In which I re-live gym class: or, "Will the also-well-fighting captain please come forward?"

Cricket Day! I spent much, much too much time watching the staff/volunteer cricket game. Volunteers came from all of their placement sites to Sivaksi, and try to take on Indians in their national sport. Just as embarassing as you might think. We got crushed, but more, it just isnt a very interesting sport to watch. I went in with an open mind (thinking of Lagan and everything) but it still just wasn't happening for me.

We played one practice game, in which I made a pretty good show if I do say so myself. Stephen (one of the other volunteers), yelled "Go Hoyas" when I went up to bat, which made my day!. He even asked if I had played baseball for my high school (thank you, Jacob) but I wasn't picked for the team that went up against the staff. So I mostly sat on the side an chatted with the other volunteres. They seemed very, very young. Most of them are "gap year" kids from England and Canada, going into medical schools next year. I was having a really hard time figuring out why, though they seemed fine, I couldn't find and real "kindred spirits" amoung them. They talked so much about what food they missed, how the bathrooms were horrid, how this or that thing was strange that I lost patience with them. It took me way to long to realize that they were just out of high school, basically, and so I was holding them up to a completely different standard. They are closer to the age I was when I went to France in 8th grade then when I went to Morocco (nevermind that I've lived 3 years since then). After this little relevation, I got on much better with them.

After the match, the director presented awards to the Man and Woman of the match, as well as the Best Batsman and Winning Captain. He invited the "also-well-fighting captain" (Will, a volunteer) to give that last prize, which he did graciously. The prizes were alarm clocks in the shape of soccer balls.

The next day, we headed out to swim at a waterfall. It was quite far away, and it was almost lunch time by the time we arrived. We spent the time in a bus with a DVD, and first watched "Oceans Tweleve" which was bad enough in the theater when I could hear all the words. Indian buses have only two settings, as far as I can see: off and LOUD! SInce not everyone wanted to watch the movie, we had the sound on "off", which meant no one got anything out of it. After that, the driver put in a Tamil movie on LOUD! then proptly went deaf to our pleas that he turn it down. It was the story of tow police men, the higherranking one had a Poirot mustach, and was clearly raelly dumb. His best friend/inferier had a normal mustache, and kept him out of trouble. The Sargent was the approved fiancee of Main Girl, even though she was clearly meant for Captain Mustache because she kept falling off things on top of him. Seriously. They met when she fell off a ladder while watering plants onto him, then she fell off a ladder in a bookstore onto him, then she slipped on a waxed floor-slid accross the floor and UNDER THE ARMS OF Sargent Dummy into the Captains arms. Each time they shared long, empassioned looks. But, since he was not approved and his best friend was, the Sargent just wnet around with a long-suffering look on his face. Then Main Girl went shopping and sang and danced in the skankiest sari I have every seen (seriously, barely covered vital areas) and then all the men in the town joined in.

At this riviting point in the movie, we arrived at the river that was our first stop. We went off for a quick swim before lunch in a local river. There were some men swimming there, and we weren't sure if we could get in with them, but they just wouldn't leave and we evertunally hopped in a little ways away. We had to swim in our clothes, though, swimsuits aren't allowed. When we were done, we walked down the river to a dam, and so got a panoramic view of the valley with palm trees, rice paddies, and mountains in the background. The mountains just rose out of totally flat ground (like Marakesh, only greener).

They'd arranged to have someone cook for us, and we ate off banana leaves on the ground. The food was great, the fried bread that you get at the start of meals in the States (Poori), then rice with curry and onion chutney. There was chicken in the curry, which was the first meat I've had since I came here. After dinner we had a very strange drink: sweet, with peanuts and cashews in it. It was good, but alitle was enough. Then, we headed out for ANOTHER 30 minute drive into Kerela to see the waterfall. It was almost 3:30 by the time we got there, and some people had long bus rides back tto their placements, so we were a little cranky, but the waterfall was beautiful. I stood under it (again, with clothes on), and swam. It felt so good to be cool. When we finally got tired and went back to the bus, we found that we hadn't been alone in the pool. I only had one leech on my foot, but some people had tons. (If someone is reading this to Freddie and Grandma, you might want to leave that bit out). Anyway, they came off now problem and we got back on the bus to head to the office. It was almost 10:30 by the time we got home, and we were so tired and hungry that we just ate and headed to bed.

This morning, we got up at 6 to come to the leprocy clinic. I'll write more about it tomorrow (when we get back to the hospital), since I'm a little pressed for time now. We need to get back to the dinner that our cook is making just for us!