"walkin' the same line through every single southern town"

for the last week i have been in vellore, india. lonely planet says that it holds "little to detain travellers" but it does boast one of the best research hospitals in the country. i have spent a few hours each day at sisters of charity, where a group of nuns cares for about 40 handicapped girls who have been abandoned. it was a new experience for me to work with kids who can't feed or bathe themselves or go to the bathroom alone. the sisters asked hopefully if i was a dr. when i showed up one morning. unfortunately all i was good for was baths and art projects, but by the second or third day the kids would yell "auntie, color!!" when they saw me coming. besides that, i've mostly been relaxing and enjoying the friendlier and slightly slower pace of small-southern-town life. elliott and i hiked a nearby hill station one day, which was a welcome respite from noise, dust and public transportation.
this weekend i travelled down to mamallapurum and pondicherry for a few days to get a taste of the south. i spent most of my time off-roading on buses--wind battered, claustrophobic, thrown up on-- oh and on one bus, there men with guns escorting some handcuffed criminals. the cities themselves were less exciting than the journey--as i have found is often the case. there were monuments and beaches and remnants of colonialism, and i did see my frist dead person. elliott sort of summed it up though when he said, "if you turn 360 anywhere in india you will see something--human, dog, cow--pooping."
hiking in vellore

the sisters didn't allow any pictures of the children.