“MOM! He won’t let me talk to my friend!” I shouted as my brother ran away with my phone.... How dare he?, I thought to myself. My mom was ignoring us as always, working in the kitchen. Until we finally got to her last nerve… “Would you guys quiet down!” Then I knew she was talking to me, when she said “your brother gonna leave in some days.  Can you give him some peace and not bother him?” She walked into the living room with an angry look on her face. “Clunk!” I looked back and my brother locked himself in his room with the phone.  I said in anger  “he’s the one who came to me and took the phone while I was talking to my friend! How is it my fault?!?”. My mom called out to him said “give it back to her!” and then he slowly comes back and gives the phone back with a evil grin on his face, and slowly heads back to his room. My mom said with a worried face “he is going to be leaving soon so be nice to him ok?”. I just stood there with a guilty face.

Anyway, it was beautiful day outside it was a little warm but the slow breeze was nice and it was the weather I always loved since it was so hot here in India. Me and my brother were fighting as always, I feel like we always find a way to quarrel over something, well it’s always my brother’s fault. Mom started yelling at us from the other room saying “ did u guys pack up yet?” I was just sitting there with my ipad watching Good mythical morning, a morning show, since it was morning and that’s the time they upload. My mom came up to me with an angry face saying “ you packed up yet?” while she was looked at my empty suitcase and the only thing that crossed my mind was “ohhh no!”.

Soon after we were leaving to Tirupathi a place in India. We reached the hotel and it was comfy, but outside it was blazing hot. We freshened up, unpacked and left to explore. We went to huge temples and crowded festivals where they sold goodies and merch. We walked through the street and saw the most eye-catching building. It was huge with intricate carvings all over it. It looked ancient and was made of cement mortar. We walked in but unfortunately got kicked out because we weren't wearing “traditional clothing”. Which I was a little glad and sad about because I did want to look at the structures of god but I also didn't want to go through the long lines. My mom was really upset because she really wanted to go. We searched for some traditional clothing we could wear but we never came across any.

We went to many attractions and climbed a mountain. While we were climbing it, the whole time, I was crying inside saying “HOW LONG IS THIS THING”. It just made my mom mad because she thinks that I was not “respecting the god”. I knew if she heard another moan from me I would be DEAD and my mom was gonna explode into t-Rex or something. Ok! Maybe I went a little crazy thinking about what my mother would do to me, but it could happen!.  Anyway, People believed that years ago a god climbed that mountain and he was frozen into an idol.  People built a temple around the idol. That temple is the main attraction there. So we went there. Then we found out that my dad made a mistake in his booking so we had to wait in line which seemed like FOREVER. It took hours and hours of waiting which seemed endless. During that time my dad kept making jokes trying to entertain us and trying to make me afraid of him. Me and my dad always had this inside joke where he try's to make me afraid of him and says how scary he is. But at the end he never gets the reaction he wants from me. We waited in a room filled with step like seats and food stalls at the corner. I slept for a bit on the steps. The food they gave was NOT good, mostly because they have vegetables in it and my mother forced me to eat. She says “vegetables  are good for you”. Which is not true because something that is good for you is not supposed to make you gag!.  After all that waiting we finally got into walking to the god that was frozen who was called ‘Venkatesh swami’. The place was so crowded that people were crashing into each other. That experience definitely was not my favorite thing I've ever done.

After a few days of stay in the hotel, we started to leave to drop my brother off. It was a long trip and our car was filled with luggage, more of my brother’s. After we reached there we saw some familiar faces mostly my brothers friends for obvious reasons. We unloaded my brother stuff and he took his stuff to his dorm room that he shared with his friends. We went around the place to do some shopping in the college’s community after we dropped our brother off. We bought mattresses, phone data and internet deals and cafeteria lunch deals for my brother. I was surprised how large and “luxurious” that place was. I almost wanted to stay!. It had a gym,  pool, restaurants, sport fields for soccer, basket balls etc, you name it!. The best of all, it had a car/ van to take you around to classes because the university was so big! After sometime it was time to leave and for some reason I wasn't as happy as I thought I would be that my brother was finally off my back because he was going to college. We said our goodbye’s and got in our car and started our journey back. My mom couldn't hold it back, my brother was leaving us, she started crying. I always knew she had a sensitive side in her. And I just stared at the window for a long time thinking about how things would be without my brother. I felt a little lonely and felt like I was surrounded by people way more mature than me and I was amazed when a tear started rolling down my left cheek. Then I thought to myself “ maybe having a brother wasn’t so bad after all”.