Olivia Ruffin: india

india

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INDIA (Part 2)

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Helloooooo! It's Friday (finally) and time to share the last batch of India photos of the second half of our trip :) Above is the "party car squad" They're the best!

With The Doon School, (a boys school we have an affiliate program with) we went to some schools where we taught English, math, and played games! The kids were SO cute!! I also helped out in painting a classroom. I loved spending time with the kids, they were all SO eager to learn :)

The last place we stayed was an Eco Lodge in Rishikesh. My favorite place by far. It was in the Himalayas, over looking the Ganges... oh man, it was SO beautiful.

Inside our tents at the Eco Lodge

Mountain mornings

And then we celebrated Holi four times... Holi is the Hindu festival of color, and new life. Joy and awakening essentially. Each time we celebrated was so different and so much fun :)

Happy Holi!!!

And that's the last of my India photos :( If I somehow recover my photos I'll try to post some more, but ughh I can't believe I lost them.... Seriously SO dissapointing!!
But I have these and ALL the AMAZING memories!!!
I will definitely be going back sometime in my life.

INDIA (part 1)

Thursday, March 19, 2015

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If you've been reading along by now you'd know that I recently took a trip to India. If you're new here, I WENT TO INDIA!!! First I'll give a little background about my trip: At my school we have one week where groups of students either travel around the world, the US, or just stay in RVA. Most of the trips tend to do a deal of community service. We had two "community service" days teaching kids, but they sure didn't feel like it.

Here's the thing, I lost just about all of my photos from my trip, except for the ones I shared with the group. I would have posted these earlier... ya know... if my computer hadn't crashed. Bless Google Drive for photo sharing... to clarify, all these photos are mine, and they are also the only ones I have. I took about 800, I have about 30...

yeah.

BUT! They're great photos that I do have! They capture the main events of my trip! And I still have my video! So I'm okay :)

First I wanted to start off with a picture of the group above.

We had a layover in Dubai on the way over and got to spend a day there! It was so wild, everything is the biggest and the boldest and the best!! Completely different from India.

The Lotus Temple.

We arrived in India at night on Saturday. India is 10.5 hours ahead of where I live, it didn't take long to adjust... It was only impossible to readjust coming home.

Above, The Laxminarayan Temple is a Hindu temple dedicated to Laxminarayan, which usually refers to Vishnu, The Preserver.

Don't get thrown off by the swastikas, in Hinduism they mean good fortune, luck and well being. It also has a variation of meanings in other religions. They were all over India, all meaning good things.

meaning good fortune, luck and well-being

Gandhi's last steps

One of the most fascinating places we went was Gandhi's home. We went to the home where Gandhi stayed for the last 144 days of his life. When he was living in just one room. above are the exact steps he took from his bed room to the place where he got assassinated. I learned so much about Gandhi, he really was an incredible man.

Humayun's tomb, modeled after the Taj Mahal

And of course... The Taj

awkwardly the only one looking into my camera.... :P

The Taj Mahal was so insanely beautiful. Seeing it in photos online I knew what it looked like and had my expectations knowing it was going to be big and luxurious. But seeing it in person? That's a whole other story. It was incredible. We had to be bare foot when actually going into the building, the marble was so smooth and intericate. Unfortunatly (but kinda fortunatly because it was so darn fun) it practically monsooned while we were there. We were drenched! The photo of all the girls above was before the rain started. But believe me, it was CRAZY. I lost my photos of the inside, and didn't get any of the back because at that point it was just too wet.

There were SO many dogs in India! Mainly this sort of dog, but the weirdest most out of place dog
I saw was a pug... It was a tiny pug just running up the empty road in the mountains. Like, what?!

More photos coming tomorrow!!!

india · Travel · video · vimeo

INDIA VIDEO

Thursday, March 12, 2015

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I'm back and better than ever! Home from India and back to blogging... I returned on Monday afternoon and have been sleeping since, 10.5 hour jet lag will do that to you haha. But here I am and with my video from India!

I was so unbelievably lucky to travel here and know I will be returning in the future. We traveled all around Northern India, staying in New Delhi, Dehradun, Rishekesh, and visiting Agra for a day (and Dubai for a day, I know it's not in India, but still, we went).
More photos and stories to come! Until then, enjoy this video :)
xoxoxo

india · thoughts · Travel

Leaving

Thursday, February 26, 2015

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Tomorrow at 5am I take off for India. INDIA. I know, it's still so hard for me to grasp too... I am so unbelievably lucky to be taking such an extravagant trip with some great people. I can't wait to share all of my photos and stories of my various adventures and excursions.

With that being said, I am not taking my phone or laptop with me, why? Well, 1. It's heavy 2. limited to no service anywhere 3. risk of loosing them or getting them stolen. I will be taking millions of pictures I know that for sure, and making a video too! AH I'M SO EXCITED JUST THINKING ABOUT IT!! And I will share everything as soon as I return! Spring Break is the following week, so I'll have time to catch up on blogging.

I'm honestly pretty dang nervous too, I mean, India, that's across the world. I wont be in contact with anyone back home. And the flight we are going on is a red eye for 14-15 hours. That's a lot of time up in the air. I love flying but I get weird about my space sometimes and I don't know if I can sit tight for that long without freaking out. Ehhhh we'll see. I'm sure it'll be fine, I'm just psyching myself out.

See you in eleven days ;) Stay fine all you beautiful honeys xox

india · Pinspiration Monday · Travel

Pinspiration Monday // INDIA

Monday, January 26, 2015

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As many of you know, this time next month I will be traveling and exploring India. Just typing those words feels so unbelievable. I have yet to even take into account just how lucky I am to be going to India so soon. It's all so surreal. Just wait until I get there right? I don't know what to expect, just that I am so SO excited!!! I have never been anywhere nearly similar to India, nor out of the continental US. Let's just say I CANNOT WAIT.

So on that note, this week I decided to share some Pinterest photos of India. All these photos can be found on m y Pinterest