Our last day in Madurai. Goodbye India!

We're in the Chennai airport now, waiting for our 1.30am flight to Brussels. Even though it's midnight here, its very packed with people. More Westerners than we've seen in the past two and a half months! It's so strange and sad that we're actually leaving, it still doesn't feel real.

We had a very busy last day here though. We woke up early and packed up all of our things. We then had a fun short cooking lesson with Chandra before breakfast! We learned how to make our favorite coconut sweet candy- mixed up the sugar and shredded coconut, melted it together in a pan adding in ghee and cardamom powder. It is so delicious! We also made some of our favorite borrotas, rolling out the dough balls with a rolling pin like we did in Bethania when we made our Chapatis. They then went in a pot full of hot oil to fry, and came out big and puffy.
It was really sad to say bye to our home in Pattiveeranpatti this morning. We sat outside, took pictures and waved bye to the school children sitting out front. We gave Chandra and Vijayasarathy a card with Nanri Amma, Nan Unay Nesekirrain, Paige and Kelsey all written in Tamil. This means thank you mother, I love you! We learned well from our Tamil lessons from our girls at Bethania! We then got in the car for our two hour drive to Madurai. We drove past all of the small villages, rice paddies, food stands on the sides of the roads, small temples. We slowly said bye to the rural village life we have come to love so much. The mountains, fields and coconut tree forests dissolved behind us, and we drove on towards the city.

We had come into Madurai so early so that we could by all of our Bethania children Christmas clothes from the money raised by Atlanta International School. We went to Pothy's, a huge department store. We went through and picked out an outfit for every child. It made us so happy to be able to think about each one of our brothers and sisters, and what clothes they would look good in, what their favorite color is. We loved going through the racks to get the shirt and skirt set for the little girls, shuridas for the older girls, and shirts and pants for our boys. We tried to get everyone's personal style reflected in our selections- Nithya bright red, white and sparkly, Muthumari pink and tastefully decorated, Ramya's bright blue with a white flower pattern, Sathish green and sophisticated, Antony's handsome and all black like he asked for, and of course ChellaPandi and Alagarsamy bright red and pink silk shirts with black shimmery pants. Alagar wanted tight black flare pants, but even in the huge store with hundreds of kid's pants, there were no flare pants...sorry Alagar. I hope black sparkly jeans with silver writing all over is sparkly enough for you. Their mom will love the almost matching sparkly silk, pink and red flowery shirts. Vijayasarathy did not approve until we explained how much the brothers love sparkly clothes. We really wish we could be there to see them all get their outfits and for them to wear them!

We spent a long time at Pothy's and after went for a late lunch at Chandra and Vijayasarathy's favorite Bell Jumbo hotel. To switch things up, we got some Indian Chinese food- really good noodles! And some of our Indian favorites too. We had to stop back at Pothy's after to pick some things up, and Chandra insisted that we buy ourselves some shirts as well, and got some presents. It was really fun to just shop and pick out outfits with Chandra and Vijayasarathy. We're going to miss them so much, our Indian parents, and they have been incredibly kind and generous to us, taking us into their family! Vijayasarathy has said that America has done so much for Indians and has become a home for so many Indians, like their son, he is happy to return the favor to visitors. We're really going to miss them and our home here.

We were lucky to be able to take rest after a packed day of shopping at Vijayasrathy's sister's house in the afternoon. We were awoken and informed by one of the women who works there, that a man was here to take us to get snacks. We joined these two strangers in their car, fearing a possible kidnapping. But instead our new friend Raymond just took us to Bell Jumbo hotel for more delicious food- some nice masala dosa. Thanks Raymond. Sorry for thinking you and your son were trying to kidnap us!

We then met Chandra and Vijayasarathy and drove to the airport. It was a sad goodbye, with lots of hugs and promises to see each other again soon! I know I won't be able to stay away from here for long, India has become such a big part of me. We made a stop at the "Cookie Man" in the tiny, one room Madurai airport, boarded our flight, and set off to Chennai- part one of our two day long trip back home!