"you look damn tired" (it's a quote so i'm allowed)

hello from nagercoil, our last stop before we head to the neighboring state of kerala. we have also passed the official half-way mark and, in a word, i am exhausted. i think no matter how long you are away from home, you hit a wall somewhere, and mine seems to have come. i would love to be able to drink tap water, sleep in my own (soft) bed, leave the house without bug repellent and take a hot shower standing straight up instead of crouched under a faucet. but, such is life in india. i am exhausted, but i am still very glad to be here.

my hosts in nagercoil are kumar and his wife, nadda, and i am their first foreign guest. kumar owns a coconut oil manufacturing facility, which is actually right next door to the house. he took me over last night to see some of the operations, which were completely fascinating. i had never seen anything like it. he dries the coconut for seven days and then it's crushed and filtered and sent in tins, mostly to soap manufacturers. kumar can tell just by looking at the skin of a coconut exactly how much oil it will produce. pretty amazing. his daughter and granddaughter are also staying here, as it is a festival week called pongal. the granddaughter calls me "auntie."

on our way to nagercoil we stopped in kayakumari and walked to the southern most tip of india, along with swarms of pilgrims on their way home from a nearby temple. they have been fasting from meat, alcohol and sex for 40 days, and we think a personal hygiene fast might have been part of the deal as well. we were jostled all the way down and back and someone called me "pebbles" (we're still trying to figure that out). we also visited a circular fort and a rock where a saint, vivekanada, is thought to have once meditated. the ferry ride out to the rock was harrowing, to say the least. all i could think of was a game of taboo i once played where kathryn helmke tried to get us to guess the word "ferry" using the clue, "sometimes these sink in india."

there are lots more things to say about our last days in tirunelveli, but time is short, so i want to end with this. while i was in tirunelveli i spent some time with a rotarian named gokul. i asked him how he felt about the increasing western influence in india and he said the following, "india needs to adapt, but not change." that is the best i have heard anyone put it yet. the longer i am in india, the more i think that this is really india's time. every country and place has gone through some kind of revolution to secure its place in the world, and i think that is exactly what is happening to india now. we need india and we need the things india can teach us. but india can't teach us anything if india changes. one thing that impresses me about this country is the balance between doing what needs to be done to succeed and improve on a global scale, while maintaining traditions and customs that make india so special and unique. and i think the same thing can be said of us as individuals. i think i spent a lot of my life feeling like i needed to change in order to fit in and be accepted in the way i wanted to be. but really, we need to adapt, not change. we need to improve our situations, professional, personal, emotional, as much as we can, while still maintaining those pieces of ourselves that make us who we are. before i came to india i said this trip was going to change my life. and i have been waiting for india to change me. but now i think maybe that's not the purpose. instead, maybe india can teach me how to stay myself.