelievable!  I was sure that we were going to kill approximately 50 different people, including ourselves.

PLUS our tuk tuk’s transmission or clutch or something went out so at one point Tal had to get out and push!

 

A VERY old tree:

Two Yoga Masters:

Beautiful fruit markets:

 

A Hindu temple that took 25 years to create:

Rubble, rubble EVERYWHERE!

AND open sewage running down the streets on both sides. There’s no way you can see how nasty this water is!

A gorgeous lily pond at “The Lady’s Garden” a place the royal women went for a little R&R!  It was so incredibly quiet and beautiful…until it was disturbed by Dad!

And a lovely family who were totally overwhelmed by meeting a real basketball player.  Below you will see the 10 year old prize-winning-discus-throwing grandson, his mom and her sister and their mother, the grandmother who is 72 years old and has been married for 55 years. That means that her marriage was arrange when she was 17!

WILD FUN DAY!

Udaipur, the Venice of India

After a flight from Kuwait back to Beirut and then back to Abu Dhabi and then on to Mumbai (by this time it was 3 a.m.) and one more flight to Udaipur, we arrived in the hotel that Tal and Anita had arranged for us at 8:30 a.m. 

Here is a glimpse of the amazing airport at Abu Dhabi:

 

Before we went to sleep for a couple of hours, we noticed that the sight from our hotel room window was a bit different than it has been:

BUT the rooms are so fun and looked like the Hyatt to Tal and Anita, who have been so conservative and very Spartan in their selection of sleeping accommodations the past four months. Just look at these terrific windows.

When we saw the bucket in the bathtub, we knew for sure that we were in India (or maybe the Philippines). 

The view from the roof of our hotel is so interesting! We saw women, making nan? or some sort of round tortillas for the day or for a hotel…we’re not sure.

Udaipur is called the Venice of India because there are amazing hotels and castles that seem to be floating in the water. 

We visited the amazing “City Palace” which was inhabited by Maharajas from many years ago and with the help of a recorded guide, Tal was able to take notes on EVERY room! Below is about 1/8 of the palace.

 

With the “

Tal’s long arm comes in pretty handy for pictures!

A very cheeky motorized rickshaw driver took us to find a restaurant.

Tal tried to help this very “in your face” guy by very kindly suggesting a different plan for him when he approaches customers! It was a pretty crowded ride which made it cozy for advice! 

After much ado, we found a lovely spot for dinner overlooking the water on one side with the lighted palace as our backdrop. Such a magical evening with a plethora of great topics at the table!

 

What fun it is to be with these fascinating, amazing and incredibly stimulating people!

This morning we took a stroll through the streets which were absolutely filthy!  We saw cows grazing on garbage at every turn and had to step over their “doo doo” every ten steps.  People just throw their garbage everywhere and it smells as good as it looks:

We walked down to the water where women were washing clothes at every possible spot!

They were slapping the clothes with something that looked like a cricket bat.  The water was filthy as people were also throwing in garbage and bathing there, but somehow the clothes carefully laid out along the railings were clean!

These two women had just finished their washing for the day in their gorgeous dresses, fit for the Junior Prom:

Sorry, not great quality because it was taken from far away, but you get the idea!

After an absolutely scrumptious vegetarian lunch, where we were hardly bothered at all by the thousands of knats that seemed to be filling the air on the streets, we went shopping!  We found some really fun table runners, a wall hanging for Tal and Anita, a small carpet and a white cut tablecloth as well as some trinkets. It was so fun!

On the way home we continued to take our lives in our hands as scooters, little motorized rickshaws, little trucks and gigantic cars, passed each other missing both us and the car on the other side by about a fourth of an inch. It was hard to know whether we should watch for the vehicles or the cow pies under our feet.

We found a guy from Brazil waiting for a music lesson just outside the store where we bought a very unusual musical instrument!

 

Look at this amazing store full of leather bound empty books!  Book heaven for Dad and Tal!

In this truly “Incredible India” in additions to so many colors constantly splashing in your face, there are so many horns honking, engines roaring, people talking and kids waving from balcony windows about that it adds up to an absolutely amazing cacophony of sight, sound and smells!  What a world!