We returned on Saturday from a week of family camp with our church. We traveled by train (the boys and my first train experience in India) and bus to get there and back. We had a relaxing week getting to know our friends and new friends better. And actually learning people's names after a year and a half! I struggle so much with learning Indian names!!
We traveled to KodaiKanal, a peaceful hill station, in the very southern tip of India. We were at 6,000 feet elevation. There were no mosquitoes!! And it was cool.
Some of the highlights of our trip were:
-We were greeted by a 7 ft 2 inch porter (carries your luggage) at the train station in Bangalore. He has to be the tallest person in India! He and another porter carried our huge suitcases on their heads up and down staircases to get to our platform. Just the train station alone was quite an experience. Wouldn't want to be there alone:)
-Kodai is known for its homemade chocolates. We had chocolate stores within walking distance and ate plenty of it!
-Our team at camp won! We were split up into 3 teams to play for the prized trophy. Brian and Kevin, our team captain, dominated the basketball court and we won the skit night. I'm not competitive so I really didn't care who won but it's fun when your team does rock:)
-First time to experience bucket baths:) So many people here bath this way to save water. It shows me just how spoiled I really am that I never thought of doing this before. Can't say that I came home a changed woman though:) A hot shower after the 15 hour journey home sure felt good!
-Experiencing an overnight train in India with 3 children, too much luggage and only 2 bunks for the five of us. I won't fully complain about it like I have been doing in my mind but lets just say if I could have secretly flown to our destination without the other 80 people at camp knowing about it I would have done it in a second:) I just couldn't be that spoiled American that was "too good" to ride the train and the overloaded bus winding down the mountains:) But here again, I'm revealing the true brat that I am:) And now I can say we did it--once:)
-Having lots of leisure time with our family. It's amazing what a week of stress free, non-busy living can do for our spirits.
-Watching the movie FireProof. That was worth the whole trip.
Here are a few pics from the week...
Monday, May 18, 2009
Camp
Posted by Colette Frazier at 4:25 PM
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3 comments:
Glad to see you finally got to experience the trains and buses! We used to do it all the time. You get used to it, and it actually starts to be fun after a while :-)
Glad to see you are all doing well!
I'm glad you guys got in some good family time.
Kai looks so tall! :)
Colette, THANK YOU for posting camp pictures! I keep checking peoples' facebook pages to see if they have posted camp photos, but hadn't seen any yet. We were sad to miss it this year! So glad you guys got to go though. Train trips are great, aren't they?! haha....we took a 2 1/2 day trip when Rebekah was 11 months old, and she and I shared a bunk. Neither of us got much sleep! Thanks again for the pics! If you don't mind, I'm going to put a link to your pics on our blog. Hope you all are doing well! Did you guys escape getting sick? I heard that a lot of people came back to B'lore with stomach bugs.
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