Madurai!

We returned Saturday night from our first weekend trip to Madurai. We boarded the ‘Barbie Bus’ (white with purple trim) at 6:00am Friday morning to travel to the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary (TTS) in Madurai. We toured their beautiful campus and got to explore their archives including seeing Scripture written on old banana leaves! In the evening we set out along the very busy and chaotic streets of Madurai to visit try Jigarthanda- famous Madurai drink that was fantastic! Next we went to the Thirumalai Nayak Palace to enjoy their sound and light show which explained the history of the palace. 

Enjoying jigarthanda drink!

 The next morning we set out early for Sri Meenakshi temple which is a HUGE Hindu temple that at least 15,000 people visit a day! We were happily surprised to see an elephant standing in the courtyard of the temple and many of the students got ‘blessed’ by the elephant where it put it's trunk on your head! What a cool experience!

Sri Meenakshi temple

A student being 'blessed' by the temple elephant!

We also visited the Gandhiji museum and read more about his life and how he influenced India.

On our drive back to Coimbatore, we stopped at an orphanage for children with HIV. At first they had a little program for us where they sang and danced and even taught us a dance! Then we all ran to play outside on their playground. These children were adorable- running around showing us their tricks and including us in their games. Shouts of ‘Akka’ (older sister), ‘Ana’ (older brother) rang out across the playground and I think we were all equally blessed by this interaction with these dear sweet children!

Our whole group enjoying the children at the orphanage.

Check out more pictures from our trip on our Facebook page- India Studies Program (ISP)!