Saturday

The first place we visited today is a UNESCO World Heritage site, Bridha Disvara. It was a fabulous temple carved and constructed from some sort of hard stone . It is dedicated Shiva. We saw the 5th largest Nandi statue in India before entering the temple and proceding to the inner sanctum where the largest ling is worshipped. We cued up with the crowd and waited in the hot temple for about 15minutes for the ceremony and to get blessed with the sandlewood paste. . The linga was draped with cloth and flowers. Elephant was at the entrance giving blessings with his trunk.

We saw a shop where they made string instuments and saw them carving the veenha.

Next we went to the bronze makers. It is an entire family working together to make bronze statues, etc. We saw them make themolds, pur in the hot bronze, cool it and break open the mold.

Next we visited an orphanage of about 200 kids where they had prepared songs and recitings for us, some in English, some in Tamil. Sri Venkateswara. The kids were very friendly and played games and talked to us afterwards. They wer exeptionally polite and well mannered, also to the elders who also had a retirement home on the site. We saw their room full of cots and spoke to some of the elderly people as well. Many people asked for us to take their pictures. We brought our USA stars and striped pencils to give out.

Then we went to see a Bahman women (of the highest caste) who told us how she is helping the children at the school by bringing them to her home and teaching them traditional songs, games, cooking, manners and all things traditional in the Indian culture.

Then we came back to the hotel and were invited to Lacuna's room for a surprise party. She dresed us all up in her Saris,, bindis, flowers in our hair and we went on a photoshoot and then to dinner all dressed up. boy, wern't we all good looking!