The last few days

Since we last posted, we've returned to Kolkata for the last few days of our trip. It seems crazy that we'll already be getting on our plane home tomorrow night. Anyway, here's a recap:

On Saturday, our train got into Kolkata at about 6:00 AM. Our stomach troubles had started coming back a little bit so we frantically searched for a hotel, mainly for the bathroom. We ended up slightly overpaying for a room for one night and mostly laid around to recover from our lack of sleep on the night train home.

The next day, we went to church and met up with Kristin and Sarah, two girls Kristen knew from when she was here before, and they invited us to stay in their flat until we leave. That's great because; 1. we don't have to pay. 2. It gets us out of the touristy part of town. After church, we met up with Julian and Charlotte, a couple from the UK and went to the new KFC to get some chicken to take on a picnic to the botanical gardens. There, we got to see the "Great banyan tree" which is in the guiness book of world records for something. It had strange trunks that grew down from branches as it spread out. We have cool pictures we'll be able to post when we get home. Julian and I discovered that the lid of the KFC bucket actually made a fantastic frisbee and threw it around until it landed in the nearby lake/pond. We tried to get it with some long sticks, but couldn't reach it. Then, the park policeman took matters into his own hands. He made some nearby kid roll up his pants and wade out into the pond with a stick until he could reach it. A pretty huge crowd gathered to watch and we clapped when he finally got it. We also gave him a tip. Nothing of note happened the rest of the day.

On monday, my parasite seemed to be back in strength. We spent some time trying to contact the IJM people and Kristen went to a birthday party for a girl that she lived next door to in '05. I took it easy and drank rehydration salts most of the day. By nightime, I was feeling much better and when this morning came, I felt pretty normal. We're definitely going to get some more medicine for cheap prices before we go home though. Today, we are going to visit Sari Bari, the business the girls we're staying with set up to get girls out of the sex trade. They teach them to make blankets and give them a source of income so that they're able to get out of the trade. After that, we're going to the IJM office to meet with a guy named Don. We've been told that all the people that work there are really cool people and that it should be an interesting visit. They just got a new lawyer in his early 30's who was previously a District Attorney in Pennsylvania and moved to Kolkata with his family to work in IJM. Hopefully, we'll meet him too. We've heard some stories about the stuff they've been investigating and I'm really excited to hear about it from them. I'm sure we'll have some stories to post about it.

Well, tomorrow will be our last post before board our plane for home. The last month has gone really fast...and slow, but it's nearly over. Next, we'll be trying to adjust to the 11.5 hour jet lag.

Stephen