December 4: Kochin

Today’s pretty normal.  The itinerary says that we’re visiting the oldest church in India and going to some Dutch palace of something.  In other words, another day of me not paying attention to what’s going on derping around in the back.   

We arrive at the church.  Pretty old and stained with 600 years of monsoon rains.  As I walked in, I notice how the font is where it should be, the lectern and pulpit too.  It’s an Anglican church and I am immediately homesick.  For those who do not know, I was raised as an Anglican, and have gone to church just about every Sunday ever since I can remember.  Not only that, but because I joined the church choir when I was eight, I was at church Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays – sometimes twice.  My church played a huge part of my memories.  

Being in the church makes me realize that I haven’t been to church since May.  I was so shocked to find myself crying from missing my church so much.  Just being in the church reminded me that it’s advent.  The four weeks leading up to Christmas are so nostalgic for me, maybe even one of my favourite times of the year.   I have already missed my favourite advent service and getting my Christmas tree.   Am I really going to miss Midnight Mass?  I don’t want to believe it.  It’s a good thing that I’ve been so busy and with friends to distract me from my absence from beautiful Canadian winter and the traditions that go with it.  

On to the Dutch Palace do-hickey.  I get ready to be bored out of my mind, but as we enter, we see a rare sight.  We see a group of young foreigners about our size and our age.  If we see a group of foreigners that’s over 10, it’s usually a planned trip for people 50 +.  When we look into the face of the young foreigners, some of us actually recognize each other.  That’s right.  We ran into other Rotary Youth Exchange Students.  What is the likelihood of that?!

This group is the other big exchange district in India.  They are from the State of Guderat, which is northeast of my district’s state and east of the other district which I’m traveling with.  Many of us were in Grand Rapids, Michigan in July for an 18 district wide Youth Exchange Conference.  They just started their South Indian tour a few days ago, as where were going to finish ours in a couple of days.  Mary and Lila from Grand Rapids were there plus a Canadian guy from British Columbia.  Many of us talked with people who were from the same country.  Anais finally got to speak French with the French girl from the other district.  A lot of us cannot get over the excitement of this random encounter.  Our tour guides didn’t plan this.  We both just happened to be in this random Dutch Palace in Kochin at the same time.  There was so much excitement.  Whatever interesting things there were in the museum, they were forgotten, or not even noticed.   Our meeting was short, as twenty short minutes later, we had to leave to catch our train out of Kochin to Goa.  We probably will never see them again, but it was an amazing, random, and almost beautiful thing about our meeting.

So it turns out that today was actually pretty interesting and didn’t turn out as I thought it would.  That’s typical when you’re on exchange.  I don’t know why I’m so surprised.  As they say “Expect the unexpected”