April 11-12, 2015 ( India to Home)

It was our last day with Rising Star and it was also our last day in Chennai before flying home. Today was mostly a driving day.

We left Rising Star at 9:00 a.m. and started making our way to the temple that was a hour + drive away. That temple was a Hindu temple and the best part about it was that it had an elephant. This elephant had a shaved body and paint on his forehead. This elephant also seemed pretty young. If you gave this elephant money, such as a coin or a bill it would touch your forehead, which is a blessing and then give the money to the priest. After the temple Mom, Saychelle, Bryan, Ashley, Erica, and I all walked around town. I didn't get any thing but other people got ice cream. I was hot and sweaty and when I got back into the van Katie and Josh were in there without air conditioning for 5 mins! We were all hot! 

I hopped in the back on the bench with Jeremy and Josh. Jeremy and  we played on my phone then Katie joined in too until we got to the mall which was a couple hours away. At the mall in Chennai we ate lunch at California Pizza Kitchen. I was ready for some non Indian food. After lunch I walked around with Josh and before leaving I got a chocolate hazelnut Pinkberry. 

Rising Star dropped us off at the Courtyard Marriott, same with Van Sootens and we had to leave Ashley, Bryan, and Saychelle, the ones with Rising Star. I hope I will see them again. 

Rising Star was a nice experience. It was different than the other service projects I have done. It was different in how you weren't working with the students every day, you are doing different things, like medical work or construction. You still have the option to be with the kids every day, but you don't have to. I chose to be with them every day. I liked playing basketball with the students during playtime. One of the students,Basha who I visited at storytime, has his birthday one day apart from me. He is May 15th, and I am May 16th. I will think about Basha on my birthday.  

At the Courtyard I took a nap around 2 hours then ate dinner. After dinner with the Van Sootens I watched part of X-men with Katie, Jeremy, and Josh then we had to say goodbye because we were driving to the airport. The Van Sootens were really fun and I liked being with them. 

We left the Courtyard and Mom and I got driven to the International Airport in Chennai. We flew an airline named Lufthansa, It is a German airline, which meant we were flying to Germany. We had a 9 1/2 hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany. I liked Germany right away when I entered the terminal because of it’s quietness. cleanliness and it’s style. We had a couple hour layover there before we caught our flight to Denver, CO. During that time we ate lunch and did some Blog. On the plane I sat next to 2 young adults from San Diego, CA and I would be sitting next to them for around 10 hours. It was a fairly easy flight but there was turbulence that scared me.

When we in Denver, AMERICA we only had less than an hour to get to our gate. But before we got to our gate we had to get off the plane, walk through customs, recheck our bags, walk through security and walk to our gate, Z 71 which was one of the farthest gates. Every thing was going well until security's scanner showed something was wrong with our boarding pass. So then we had to run upstairs to the United desk where they printed us new boarding passes. We then ran back downstairs to security and luckily it worked. Through security we didn't walk, we ran all the way to our gate which was basically the last one so we didn't miss our flight! We made it!

We took around a 45 min flight to SLC, UT, USA! Walking out of the United terminal we were welcomed by Dad, Kendall, Anne, August, and Leisl and Kendall Simmons and my sister's friend Avery and her fiancé! And they had signs with Mom and my name on them! That was so nice. I was glad to be home.