July 20, 2011

Dear Diary,
     I'm so tired and my feet hurt. Today I probably walked like twenty miles. This morning my family and I drove from Angamaly, Kerala to Velankanni, Tamil Nadu. It was a 10 hour drive. I checked on google and it said that we basically crossed the whole country of India! We went on a big bus with my cousins, aunts, uncles an grandparents.
     As I said, we got to Velankanni which is a city in South India. Not many tourists come to places in South India but this place was packed with people. This city was named after Our Lady of Good Health. People usually visit this city as part of a church pilgrimage because there were so many miracles that occurred here with Mother Mary.
     I was really surprised when I got here because this place wasn't like anything I expected. Since so many people come to visit, I thought that the city would be more cleanlier than other cities in India, but that wasn't the case. Our hotel was... let's just say it didn't look like hotels that we have in the U.S. There were poor people out in the streets begging for money. It was really sad to see so many poor people in such a holy place. There were stay dogs out in the streets which was normal but here there were so many. Also, the beach was like gray. I was disgusted. My grandma said that it was the natural color of the sand but I was still kind of scared to sit down.
     The only place that was actually pretty clean was the church. I mean the basilica. A basilica is way bigger than a church or cathedral. It was so big and white. My family and I attended mass there. It was too crowded, so we couldn't get inside. I bet there were more than a thousand people. I was holding onto my grandma's hand the whole day because there were probably kidnappers and I could easily get lost. Overall, this trip was very tiring but it was really worth it.

~Aneena