The Weekend

This is how you make a team ecstatically happy. By ordering Domino's Pizza and also having Coke. Pizza and Coke just go together... But soo yummy. The left is a veggie pizza and the right is a BBQ chicken pizza. SO good. Our team was on cloud 9 after dinner. :)



Also we ordered 4 "larges." It was funny, because they definitely would have been a small in the US, but even with how small they were, I couldn't eat as much as I normally do. I guess I've just gotten used to smaller portions. Woohoo adapting to others' eating styles! (Seriously... have you seen how HUGE a Wendy's medium drink is? It's like a supersized version of a medium)

I love Indian food, don't get me wrong. But when you're having rice every single day, it gets tiring. You long for bread and pasta and carbs in another form. When Sister Alice made us quesadillas the other night using chipati (the Indian version of a tortilla) we all were just so happy and inhaled the food.

After eating we filmed a "dating show" and that was hilarious. I'll post the video when Ale and I are done editing it. We had Sean as the bachelor and Angela, Ashlee and Melanie as the bachelorettes. It ended up being super funny and a great friday night activity.

So after a week of meetings and hashing out what we're doing with partners, we all needed a well-deserved break. I feel like I know so much more now (I've read 227 pages of a book a partner gave me on thursday already) but I'm a bit overloaded. So sleeping in on saturday was nice. We were supposed to go to a wedding but that didn't work out.

Instead, we were looking at things to do and we decided to go to the Nehru Zoological Park! We were all so excited to go. :)

It was a fun ride too because our auto driver kept pointing out landmarks in Hyderabad and explaining the significance. He's the first driver we've had do that! He was super nice.

After driving for 45 minutes we finally get there!


There were turtles that were HUGE


And a ton of monkeys!



(Do you like my new outfit? :) Yay Indian styles!)


This guy was PASSED OUT. So funny.

The park was a little confusing and there were SO many people there. I have seriously never ever seen so many people at a zoo before. And about 70% of those there were children under 10. In addition to all of these people, the park wasn't very well laid out. All of the maps showed one big loop with the animals. However, there are in reality a lot of different paths to take.

So Julie, Melanie and I wandered off and look what we found:

A Brontosaurus

And..

A T-Rex!

It was so random and funny.

We continued walking and came across the elephants. One of the advertisements for the park was elephant rides, but we couldn't find it anywhere! And it didn't matter who we asked, everyone looked as us like we had a third head. :( So no elephant rides.


Just regular elephants.

We kept going and came across this pretty little lake.


And then we found the line for the lion and tiger safari!


Pictured: the other team members in line for the safari while we had just gotten on our bus. :)

So the first ferocious animal we saw was a lion!

Scary!


That tan lump in the middle of the trees is a lion just ready to pounce! (or sleep...)

Up next, Tigers!

Who was totally enthralled by the whole experience...


Julie and Melanie

We were having fun, even if it was a little bit overly dramatic for nothing. One of the more exciting parts was when we were going downhill and the driver went fast so that the little kids screamed like a roller coaster. That was fun.

There were also bears but I couldn't get a good shot from my side of the bus. :(

But I got the last ferocious animal!


I'm trembling in fear...

So the Safari was a bust, but it was still fun. It cost like $0.50 to do it so no big loss. The whole zoo experience cost like $2 including food, which was nice.


mmm... yummy, and it's cool because the plate was made out of leaves!

After eating we saw a few last animals before heading out.


A hungry hungry hippo


And a lion who was playing with his brother

On our way out we found this great spot to take pictures.

The group pretending to be animals

Sean, Melissa, Ashlee, Brandon, Angela, Julie, Melanie and Seth


And a nice shot of the group :)

After leaving the zoo, Melanie, Julie and I wanted to go to Cherma's to see if there were any outfits we could get. The first time we went was the first saturday here and it was a little crazy with the entire group so none of us had gotten anything.

It was a long ride back, but it was nearing sunset so I took some pictures of the city scenes.


Waterway near the zoo


a slum


I think it's the justice building? Not quite sure


pretty


this is so common here, people are so touchy feely with their friends!


This is typical India, first and third worlds combined


No that's not a glare from the sun, that's smog from the autos (rickshaws)


I thought this was a really cool structure, I think it's a mosque but we went by it too fast for me to read the signs, either way it was neat. :)


We passed by this, so random but funny


Smile! A little bright but it's in a small space


Welcome to India where this is the perfect family vehicle! Notice the child on the mom's lap.


The beautiful view of the Buddha in the Hussain Sagar Lake :)


This is the little place we get lassi's and food sometimes near the corner of our street and a big street.

So we finally got to Cherma's and were able to do some shopping. I got four new outfits! :)

I got:

A green and white one


A red and brown one


A purple and blue one


And a purple and white one


It was so nice to get these outfits! They are SO much cooler than my shirts that I brought. And my shirts are cotton! And they're pretty and I don't get as many stares when I'm in them.

Sunday was absolutely fantastic. The branch is SO strong here! There is such an air of humility and true love of God. Everyone who is in the branch has had to constantly defend their beliefs or come to know them on their own. Apparently the week before we got here there was the first ever blessing of a baby in the branch that was a 3rd generation member. That's awesome! The talks are all humble and wonderful and everyone sings (even if it's a little interesting in that department...). It's truly been such a blessing to be able to go to this branch. THIS is what the church is really all about! This is where it is the most needed. It can and does bless the lives of so many here.

And since we are only here for a short amount of time, we won't be officially transferring our records to the branch. But that means we can help out wherever we're needed. Guess where I was asked to go? Nursery and Primary! I'm with the yunguns all sunday! Woohoo! Actually it was ...educational. Haha. There were only two kids in nursery that day. All of the others didn't want to leave mom. :) But we had Jacelyn and Spencer. Jacelyn is Sister Gloria's daughter (remember Golconda Fort?). She is SO adorable. And so well behaved! Such a cutie. And then we had Spencer... or Spencie as he goes by. He's the branch president's son and he... well, he's a 2 year old boy. Full of energy! But it was fun to help out and feed them snacks and keep them from getting in trouble. Spencie didn't want to eat his snack at first because we gave him a spoon (most people eat here without utensils) but once I motioned with his hands, he dug in. And somehow he got rice EVERYWHERE. Seriously, how can kids do that? It's a special skill. I was holding his plate and everything and somehow he got it underneath the plate and all over his pants.

After helping out with snack time, I had mentioned to the Primary President as a suggestion that maybe I could teach the Primary kids the Father's Day song to sing in sacrament meeting. I thought she would get back to me on it but then she told Melanie and me to come into the primary room with the nursery kids and teach them the song! Right then and there! So... we taught them the song and it was so cute. As soon as I did the "great, big kiss, MWAH" they all giggled and nearly fell off their chairs they were laughing so hard. But it was fun to see the kids excited about doing a song for their dads. :)

Such a great branch. It will be so much fun to go there for the next few months. It's also been great because there has been a baptism every week that we have been here. And there are at least two more scheduled for the upcoming weeks. It's so exciting to see the work progress. Hopefully we can get senior couples back to India to help do service work and to further progress.

Overall a great weekend.