June 16: Shopping in Coimbatore

Getting her ears marked

I woke up feeling a lot better but unfortunately my sister started getting sick at 3 in the morning and woke up pretty much every hour to throw up. No one really go much sleep after 3am but apparently the food and weather was not agreeing with us this time around. Thankfully I was feeling a little bit better but still was not a 100%. We were supposed to spend the day shopping in Coimbatore with my aunt and her son but my sister couldn't come so we had to leave her at home while the rest of us went. One of the gold bangle sets that my mom had gotten last year ended up breaking the night before we left so we were going to return it and pick out a new set at Selvi Athai's favorite gold jewelers. Apparently she is a frequent visitor because she knew everyone at the store and they all knew her and what she liked. I was pretty quick at picking out what I wanted but when it comes to gold I don't really like anything fancy. Plain and simple is the way to go for me but apparently plain and simple does not work for Selvi Athai because she got me to pick a different set that had more engravings. I won't have pictures till Thursday because they didn't have my size at the store and had to order a pair for me. It's crazy how much money people spend on gold here in India. I am quite happy with my costume jewelry but here buying gold is an investment, similar to buying stocks. I don't know what possessed her to get her ears pierced but Selvi Athai really wanted to get a second ear piercing so she decided to go for it. The store had to call someone to come pierce her ears and she spent the entire time fretting over whether or not she should go through with it. Her son, Raja Barathi and I decided that instead of holding her hand we were going to video tape the piercing because we knew it was going to be entertaining and boy were we right. By the time she was ready to get her ears pierced the entire store was gathered around to watch.

She basically cried for her mom and dad throughout the piercing. It was highly entertaining :-P

After this store we headed to a nearby restaurant for lunch and then I went to my favorite little hole in the wall jewelry store to pick up a "few" things. Just to raise my mom's blood pressure a little bit I took a picture of all the jewelry that I have bought so far on this trip.

Pretty pretty pretty!!!!!

It's upside down but I found a pretty watch bracelet

A random find but I loved it

 We stopped at Spencers to see if there were any good baked goods but ended up getting cookies and cream ice cream before heading to our next stop. Raja Barathi wanted to pick up some more clothes before he leaves for Delhi for school next week so we went to this new store called Grasp. It was really interesting because pretty much all the clothes in the store are American Eagle, A&F, Aeropostale, Levi......and they all have the same pattern. I don't know the name of the pattern except they're flannel meets checkerboard on cotton fabric. There is a separate store for guys and a separate one for girls but when you step into the guys store they are all pretty much dressed similarly which was entertaining. Everything was loud and bright and completely not what I think would look good on people but apparently that is the trend here. I ended up buying a chudidar set at the end of the night before we all headed back home.