Sunday, Jan. 3. Our last day in Goa. Tomorrow we leave for the airport around 11:00 and fly to Delhi. We gather up with the school group on the 5th, a short afternoon tour of Delhi and then off on the "winter tour" Four weeks of a different place every night! Returning emails may be more sporadic from now on.

New Year's was raucous! We had a nice dinner out and then watched fireworks. They are everywhere in Goa that night!
After a week of pretty much cloudy days...but still very hot, the completely sunny days have returned, as of about 3 days ago. The last three or four nights the sun has gone down in a firey red ball in the western sky. We have walked out to the beach to watch the sunset. Haven't been there for low tide and discovered how trashed the beach and water actually are at low tide. We discovered that we could outfit almost an entire family with clothes washed up, plastic bottles, shoes, a wallet, paper trash and lots of styrofoam. It's very sad actually. I've come to realize there are few places for one to dispose of trash so it's done where ever: streets, over a fence, the beach, the ocean... etc. MANY dogs roam the beach as well and dispose of their waste where ever as well. We had to move rooms and are now face the back of the hotel, not to the pool. There is an area below us with quite a bit of trash built up and this morning Catherine actually saw a woman throwing a small bag over the fence.. the bag broke and there it was... more adding to the growing pile. The disposal of plastic, mainly water, juice and soda bottles
are causing the country to be in a nighmarish situation of an overwhelming MOUNTAIN of all of it. Seems to be very little recycling of any kind and again, no trash removal. In the local paper they recently listed 6-7 local lakes almost completely contaminated by waste and garbage seeping into them. Oh well, sorry for the depressing posting but until one has actually visited, it's really hard to comprehend
all of it. Slumdog Millionaire has it bang-on, even glossed over in some cases, I know, hard to believe... but so true.... Sandy