Our First Full Day on the Ground

Welcome the the Avenue Regent Hotel in Kochi, India! The capable and very courteous staff will be happy to assist you in all your travel needs, including cutting the locks off of your luggage when you realize that you have put them inside your very secure luggage.

All nine of my travelling companions have made it to Kochi- albeit some did not arrive until very late last night. Laura and I arrived on time with no flight issues other than an anticipated 9 hour wait in London at Heathrow airport. We are rethinking our return strategy which allows for a 12 hour layover in Mumbai on the return. Not sure what we are going to come up with but 9 hours was too long an there was shopping in Heathrow- not so Mumbai. It is time to introduce my fellow adventurerers. From left to right are Laura, Leslee who arrived with via Helsinki rather than Brussels, and Kathy.

Here from left to right we have the back of Joyce's head, Tanya, and Amanda.

Here on the right is Wendy and a little better shot of Kathy - but not much.

My sister Laura, below-

And last but not least, Deanna our fearless leader for the trip.

So what do 10 women do first when they arrive in India? Shop, of course! Several of us who arrived earlier had already been to the silk shop to purchase fabric and order native garb and those of us who arrived later were not to be denied. We must have spent nearly three hours looking at combinations of cloth for making our shirt tops, pants and scarf sets. I think Deanna must have known to get us there before the store got busy because we had multiple assistants to help us with our selection and we shared our pictures from home with them and answered many questions about our lives.

Yes, we really did make that big pile of clothes for him to fold when we left.

We all had red smears on our foreheads when we left the shop.

There was more in the afternoon as we visited the Center for Peace and learned about the great things they are doing to help fight domestic violence in India, but that will have to wait until tomorrow since I am too tired to write. The sun sets here just like everywhere else and is just asbeautiful. Tomorrow a fashion show.... Peace out.