We've now been Orientated!

Yesterday, we started our first full week and our first day of volunteer orientation. Missionaries of Charity orientation didn't start till 3:00, so we had some time in the morning. We decided that we needed to make a grocery store run and went to Spencer's in the mall (aka the Kolkata version of Walmart). We shopped for a while and were amused by the "USA and Others" section in the International section. The taxi ride back in the monsoon was miserable and left all of us feeling a little weak. But after some prodding from our BMS friends, we pulled out all of our rain gear and made our way down to Shishu Bavan (one of the MOC houses) for orientation. Once we were arrived we divided up into languages; I think the main ones were English, Spanish and Chinese. The girl leading orientation went over the houses that we could work in and we were called up individually to talk with a sister about where we were wanting to volunteer. We decided on Daya Dan, a home for mentally and physically disabled children. After, we walked back to the BMS and cleaned. I hung a close line, so we could finally hang our clothes outside the bathroom so they can actually dry. We all ended up passing out fairly early from straight exhaustion. Today, we went to Freeset in the morning and took the Metro, which didn't agree with Katie too well. But we ended up making it Freeset without any serious issues. The tour was great and the women were all so nice. We are all looking forward to going back to volunteer there soon! These are some of the pictures from the past two days...

South City Mall

Our new clothes line that I rigged yesterday. (Thanks Dad!)

Ally and I in our Indian tunics and very Western Merrels,. Cute, we know.

We haven't figured out what this is yet but it is everywhere! Any ideas, let me know.

I loved the contrast between the old and the new here.

The Metro. Photos are prohibited on the actual platform.
 I would love to post a picture of how insanely crowed it is though!

The stall where we bought our first street chai.

We stopped at a street chai place and amused the workers and
several surrounding customers during our first street chai experience.

Chai cups. After you drink the chai you are supposed to smash the
cup on the ground and it supposedly dissolves into the dirt.

Our first street chai!

Insane amount of wires inside the telephone box on the street.

Our mehndi now that the crumbly dry part has peeled off.

Out and About with New Friends.

Even though we take cold, bucket showers from the same bucket that we wash laundry in and have no AC... there are advantages of living in a hostel. Such as the one we learned today, making new friends. Ally and I met Amanda, from Canada, in the internet room last night. She met us at breakfast this morning and a girl we met a couple days ago, Angela, sat with us. We asked Angela where she went to church and she told us where and invited us to go with. After going with her to the church her team goes to, we went to lunch at South Street mall with a lot of the college/young adults from the church, which is where we met Laurel and Melissa. (After our epic struggle to order our Subway... it's a far stretch from what it is in the States). This is where today's adventures began. The girls and I were talking to Melissa and Laurel about what we should, where we should go in Kolkata. They gave a lot of great advice - such as phrases like side korben: pull over and bus: stop, which will come in handy for when we are riding taxis and rickshaws - and invited us to go with them to see one of the places that they had told us about - Gariahat, a street market that took up the four corners of an intersection. These are the pictures from our adventures:

One of the houses on the way to church this morning.

Katie and me on our second bus ride in Kolkata.
(This first was entirely too crowded and too crazy to photograph!)

Ally with Amanda, Melissa and Laurel on our second bus ride.

The Mehndi Experience (aka Henna) 

We aren't really sure what went wrong with Katie's henna but something did.
This is the mehndi guy fixing it after he took off the first layer.

Dinner tonight. Mine and Amanda's dinners were super spicy!

My henna halfway through peeling off the dried parts.

Katie's pile of dried henna she peeled off under our table at dinner.

Flury's: Fine Generations of Fine Confection for Ally's Birthday!

Indian desserts are definitely different...

During our first rickshaw ride.

Katie taking control of the direction giving on our first rickshaw ride.