A Bit About The Zoo & The Headmistress

We got the opportunity to take the Hope Centre children to the Vandalur Zoo last Friday. None of them had ever been to a zoo before. They were so excited about seeing a real tiger, and they loved the white peacocks. They got to eat ice cream cones and have lunch in a gazebo. The children all rode the bus with us (not recommended unless absolutely necessary), and Danush got to ride around on Dustin's shoulders during travel to and from the bus. Overall, it went swimmingly, and the kids all had a fabulous time.

We took Jack with us as well, but he had a very slight fever, and it was his nap time, so he was getting grumpier and grumpier until Pastor Caleb let Jack "drive" the bicycle he had rented. I think Caleb pushed him around most of the area in the zoo that we visited while Jack squealed with delight. We only stayed for two hours, but those kids have a tendency to get really naughty when they are tired, so it worked out well. Rabi, Caleb, Devi, Keziya, and Pastor Sateesh all came. I think there were about 20 kids in all. I'll post some pictures on the web album.

Dustin's at the Hope Centre with Rabi right now, and Jack and I are at Rabi's sister's house. His sister Freeda and her family live here, and across the patio is Rabi's dad & mom's house. They are always so sweet to let Jack and me stay here during the days Dustin's at the Hope Centre. Rabi's mom, Mariel, is giving me the occasional cooking lesson so that I can learn some useful South Indian dishes. (Dustin keeps asking when I am going to learn to cook vadai and chutnies.) Jack absolutely loves being here and seeing Pati (Grandma), Tata (Grandpa), and Auntie (Freeda).

I had a chat with Bridget's headmistress yesterday. She said Bridget is very friendly with every child in the school, and every teacher. She has gobs of friends there, and when any child is crying she'll put on a mask and roar at them until they start laughing. The only thing is, if they try to get her to sit down and do her classwork, she'll do it for about five minutes, and then she'll get bored with it and want to go play on the slide or visit Abisheik. (Abisheik is in an older class upstairs.) If they try to force her, she'll start crying for mommy. The headmistress said she can't bear to force her after that, because she knows Bridget isn't from there, and she wants to go easy on her. We talked about it, and she and I both agreed that Bridget needs to learn to sit down and do her schoolwork when she's supposed to. She said they'll start treating her the same as they do the other children. We'll see how it goes... I guess.

I'm hoping we can get a white board for the Hope Centre again soon. We had one there on loan from Calvary Ministries (the church Caleb is a Pastor at), but they took it back. Bummer. We desperately need something there, though. It's nearly impossible to teach another language without the ability to write things out for them, or draw pictures. We have almost no supplies there anyway.

On School Uniforms & A Double-Decker Bus

Well, The Hope Centre reopened today. I have never been so happy to see those naughty little faces! I missed them terribly during the last 6 weeks of summer holidays. When I remember how they were when we first opened the Hope Centre the difference is like night and day. Nobody even tried to climb the shelves or windows. Bridget started kindergarten today! She looks so cute in her little red uniform, and white shirt. I hope she will adjust to it well. She said the teacher let her watch t.v. and play on the slide today, so I'm not really sure how that will go.

In the last few weeks we were very busy. We went to London for 10 days so that we could renew our visas. We got to see a lot of marvelous things there: The Tower of London, the Zoo, Windsor Castle, a few Starbucks :), LEGOland. Not to sound too corny, but the best part of the whole trip was getting to see my kids with their grandparents (Terry and Tammy met us there). Dustin and I got to go on two dates! The first in 5 months. We went to see Terminator, and we went to a medieval banquet. And, yes, I got to ride on a double-decker bus.

Well, I think I'll leave it at that for now. For missing updates see next posting.

Ash

The lake and Bangalore

On the first of April, Rabi invited us to go to the lake just outside of Vandalur for the day. We followed him to the YWAM house (which he sleeps at most of the time) by autorickshaw and, from there we went the rest of the way by three separate motorcycles. Ashlin rode with Rabi on our scooter, Bridget rode with Sasi Kumar, and Jack and I rode with a very large man named Mari. Now, don't ask me why I, as the heaviest member of our family, rode on a bike with Rabi's bulkiest friend, but the rear fender bounced up and down on its tire for most of the trip. At the lake, Rabi showed us how to fish with a huge net and Ashlin even got to help empty the net.
After lunch, Henry Daniel happened be driving by and Rabi cornered him and made him teach me how to drive our scooter. After a very short while, I was officially qualified to drive it alone, and later that day, I took Ashlin out and taught her to drive it as well.
That Friday, which happened to be Bridget's 5th birthday, we took an overnight train to Bangalore. Trying to sleep with your children on a crowded train is not fun. Actually, I slept fairly well on the top bunk while Ashlin tried to get a little rest with a sick Jack in her bed. She didn't sleep at all that night. We arrived in Bangalore at about 7 AM, took a taxi to drop Ashita off at her parents' house, and finally got to Rabi's friend James' house at 9. After several hours of resting, we were off to go shopping. Traffic in Bangalore is crazy. It took 45 minutes to go about six by auto to a mall suggested by Ashita. The mall didn't turn out to have anything we were looking for, so we went nearby to Market Street (or maybe it was Commercial Street) where you can find almost any sort of shop imaginable. We spent most of the remainder of the day shopping, until Bridget started to get sick with a high fever. Luckily, the fever broke during the night, so we were free to go exploring in the morning.
The next day was spent mostly at the botanical gardens. Bangalore's gardens are amazingly beautiful, and we got to take our time wandering through them. I'll make sure that Ashlin gets pictures from Bangalore up in the morning so you all can see what it was like.
I'll be getting posts up for all of the weeks that we've missed in the last two months soon. I mean it this time... promise.

Dinner at Rabi's

We are going to dinner at Rabi's Parents' house tonight. It'll be fun to meet new people. Hopefully Bridget will eat.

Communication problems have gotten very difficult. It's frustrating being in a place where we aren't allowed to do much, without asking permission first. Please pray that we won't feel so discouraged about this.

"Weekly" Update

Yeah, I know that we're no good at keeping up on the blog. :( Tonight, Ashlin and I are going to put up multiple postings about our travels over the last month, work at the Hope Centre, and some prayer request. Ashlin will also post a bunch of photos. Thanks for putting up with us, everyone!

A month's worth of miscellany

I'll start things out with a brief explanation. As I'm sure you've all noticed, were doing a really great job keeping up with our promise of updates every few days. There is a reason for our lack of posting, however. Mostly it's the heat, the darn, darn heat. Typically, after we get the kids in bed we collapse in a heap and stew in our juices until morning. Thanks for being understanding of us, we're so thankful that we have people at home praying for us. Ashlin did update the photo album a week or two ago, but we forgot to do a post to let you guys know. Anyway, on to the stories!

A few weeks ago, Ashlin was at the Hope Centre early when this guy named Babu showed up. He said, through hand signals, that he was supposed to measure something at the daycare but no one had actually called him and, as Ashlin doesn't speak Tamil, there wasn't much else to say. Later that day, Babu stopped her on the side of the road and insisted on giving her a bag of vegetables, saying that God had told him to do so. With the encouragement of the cook and teacher she was walking with, she took them. The next day, I was walking to the daycare when Babu pulled up next to me and told me he would give me a ride the rest of the way. I, having misunderstood Ashlin's story and thinking that Babu was from our church, accepted said ride. Upon arrival at the Hope Centre, Babu offered to have Ashlin and me over for lunch. I tried to explain that it was Jack's birthday and, as such, it wouldn't work to have lunch that day. He ended the conversation with, "Okay, two o'clock." I tried to have Caleb call him and work it out, but he was too busy and said not to worry. At a quarter till three, as Ashlin and I were decorating the flat for Jack's party, I got called over to Caleb's father Rajan's house. Babu was there and wanted to know why I hadn't met him at the school. Using Rajan and Bina as translators, I explained again that it wasn't a good day for this. He insisted that, if we couldn't go to his house for lunch, that he would bring the food to us. So, around four, we got called down to Caleb's house where Babu was waiting with some food for us. Babu and Ashita talked to each other for a while in Tamil, and eventually, Babu left the meal for us. After he was gone, Caleb and Ashita more or less ordered us to dispose of the food. They said that you never know about people here and that sometimes being white makes us instant targets.
Anyway, I wanted to share the above story to shed some light on the difficulties we are having communicating with people without getting things hopelessly mixed up. About half of the people in Vandalur speak English. Only, they don't all speak very good English. The language breakdown has led to multiple times where Ashlin and I have ticked people off by not doing what they thought they had asked us to do. Twice now, Ashlin has scheduled to go with Keziya and Devi around the neighborhood praying for people only to have them never show up, and later, they were convinced that Ashlin didn't go with them because they had done something wrong.
As I mentioned earlier, all of the craziness with Babu happened on Jack's birthday while we were trying to set up for the party. Trying to plan a party within a culture you aren't familiar with is difficult to say the least. The night before the party, Caleb took me for a terrifying nighttime motorcycle ride through a zoo of traffic to Tambaram for Jack's gift and all of the party supplies. We got Jack a mattress, and yes, I rolled it up and carried it on the back of the bike. I figured that, if we got in a wreck, the mattress would serve in place of the helmet I don't own. So, Jack's birthday fell smack dab in the middle of a ten day long fasting prayer at the church (although I'm not sure if anyone besides Bina was fasting) and, even though we started at the time Caleb suggested, most people didn't show up till after the prayer, which was about 8:30. We also made the mistake of getting pizza from Tambaram. Boy howdy! that was expensive. For Bridget's birthday, we're going to have Indian food. Jack had a great time, though, so it doesn't really matter that it was an awkward situation for the adults.

A couple of weeks ago, Ashita's mother, Shirley and sister nicknamed Pinkoo, whose real name I can't remember, came to Vandalur to visit. Ashlin got to spend a couple of hours one day hanging out at Ashita's house with them. They invited us to visit them in Bangalore if we ever make it out that way, which we will be doing next weekend. We'll get lots of pictures (in theory) for you guys while we're there.

Two weeks ago, Caleb found a scooter for us to buy. Its very manly. I haven't been able to get anyone to teach me how to drive it yet, but Henry Daniel (a friend from church) said he could teach me on Saturday. I'm desperately looking forward to having a little bit of freedom of movement. As it stands, we have to call Rabi anytime we need to go anywhere outside of Vandalur. I'll be sure to let everyone know as soon as I crash it. :)

On the 16th, Caleb left for a trip to the U.S. He'll be visiting family and then travelling around to some churches and letting them know about all of the work being done in India. Please pray for his safe journey and that he can raise the funds and awareness that he needs to. He'll be in the Vancouver/Portland area as of April 10th or so.
After two and a half weeks of holiday, the Hope Centre is back up and running. We haven't been getting as many children coming each day due to some squabbling amongst their parents. Instead of fifteen to eighteen kids, we've been getting eight or nine a day. The upside of this is that we get to spend more time with each kid. We have four kids that Rabi thinks will be ready for regular school by June. Ashlin and I aren't so sure that they're ready for that yet, but they certainly are improving. The kids don't climb the bookshelves and windows anymore, and today, Ajith and Tirisha actually slept at nap time!

One of us will post more info in a few days, but before I go I have an announcement. Jack is in love. He's decided that Caleb and Ashita's daughter Chickoo is the coolest girl ever. It's really cute, he'll be in our room playing with his toot-toot (that's how he says train) and he'll hear her voice from downstairs. He'll stop playing, stand up meerkat style, and start chanting Tee-coo! Tee-coo! Ashita asked if we could sense a future marriage proposal.

Lastly, someday I'll put the recipe for egg curry up for everyone, but we'll see how long that takes. We love you all. I promise we won't keep you all waiting so long before we post again. Goodnight.

Middle of a sultry Indian night

Waaay to tired to post tonight. I'm so sorry it's been so long. We're still alive, obviously. No terrible diseases. Will write soon.
Love you all,
Ash