I am sitting in 10x10 room at the foothills of the most majestic mountain range in all creation. In a smaller adjoining room our boys are down for an afternoon nap. Above my head our clothesline is strung from one corner of the apartment to the other. There is a clothesline outside, but the monkeys (who pay us frequent visits) have a reputation of thievery. Toys, dirty clothes, and language books are scattered across the living space leaving only a small path to move around. I’d like to say everything was neat and tidy, but raising two boys out of a suitcase doesn’t lend itself to tidy or neat. Last night the owner of our hotel won a local election and the resulting party brought drums and fireworks outside our door until early in the morning. When the party was over all became silent enough to hear the raindrops hitting the tin roof. It’s colder than any of our advisors expected and keeping warm has been an adventure. We came from 110-degree heat in our city to almost half that here. We found fleece jackets for the boys for around $3 each. Food is provided at the hotel, which means a daily diet of porridge, rice, curried vegetables, and our favorite wheat tortilla like bread called “roti”. Water sanitation here is questionable so we tote 5 liter bottles back and forth to the store a half-mile up the staircase like road the town is built around. For the first time since moving to India, all four of us have been sick. We aren’t sure of the cause, but from what we understand this place is known for upsetting the tummy. The language school we attend is another quarter mile up the mountain and I take classes until lunch while T watches the boys. We switch in the afternoon and study together in the evening while the boys usually watch Scooby Doo on our computer. The school is full of people from all over the world learning Hindi for all kinds of reasons. Next door a Swedish man is seeking truth and says Hindu scriptures answered all his questions while the Bible just left him confused. We have been here a week with four more to go before packing our bags for our next journey. All of our things are now crammed into a small room the house we will be occupying in the fall. Just before coming here we packed all of our stuff in the back of a dump truck like vehicle and made the 10hr journey to our new city. We all made it in one piece, but some of our furniture lost arms and legs along the way. We got to our mountain home just in time for Mother’s day, but found internet access difficult to come by in this historical city. We finally found an Internet café down the mountain run by a very polite man in a turban. He allowed me to tell my mom I love her while a room full of natives watched the foreigner with wet eyes having a conversation with his laptop. The next day I took T to a five star hotel that didn’t seem to mind non paying American guest using their playground for the afternoon. From the swing set of this roof top park we set our eyes on the most beautiful mountain view any human being deserves to see. Our eleventh wedding anniversary is next weekend and I think I might just have to cough up the $300 for a night’s stay at this Himalayan palace.
There is always more to tell about life here, but I hope this gives you a glimpse of our story. Some days we wake up asking ourselves what in the world have we gotten into, but even in our bleakest hour we can’t keep from thanking God for the privilege of getting to be where we are to do what we do! Thanks for being with us!!
Pictures: The town, the lime green building is the place we stay, T and boys on momma’s day, T at the language school, our moving truck.
