tuk tuk it up

right now i am typing this in cochin (or kochi). this is a city in kerala located on the coast so it is hot and fishy! our first day in cochin was a busy one. we woke up early in the morning and headed to cochin university to practice our science exhibits that we will be doing for the kids in the various schools. cochin university has a science center where children from all over the state come with their school to get an interactive experience with science. it was a hectic experience for us because we had 70 kids go through our exhibits, 5 groups total, and each rotation was 5 minutes. talk about crazy. but needless to say i LOVED it and loved being with the kids. they are seriously the most precious children to ever exist. you can just smile at them and immediately a big smile pops up on their face and they want to shake your hand and know your name. they might be the most joyful children i have ever met. and they laugh a lot. there are times when you'll say "hi" to them and they will turn around and giggle or laugh. sometimes you don't have to do anything and they will laugh at you...which i'm totally okay being laughed at by the precious indian children.

highlight of that day:
- the indian children.
- we went on a tour of fort kochi, the coastline of cochin, and when we were on the tour walking by fishing boats a bunch of old men started yelling at us to come out onto their make shift dock thing and help them pull up their nets. so me and four other people walked onto the dock, were handed a big rope, and told to pull. i  chinese water netted in the arabian sea.

yesterday was our first "independent study" day (aka free day) in india. i woke up really early and headed to a protestant church in fort kochi that we had gone to during our tour the day before. this was an extremely new and different experience. when you walk in the church you take your shoes off. the whole service is memorized by those who go there and there is not much variation in the service from week to week other than what songs are sung and the message from the minister. they flyyyyy through the parts where we would all speak together. it was so fast even i couldn't keep up. that's one thing about the english here, they talk so fast that we can't understand half of what they say. anyways, we took communion there, which was cool, too. we went up front, sat down on a cushion, and the minister gave us the bread and then spooned us the wine. it was an amazing experience to be in a totally different country, half way across the world, worshiping with fellow believers and followers.

the rest of the day was spent exploring fort kochi and cochin. some highlights:
- we found a really cool deli and i had the best grilled cheese and french fries of my life.
- i had to sit up front with a tuk tuk driver (google it...they are awesome and basically the taxis of the town), which at times made me fear for my life because he gave me like 2 inches to put my whole bottom on the seat (didn't work), but he let me drive it! i had no idea what i was doing and there is a good possibility we could have gotten killed, but it was awesome.

later that night we went to go see a local dance performance. we got to see the dancers putting on the makeup before and saw how the productions were made. i'm going to do a little more research on the kind of dance we saw and then write more about that experience, but i will tell you it was hilarious and awesome!

today we are about to go into our first school and do our exhibits. i'm bringing my advil because i'm the sound exhibit. i'm really excited to hang out with the kids today!