Farewell!

Our final day in India was spent in Mumbai: packing, last minute shopping, re-packing, and some entertaining events in between.

My morning began about 6am when I decided to check the status of my clothes that I hand-washed the night before. One key point that I learned from this event: while most air conditioners also work as de-humidifier, Mumbai humidity sets its own rules that defy technology.  Salvar suits (common Indian outfits for women) dry in 8ish hours, but any cotton assecories (US purchases) can't manage in 10+ hours even with an air-conditioner on full force.  Most of the other SWE ladies had anticipated this after taming some wild hairdos on day 1 in Mumbai, but I didn't take advantage of the drier heat in Walchandnager (or extremely dry heat in Agra).

After our final breakfast at the Y we packed up, checked out of our rooms, and hauled all of our bags to a single room that we had reserved for the day as a storage spot.  We then dispersed for our final day in Mumbai. On the morning to do list was Fab India (India's combination of Urban Outfitters and a tree-hugging Macy's), henna tattoo art, street market shopping, and mass at the Catholic cathedral.

The church crew headed out around 9:45am for the 10am mass.  Upon first inspection the most striking features of the Cathedral of the Holy Name were the beautiful stained glass windows, intricate ceiling paintings, and many reserved pews in the front (though I wasn't quite sure what those were for).  For a Cathedral, it was rather small, but by 9:58am the pews were still rather empty. But the mass didn't start at 10, and it didn't start on Michigan time (10 after).  People kept slowly drifting in, many bringing flowered wreaths with them (a presumed cultural tradition), and we figured the mass time was actually at 10:30am.  Around 10:15am, when our pew and the pews around us were sufficiently packed, Emily leaned over to me and whispered:    "Michelle thinks this might be a funeral."

Preposterous! said I.  Yes there are flowers and many people in black, but it's a Sunday, and at least in the US, Catholic funerals are not celebrated on Sunday.  But considering that fact that Michelle is SWE's version of Chuck Norris, perhaps I should have given that more consideration.  For that's exactly what this turned out to be: a funeral for a very prominent man in this parish.

Once we had confirmed Michelle's hypothesis, it was too late to respectfully leave to find a different church.  For the most part, the mass was the same as it would be on any other Sunday: sans the fact that it began with a procession of an OPEN casket down the center aisle, and at the end, there were 9 eulogies before the recession which culminated in a 15+ piece military-ish band playing outside the front steps of the cathedral.  The 2 hour adventure was also made interesting because of the kind (though very chatty) man sitting next to me.   He is a retired member of the Indian Navy and as I learned through whispers over the many high speed fans, his daughter works as an attorney in Detroit!  Though the post-mass eulogies were quite nice, the retiree also seemed a bit exasperated with the time they were takiing, so he proceded to try his hand at the feat of learning AND spelling my name: "What is your name again?  Berg-meyer? How do spell that?  B-e-r.."  Juggling cultural respectfulness for the mass, the funeral, and this retiree was quite the task.

The afternoon was quite calm, with a late lunch at Leopold's Cafe where we enjoyed a plethora of different Indian foods before heading back to the Y.  We sat in upstairs where they had AC and some groovin' 80s tunes (a similar sound track to the one at Cafe Mondegar that was menioned in Nadine's post.) I voted Rachel's meal as the most interesting-- Tandoori mushrooms, a heaping plate of button mushrooms in tandoori seasoning. My falooda drink/dessert came a close second though: think bubble tea ice cream float with rose essence, and instead of just tapioca pearls there were also some spaghetti-ish strands. Try managing that with a straw.

After lunch, although we had a few hours remaining in the day, most of us headed straight back to the Y to have a SWE party in the lobby: this consisted of us shrinking our pores in the AC and sending some final emails before the 20ish hour expedition back to the US. After 2 weeks in India, we were exhausted!

Two taxis for the airport were scheduled to arrive at the Y, but at 7pm only one pulled up. Even though we were assured that the next one was on its way, by 7:30pm, the group of 4 SWE ladies extending their exploration of Asia didn't want to miss their earlier flight to Nepal, so we decided to send one taxi off to the airport. This trek across the Sealink was reminiscent of the taxi ride back from the Women's college on day1: who needs Cedar Point when you have taxi cabs in Mumbai??

Sure enough, the 2nd taxi arrived to fetch the remaining SWE ladies, but meanwhile Taxi #1 was having its own issues. Even though most people would think that Nepal would be an international flight (including Taxi Driver #1 who looked at our flight confirmation before dropping us off), since there was a scheduled layover in Delhi, we were supposed to use the domestic entrance. This however, was only discovered after the 4 Nepal SWEople were denied entrance into the international terminal and told to go to the domestic terminal which was a good 15-20 car ride away. Fun. Good thing Labiba has some mighty swift cell phone skills else we may not have summoned back our Taxi Driver #1, who had made the drop off error in the first place. Only after that seat belt was clicked in place and the airplane rose above ground did we finally have a sigh of relief and relaxation.

So here ends our tale of SWE Overseas 2013. This was quite the advenure, and I am so much looking forward to developing ways in which SWE will be a leader in Global Outreach in the years to come! So, as my Grandma Berkemeier likes to say:

To be continued,

Andrea