Saturday was full of running around. We took Mounika and tried to get everything situated for her to come to the States to study. We've never tried to help someone get into college from another country before and didn't realize all the running in circles we had to do. 

We started out at the bank with her dad. Because her dad is a government employee, funds are available for tuition costs. That seemed to go well. Papers were drawn up and the banker would have a letter available on Monday. Then we went to the school. We went to where she attended 11th and 12th grade, (here they refer to it as Jr. College), to get her transcripts. The principal wouldn't be back until 2:00 (it was 1:15). We ran errands until 2:00, talked to the principal and her told us we had to go to the main campus (4 buildings down the street). We walk to the main campus and wait for that principal to get back for lunch, about 15 minutes. Mounika explains what she needs again, he tells her to go to room 5. We go to room 5, explain to another gentleman that we need transcripts to be sent to a college in the US. She has a copy of her "marks" (grades) that the school gave her upon graduation. He indicates to her (and us) that what she had was an "official government document" and that it needed to be xeroxed and brought back with 2 envelopes. (They don't xerox or have envelopes at the school). We drive across the street to get copies, but there is a power outage (again, common), they say it would be coming back on soon. We wait 10 minutes, no current returns. We drive down the street further and into a neighborhood and find a place to copy her marks. We make 13 copies of several documents and pay 13 rupees for the 13 copies (equivalent to about $0.25). We then proceed to walk down the street a little further and find a shop selling stationary and purchase 2 envelopes (for 2 rupees ($0.04). We head back to the school, where the guy in room 5 looks over the documents, signs them and then has another young lady stamp the marks and the envelopes. He then tells us we need to go to another school (that's not open until Monday) to get another signature and stamp on another paper.

Good grief! I am so grateful to live somewhere that I can call, send $2 for a copy of my transcripts and have them do all the foot work!

Saturday morning Ryan also took Davis to market. He wanted to take the camera and captured some great shots:

vegetables, I love the scales they still use (look towards the upper left side of the picture)

bananas

our favorite "egg lady"

flowers

grains

onions

ginger root

Ryan buying onions

coconut

long snake vegetable thingy

mango, beans, coconut

carrots

papaya

spices

coconut

chickens

market kiosk

juice stand

food cart

The guy cooking behind the food cart. His food is pretty popular. Always a line at dinner time!

More panipuri

Fresh samosas

Tricked-out rickshaw...at night it has neon lights and loud music