DAY NINE - January 5th 2010 - Kanpur to Jhansi

We were supposed to have our last morning in Kanpur to have breakfast with our host family, but the Kanpur club has arranged for a breakfast meeting. We had arranged with the club and our host to leave early to go to the leather factory to get our shoes on our way to breakfast. Erin and I say our sad goodbyes to our host family and leave them gifts as thanks for their wonderful hospitality. We stop by to pick up Linda on our way to the factory. We are all under the impression that it is close by, but it turns out we end up travelling for many hours to the factory and end up missing our breakfast. The rest of the team is able to attend and wait for us there. We arrive back at the breakfast at 12:30pm, 3hrs late and there are very few Rotarians left to greet us.. We gather our team together and begin our very long journey towards the next stop in our tour, the town of Jhansi, there we will stay for 3nights. The road to Jhansi is the worst I have seen so far, there is a lot of construction and detours, our driver at times gets lost and has to ask for directions. When we finally arrive we are very late, exhausted and I have spent most of the drive thinking of family back home and shedding a few tears.. It turns out the rotary club of Jhansi Rani has arranged for a special performance and dinner for us at 8pm so we rush to our host families homes to get freshened up. The village where the host families all live is a private community only 2 years old. The buildings are like townhouses and everything is very clean and modern. All the kids are very excited to meet all of us and some join me at the performance to ask me questions and help translate the songs for me. The performer is a sweet older lady that is very famous in india for doing traditional classical Indian dance. She truly is amazing in her abilities and the team gets together after to meet her and take a few pics.. After a late dinner we all separate to go back to our host families for the night.. All the team members are staying in this small community just a few doors from each other.. except me, I am staying with the secretary of the rotary club and his wife and they live in another area of the city. It’s a bit weird to think about staying on my own but they are so sweet and the grandmother is so excited to meet me I know I will be fine and given lots of love and comfort. The hosts take me home and I get settled in for the night. It has been such an emotional day for me and I feel so exhausted, I need some rest…