Hampi

Ok so Last weekend I went to Hampi with Anna, Melissa, Tiffani, Carol, Margret and Stacy. We had fun and ate a lot of good food. The first day we got there before sunrise and watched the sunrise from the courtyard of the hostel we stayed at Shanthi. It was a cute little place we had mosquito nets over our beds and community bathrooms. Not too bad other then we all were wishing for AC because it was SOOOOO hot. the indians we talked to were even saying it was hot.

So we checked into the hotel and then we went and saw Lakshmi the elephant get a bath in the river. After that we crossed the river and climbed tooo many stairs to the Hanuman temple, monkey temple. it wasn't really worth it if you ask me. When we finished that we went to lunch at a resort type place on the same side of the river as the temple and had interesting food. but the staff was funny and they played backgammon with us and showed us magic tricks and then played johnny cash music which caught us all off guard and made us laugh. In the afternoon we checked out some temples close to our hotel and checked out some of the shops on the main strip. We had dinner at a pizza place and everything was good but apparently anything with spinach in it, the girls who had it looked as if they were going to die from the taste... it was a good thing three of us got regular o;d pizzas and they ended up being bigger then we thought so we shared.
the next day we got up early and went to see some of the famous temples with a very interesting rickshaw driver Mr. Paul and his buddy. Mr. Paul is a jack of all trades and was a night guard at our hostel, a rickshaw driver and he also sold stuff at a shop, we never saw the shop though. half way through the day most of us decided it was too hot and we were sick of seeing temples. so we went back and had lunch and then went shopping and got some nice stuff, i got a dress, jewelry and some sweet pants. After the other half of the girls came back from seeing their temples we all gathered up books and things to do and went and sat in the shade by the river.
that was an interesting experience we met a woman from england, and then a couple the woman was from new york and the man was from some where in canada but i don't remember where. Let me tell you i loved the new york woman if for no other reason then she had and american accent which was sooo nice. it gets exhausting people not understanding what your saying. after that we went to a nice restaurant for dinner and we all had random foods some indian foods others had pasta and such. (all of the restaurants we ate at that weekend we sat on the floor by the way, it was a tourist area and apparently tourist think indians always sit on the floor and eat)that night tiffani apparently got sick and Mr. Paul took care of here and told her he would take her to the hospital if she needed to. the next day we took it easy and spent most of our morning before we had to go for our train sitting at breakfast. it was a place outside that over looked the river and it was quiet and away from the busy part of town.
we got on our train that was an hour late, they never seem to be on time for whatever reason. then we stopped somewhere and we had to wait for another train to pick up our cars and take us back to hyderabad.... we sat there for 5 hours! we hung our and met a british guy from london and he was reading some book about a ashram that people go to have sex. well that made for an interesting encounter with some indian men who saw him reading the book, we all were tired and sick of talking after abotu 2 hours. these indian men apparently thought this old english man was taking 6 american women with him to this ashram, it was really awkward for us because the whole situation showed how indian men think american women are easy and it was really awkward. he finally got them to leave and we were happy that his train was leaving before ours to go to a different place. we got back on the train and got back to hyderabad.
as always the rickshaw drivers were driving us nuts. we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do but they wouldn't leave us alone. i eventually after 10 mins was fed up (mind you it was 5am at this point) and freaked out at them, i was like ok enough, you all need to leave if we need you we will come find you thank you. one guy kept going and i was like sir that includes you goodbye thank you. they were offended but there are times when i get really sick of worrying if offend someone and at 5am i really didn't feel like caring if they didn't like us because of it.
we eventually got rickshaws that had meters in them through the police that apparently higher rickshaw drivers, in other words they were government rickshaw drivers. So we had one extra person, your supposed to have 3 we had 4 in ours, the police officer told us to pay 10 rupees over the meter for the extra person. we get back to tagore and the meter said 160 or something like that so we went to give him 170. he was like no 300 and we started to argue and one of our lovely gaurds walks over and starts arguing with him. and he eventually told us to just set the money down and go inside, not sure what the gaurd told him but he wasn't happy that we paid what the meter said. it was an interesting situation and so very typical of rickshaw drivers.
Other then that not much has happened, went to hard rock with ashley and kristen this week and it was yummy. also went out to a club last night, i really hate clubs here, men are creepy and there are never very many women. not only that but half way there i got a splitting headache so i wasn't happy all night. but it was something to do and considering there are only 10 sip students here this weekend we all went out together last night. oh well just reminded me why i don't go out here and just won't do it again.