7:16pm
It's hard to believe we're already into our second week in India. Keeping our schedules busy has made things go by pretty quickly (another reason I'm taking the time to write this blog). I woke up later than usual this morning so I had to postpone my workout and go straight from bed to yoga class. I won't make that mistake again. Rolling out of bed and immediately being told to attempt folding yourself like a pretzel is never a good idea. Another reason that I won't wake up late again is that my morning run turned into a game of running frogger. At 6am, the streets of Chennai are relatively calm. Around 8 or so, they are flooded with cars, street sweepers and construction workers. Since the sidewalks here aren't designed with exercise in mind, you have to run on the side of the road. At 6am, I can basically run in the middle of the road without coming close to a moving vehicle. After 8, however, I'm tip toeing as close to the edge of the road as possible and still having cars come within a foot or so of my elbows. Not to mention, the temperature increases about 20 degrees within that time period.
I ate a quick breakfast after my workout then I was told that the group was leaving in 15 minutes to go to a zoo before class started. So I hopped in the shower and headed out on the streets with everyone. We did the usual routine of flagging down auto drivers and refusing to pay double the price on the meter. We eventually found a good driver and headed to the zoo. This was the longest auto ride we've taken so far and sure enough, we got to the zoo and they are closed on Tuesdays. Yes, Tuesdays. I still haven't quite figured out why this is the day of the week they chose to shut down for, but it is what it is I guess. With no other ideas, we told the driver to take us to the Express Avenue mall again. The second trip here was just as impressive as the last. With so much square footage, it wasn't hard to find stores we hadn't seen yet. Jeevan and I looked in a few of the men's stores then headed to the food court for some lunch. Here we found out the Indian Quiznos is not quite the same thing as in the U.S. I'm learning that a lot of the big restaurant chains will reduce the quality of their ingredients in order to be able to sell their food at reasonable prices for the local markets in other countries. This is why my foot-long Quiznos sub with a bottle of water only costed me about $3.50. We will probably stick with cheap local Indian places from now on.
It wasn't long before Jeevan and I got tired of walking around the mall and decided to split up with the girls and head back to the hotel. For those of you who may be concerned by that last sentence (cough cough Mom cough cough), the answer is yes. We left the girls in a very safe area where they able to make it back to hotel without any problems. The rest of the day consisted of more class and schoolwork. No pictures today.
It's hard to believe we're already into our second week in India. Keeping our schedules busy has made things go by pretty quickly (another reason I'm taking the time to write this blog). I woke up later than usual this morning so I had to postpone my workout and go straight from bed to yoga class. I won't make that mistake again. Rolling out of bed and immediately being told to attempt folding yourself like a pretzel is never a good idea. Another reason that I won't wake up late again is that my morning run turned into a game of running frogger. At 6am, the streets of Chennai are relatively calm. Around 8 or so, they are flooded with cars, street sweepers and construction workers. Since the sidewalks here aren't designed with exercise in mind, you have to run on the side of the road. At 6am, I can basically run in the middle of the road without coming close to a moving vehicle. After 8, however, I'm tip toeing as close to the edge of the road as possible and still having cars come within a foot or so of my elbows. Not to mention, the temperature increases about 20 degrees within that time period.
I ate a quick breakfast after my workout then I was told that the group was leaving in 15 minutes to go to a zoo before class started. So I hopped in the shower and headed out on the streets with everyone. We did the usual routine of flagging down auto drivers and refusing to pay double the price on the meter. We eventually found a good driver and headed to the zoo. This was the longest auto ride we've taken so far and sure enough, we got to the zoo and they are closed on Tuesdays. Yes, Tuesdays. I still haven't quite figured out why this is the day of the week they chose to shut down for, but it is what it is I guess. With no other ideas, we told the driver to take us to the Express Avenue mall again. The second trip here was just as impressive as the last. With so much square footage, it wasn't hard to find stores we hadn't seen yet. Jeevan and I looked in a few of the men's stores then headed to the food court for some lunch. Here we found out the Indian Quiznos is not quite the same thing as in the U.S. I'm learning that a lot of the big restaurant chains will reduce the quality of their ingredients in order to be able to sell their food at reasonable prices for the local markets in other countries. This is why my foot-long Quiznos sub with a bottle of water only costed me about $3.50. We will probably stick with cheap local Indian places from now on.
It wasn't long before Jeevan and I got tired of walking around the mall and decided to split up with the girls and head back to the hotel. For those of you who may be concerned by that last sentence (cough cough Mom cough cough), the answer is yes. We left the girls in a very safe area where they able to make it back to hotel without any problems. The rest of the day consisted of more class and schoolwork. No pictures today.
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