Our first full day in India falls on the tail of a two day, 48 hour trip. Starting in NM we (Guru Amrit Hari, Siri Dharam, and myself) left, the night of the fourth. We had a red-eye flight to NY, spent a few hours there in the city and than we were off on a 14 hour flight straight to Delhi. After seeing some of the new MPA generation play soccer and basketball on a quick trip to the American embassy school, we had our last flight to Amritsar. I had a very introspective moment watching the kids play. I realized how much of a different place I am in now in my life. It has never been as apparent to me before as to how much time has actually past and how much growth I have gone through since high-school.
On the last flight we got bumped up to business class and I ended up sitting next to this incredible punjabi woman. She said she worked for the Indian gov. and helped me locate some lost jewelry. Turns out she is Bagal's (a very prominent and corrupt politician who is the one hosting the Kabaddi competition I was there for) wife.
We arrived and picked up the other members of our USA Kabaddi team. We sat on the bus for another 4 hours with everyone with a short break at Haveli for some delicious grub. Finally we arrived at our hotel at 2am on the 7th.
When we woke up after a slightly too short rest it was 6:30 am and breakfast time. I went downstairs with my roommates to a room full of Pakistani women in their green jackets, ready to play England. We were to play India in a match in which we are a rag-tag A team and they are a well oiled machine. Most of our team had not ever seen each other play before this and far from played together. Needless to say we lost pretty badly but we went down gracefully to a team that is far superior.
Before the game I was a ball of nerves, which is a relatively new sensation for me. Since graduating from MHC, I have begun to get serious anxiety that I had never previously felt. While everyone else was on the bus catching some extra rest before the game I was simultaneously pumping myself up and quacking with nerves.
We finished all of our games. We won against Kenya in our 2nd game and lost to India and NZ. The India girls are so good! They have skill and technique like woah!! However, the New Zealand team played dirty. They fell back on old habits from rugby and it was real gnarly. Since we've now finished our games we've pretty much been cooped up, either in the hotel or on the bus. It's getting really annoying having security that just won't let us leave. We tried to make a break for it a few times, unsuccessfully.
The finals were very interesting to watch. India kicked some kiwi bum! I ended up befriending some of the NZ girls and they're cool but also really intense. The Danish girls are really sweet and the Kenyan girls just rock! We never did get to have dance party with though. Every time we tried security made us stop. We really needed to burn off steam but instead during the closing ceremony on the 14th they literally had all the teams in a cage.
We went to Amritsar, GT, and the school (MPA). It was so weird being back. I actually started to cry at GT when I was bowing but than security would not even let us have a moment so I just got pissed. It was like being captive in our own home. We freaking grew up in Amritsar, we know our way around! Siri Simran and I snuck away to get some Kulcha though and that was awesome! My stomach was smiling for hours! We got to go to the school for like two seconds and I did a quick tour, there is not that much that is new, but enough for it to be weird.
Anyways, off to Delhi now and than onwards to Aukland!
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