India Blog - Day 3

Sunday , March 15

I woke up a little before 7:30 after less than 4 hours of sleep. Luckily I woke up before my alarm because I found out later I had accidentally set it for 7:30 PM. I showered and met Randy in the lobby at 8:00. We had breakfast at the hotel restaurant buffet. They had all kinds of strange Indian dishes available, like Aloo Paratha and Poori Bhaji. But I was a chicken and went for the things that looked like pancakes and some bacon and some spiced potato things. We also ate the pineapple because Randy said it was less likely to make us sick. We're supposed to stay away from most fruit. Also, no drinking the water, unless it's bottled water and the cap is still sealed (and not sealed with super glue - has anyone seen Slumdog Millionaire?) We're even supposed to use bottled water to brush our teeth. I nearly forgot last night and rinsed my toothbrush with tap water. I poured a whole bottle of water over it after that so hopefully I dislodged most of the critters. After brushing I gargled with Listerine, so maybe that will kill some more. We're all watching each other to see who will be the first one to get sick.

Randy and I met the driver and drove to the address of the church we got off the web. The driver stopped a couple times to ask people on the street more specific directions, since there aren't any house numbers or street signs to speak of. Turns out the church had moved in the past 6 months, but luckily one of the guys working on the side of the road near the old place knew the new address. The church was in the basement of a building. There was a small sign out front, but I don't think I would have been able to find it.

We got there at 9:00 but it didn't start until 9:30 so it was basically empty when we got there. But lots of people came up to us and introduced themselves as they started to show up. One lady told us how her trainer from the US had introduced her to the gospel even though she had never met him. She has since been baptized and married in the Hong Kong temple. She told us how they have had property to build an actual Church building for 11 years but because the Church won't pay the necessary bribes, they haven't been able to build yet.

Church was very good, especially one talk about general conference and how we need to be prepared. There were a fair number of non-Indian people in attendance, mostly missionaries and people from the US working here. But the majority of the congregation was Indian. All the women wore saris. The bright colors were very striking and beautiful and I wished I could have a picture, but didn't think that would be appropriate. Randy and I had time to go through most of Sunday school before we had to get back. Here's a picture of me on the stairs going down to the church.














Our driver was outside waiting for us and he drove us back to the hotel and we met up with the rest of our group. We had a tour guide and some people that we work with in India. They were going along on the sightseeing tour to Mahabalipuram.

I'll finish this later...

India Blog - Day 1 (and 2)

Okay, so here is the start of my India blog. I promised Edith and the kids that I would take lots of pictures and put them up here. Feel free to skip ahead and just look at the pictures if I get boring.

March 13 (Friday the 13th)

5:15 - I wake up to get ready to go after getting to sleep after midnight while packing. Getting 5 hours of sleep is not a recommended way to start a 28 hour flight to India. Thanks, Edith, for helping me pack.
5:50 - Edith drives me to the airport (thanks again).
7:00 - I say goodbye to Edith at the airport. This will be the longest we've ever been apart since being married.
7:10 - My passport won't scan at the kiosk for some reason, even for the agent that came to help me, so she let me skip the long line and checked my baggage for me.
7:20 - I arrive at the gate and try for an hour to get my laptop to connect to the Internet through my phone. No luck
8:40 - We take off. I have always loved this part of the flight. The rush of takeoff is awesome, especially when I have a window seat like I did on this flight, and can watch the ground drop away from me. Call me crazy but I also really like turbulence. I figure people pay lots of money to go ride the rides at an amusement park, so why do they complain when the plane does the same thing to their stomach? I don't like landings so much.
8:50 We fly east and I can see my house. Well, not so much my house but the valley. I'm sure if I had really strong binoculars I could pick out my house.















I watched "City of Ember" and an episode of "The Office" on the little screen in the seat in front of me. At some point during the flight we flew over Des Moines and fairly close to Pittsburgh. We went through a bit of Canada and finally landed in New York. At this point I'm going to stop with the time because time started to have no meaning.

I knew we were in New York because everyone was wearing black. We had to switch terminals and go through security (again) and got sent to 5 different gates before we finally settled on a flight. Couldn't find any power outlets to charge the laptop, but since I was too cheap to pay $10 for wireless access, it didn't matter much. Lunch was $14 for a sandwich, and bottle of water and some cake. At least work is paying for it.

The flight to Paris on Air France was interesting. I read some, watched "Ghost Town" on the little screen in the seat in front of me, and ate some really good food. Even on airline flights, the French food is good.















I slept a little, the kind of sleep where you can't tell if you have slept or not and you feel a bit delirious.

We arrived in Paris around 7:00 their time and had to catch a bus to another terminal. We had to go through security for the third time and since I forgot to take my phone out of my pocket, I got a very thorough pat-down by the security guy. At least we didn't have to take our shoes off for this one.

Again no wireless in the airport so we waited until the pastry shop opened and Randy changed some money and bought me a pastry.














Before the plane took off, one of the flight attendents came down the aisle spraying a constant cloud of something through the air that filled the whole cabin. The announcement came that it was bug spray and was "harmless" but I breathed through my shirt for a while anyway. I try to avoid inhaling pesticides as much as possible.

On the flight to Chennai I was really tired so I slept quite a bit at the beginning. I watched most of Gandhi on my phone, which Randy had ripped and given me a copy of. I got through about 2 hours before the battery ran out and we were about to land anyway.

We went through the long lines at customs, security (again), at the baggage claim, and at the money exchange. Then went out to find our drivers holding up signs with our names on them. It was 2:30 in the morning (Sunday morning) but there were a lot of people out. We checked into the hotel and I immediately signed up for Internet and called Edith and the kids. It was great to talk to them. I didn't feel that tired but I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Things that make me happy

Star put out a call for things on your happy list. Here is my list for today.

Day 2--

1. When Anderson asked "If I buy it with my own money would you let me get a regular crab with really sharp claws?. . .Well, what if I find one, then?"

2. When I said, "Oh, Goodness!" to Rosalie and she echoed me "Oh, Gohneets!"

3. Rosalie has doubts about my intelligence. She walked right up to where I was sitting on the floor, looked me dead in the eye, and said, "Food!"
I said, "Oh, are you hungry? Do you want some food?"
On her face was a look of mild exasperation that I have begun to recognize--Why doesn't Mom understand? How can I make myself more clear?--"Mmmunch!"
(I think she meant "lunch.")

4. When you, Casey, called from India at 2:45 am your time (3:15 pm here) to say you'd arrived safely. I hope you slept well for all of four hours before you got up for church. We all miss you very much and pray for you every prayer.

Wish you were here. Since I'm not there, I should have sent a li'l me with you to pose for photos!

At Home

Casey left for India this morning. I drove him there on less than 5 hours of post-packing sleep. I felt a little groggy on the trip back home but it didn't really hit me until after school when Ani had two of her friends over. Every time they passed through the living room I snapped awake from my slumped position on the couch. It's never too early to start embarrassing your pre-teen in front of her friends.
Casey is usually here to experience and/or endure the daily minutiae of our lives. But since he's not, the next two weeks of blogging will be mostly for his benefit.
He has promised to post about his experiences while away, too.
So here goes:

Day 1--

Ready to bust a move


Ready to bust a moue


Happy as a duck in the muck


Look closely--the cranes have returned! They flew a circle around the whole property while they had this discussion--She: "Why do we always come here? It's spring everywhere else but look at all this snow!" He: "I kept telling you we didn't have to migrate yet." She: "No one likes a know-it-all." He: Honk!


Casey, I really like this camera. I'm glad you took the other one.


Ani and her friends made us brownies.


Anderson and his friends terrorized Ani and her friends. And made Rosalie laugh and laugh.

Lissa is at a friend's house in Liberty. They are going to watch a Church ball tournament. I hope she doesn't get broken.


Oh, and I moved the furniture around.


Wish you were here.

How to up your square footage by 30%

It took us over two years, but the basement is finally finished! Okay, my compulsion toward absolute accuracy forces me to admit there are still a few little things we have to do yet. But if I let that stop me from posting photos, none of you would ever have seen pictures of the upstairs of our house, either.
And so, without further ado (and without furniture or anything else) I present--The Basement!
The big girls' room.


The Family Room


Underland from the back hallway


All this open space just makes you want to run . . .


or wrestle.


Underland from the little door.


All the other photos are from a week and a half ago. Since then we have tastefully decorated our new TV room with vintage furniture, including Casey's grandmother's antique TV stand. We are well on our way to making the basement the nicest part of our house.

Bugged

Sudden pandemonium echoed up the stairs from the basement.
Casey's low voiced "RAAARR!" was barely audible under the shrill screams of pure panic coming from my children.
"That's funny," I thought. "They aren't usually that scared of their dad."

It sure helps to have a visual aid.




As I walked past the primary room today, I just happened to be in time to hear the teacher ask Meredith what her dad does to help the family. "He touches the bugs and doesn't even die."

Post Edit: For those of you who asked for more information, here it is. We have one creepy window well in the basement that collects wildlife--everything from mice to lizards to giant bugs. (Despite my carefully installed mesh grating over the top.) Since, until now, we didn't spend much time in the basement, we usually saw these unfortunates in various stages of decay and/or petrification. Now that we have carpet (! Post later!) we thought it would be a good idea to clean it out a little.
This giant beetle is the Prionus Californicus--it is a "long horned" wood borer beetle whose larva attack the roots of stone fruit trees. They can grow to be around 3 inches long. We don't know how long this one was because it had disintegrated under its wing cases, but it was BIG ENOUGH.

Aunt Jenny saves the day

Last weekend Casey and I went to the temple and did a few other things (like get the stitches out of his lip. When you live in an isolated area, you always combine errands.) Usually when we leave the kids on their own, I make dinner for them, remind them of the rules, and give them something to look forward to when they're done with their jobs, like staying up late to watch a new movie. But we learned that we'd have to leave early for Casey to get his second booster for the India trip and so there was no such preparation before we jumped and ran. Chaos resulted, as witnessed by my sister-in-law Jenny when she brought Meri home. I lifted this from her blog:

Violent Tendencies

This last weekend I helped babysit for my nieces and nephew. The violence that ensued reminded me of my own childhood when my parents would leave. I was witness to kicking, yelling, threatening, bawling, chasing, and machete-whacking intentions.
But I knew things were on the up-swing when I witnessed this tender moment:
My nephew hugged his older sister and apologetically said, "Sorry I tried to whack your face with a machete..."

Later, when I was recounting the horrors to my dad, I said, "Who in their right mind would give a machete to a little boy with violent tendencies?!"
Looking slightly abashed, my dad said: "Me."


When Anika related how Jenny had stepped in, she counseled us "You should probably pay her. Or at least buy her some shoes."

I'm pretty confident that if Jenny hadn't helped out it would have been a lot longer for Anderson to arrive at the point of apologizing. This is the same boy who, at age 4, chased Anika around the house while yelling, "I'm not gonna hurt you! Now come back here or I'll sword you in pieces!"