Sunday afternoon

There's a school down the road from our house. It's on the way to a nice park where I was headed for an afternoon jog. The day before, I ran for about 20 minutes before the combination of morbid obesity and terrible air pollution did me in. So, I was quite excited when I caught sight of some boys playing volleyball on a dirt court in front of the school. I stood watching for a bit, until one boy yelled over, "you come play?" Sure, I said.So 11 high school boys and I played volleyball for a good two hours, six on six in the dirt. They were pretty good, I was impressed.

The game ended (my team lost, rude I know), and it started pouring rain. It's monsoon season here in southern India. The newspapers say it's been a tame season thus far (one town this past week performed a traditional ceremony of frog marraige to cultivate the rain). Evenstill, when it rains, it rains. So we moved to a place under a bit of roof (picture above) to wait out the strong but brief rain burst. Meanwhile, I learned how to write my name and "rain" in Kanada, the local language of Karnataka State. Dipping our index fingers in murky rain puddles, I traced their markings on the school wall in Hebrew-like swirly symbols, left to right.

That evening, Naomi and I ventured to the Mysore Palace. A specatacle in its own right during the day, at nightfall the palace is lit up by 5,000 light bulbs. Commissioned in 1897 and completed in 1912, the Palace of Mysore is a spectacular blend of Hindi, gothic, and Muslim style of architecture.