The chaos ends

I'm sitting in my hotel in London reflecting on the last month. India wasn't at all what I expected. It is only described as constant ironies. Full of love and hate, chaos that cannot be described and serenity, tradition and always change. It took me by surprise constantly.It's fitting that  I'm so happy and sad to be leaving. I have a new family in India and that cannot be topped, but it feels so good to see organization again. Katie, Robin and I are bonded for life. In true Charity form, sending Katie off to China made my eyes well up.
   I promise that I'll post several hundred pictures on facebook asap, but for now, it's time to reflect and appreciate being home. I am so happy that I get to spend some time with some of my best buds tonight! Can't wait to be back in the USA!

Farwell

So...last day in India. Leaving a land of peace and tranquility (amidst pollution and crowding), delicious food (every meal spicy with 'mystery' ingredients), culture and calamity (riding trains with Sheiks and beggars) and the mystical aura that can only be known as India.

Charity and I are leaving touristy Goa to head back to Bangalore. We will post more tonight but we are ready to head back to the big city. Tomorrow I part ways with my sweet friend while she heads back to the land of red, white and blue and I head to the land of red....uh, I mean China:) I will miss my friend that has been a constant source of support and friendship. She has been the best friend to have sifting through the complex mess of India's travel web. I wish her the best and hope we travel together again soon.

Slacker Blogger

So...Charity and Robin have been picking up the slack on blogging so here is something I wrote after leaving KGF...reflection of sorts. Love to everyone. Please send prayer and any help you can to Haiti...peace be with them.


I am sitting at the hotel in Bangalore watching children who two weeks ago were complete strangers and have now become close family. The mission trip to India was beyond anything I could have imagined or predicted. The mantra 'expect the unexpected' was a clear understatement for our two weeks in South India. We came with the mission to deliever eye care to people in rural India and due to circumstances out of our control we ended up changing plans...many times. I had the opportunity and good fortune to do a variety of missions during our time. I was welcomed into a wonderful family, invited to conduct children's programs, help facilitate eye care clinics and work doing wound care with lepers. Every day was a struggle and blessing. I leave this experience a better person in faith. The flexibility of my team and help from people in the community came together to create a unique mission trip experience. I leave blessed.

a different kind of day

What a wonderful day. We took a tour today for 700 rupees each - that's about 15 dollars. It included a jeep with a guide who drove us to a wildlife sanctuary, some caves, 5 different waterfalls and breakfast. There were 3 germans that we spent the day with and they were about our age so it was great fun! At the caves I bought a lollipop but the monkeys were closing in on me so I laid it on the ground (I do not want a monkey jumping on my head!). it was funny to see a monkey pick it up, lick it a couple times then bite off the candy and throw the stick on the ground. My mom always wanted a monkey for a pet so I thought of her a lot today. Off to a city tomorrow called Mysore yes, that's right MY SORE.

The longest day ever

Katie and I headed to the mountains yesterday. Our trip was pretty hilarious. We started by taking a ferry to Kochi, took an autorickshaw to the trainstation, took a 4 hour train to Calicut, took another autorickshaw to the bus station loaded what we deemed the scariest bus ever up into the mountains toward our destination-Kalpetta. We expected to arrive at our hotel about 8 pm. A truck accident on the mountain overpass we were on blocked traffic and suddenly our bus was turned off and we sat for about 2 hours. We recognized that there were 2 other white people on the bus (from berlin) and we banded together. Smaller vehicles were still moving in traffic, so our bus driver flagged down a random safari type jeep and we jumped in the back assured that the driver would get us to our hotel... in a nutshell, ALL traffic eventually stopped and we sat again until 130 am. We are now near Wayanad wildlife sanctuary, and will probably head into the park with hopes of spotting tigers and elephants in their natural habitat. Can't wait to have a big salad!

Home Sweet Home

After 26 hours of travel, I arrived home on Monday night. Aside from adjusting to the 12 hour time difference and trying to cough all of the pollution out of my lungs, I am alive, well and glad to be home. I am still trying to get my mind around all that we saw and did. I think it will take a bit of time before I am able to understand the impact of the time in India.

For now, here are a few things that make me glad to be home:
Michael's sweet face, hot showers, US customs and police, raw, fresh vegetables, cereal with cold milk, drivers who follow rules of the road, my bed, whole grain bread, independence and anonymity.




Here are a few things that I will miss about India:
Gracey, Yesudass, Samuel, Daniel, Shiny, Pinky, Pravene, Navene, Papa, and the rest of my Indian family, chapatis, the head bobble to indicate “yes,” being called Aunty, singing Christmas carols by headlamp, singing Katie Block original tunes, non-stop time with Charity Aunty and Katie Aunty.

As soon as I am able to gain concise perspective on our Indian adventures, I'll post what I've taken away from my time there.

We found the white people!

Katie and I are currently in the island town of Fort Kochin in southern India. What a crazy contrast to what we've been experiencing. There are white people EVERYWHERE and a lot of dirty hippies (from various countries) walking around barefoot. When we arrived last night, I was so DONE with Indian food that we had to order french fries. We've now stuffed ourselves with every sort of american junk food that we can get our hands on, and are going to go for a search tonight. We're craving VEGETABLES. Will post pictures of this beautiful place asap, tomorrow we are off to the mountain town of Munnar.

Maggots and Lepers and wounds, oh my

Wow, there is so much to update about because our time has gone quickly and internet access has been difficult to come by.
   Yesterday was really great. We had a party for some lepers about 9 days ago and realized how little care they are receiving. How heartbreaking to see people so mangled and broken by a disease that is completely curable because they don't have money to buy the medications that they need. Anyway... yesterday we went to the leper colony to give a little TLC. We washed hands and feet, dressed wounds and provided lunch. These poor people haven't had human touch in so long and some were crying. Katie was a rockstar and took maggots out of a 34 year old mans feet.
  We came back to Bangalore today to send Robin and the rest of  the team off early in the morning, Leaving the family that we've spent the last 10 days with was heartbreaking, but Robin is missing Michael so much and Katie and I are looking forward to an adventure. We all fly out tomorrow, Robin is heading back to Phoenix and Katie and I will head to Kochi, Kerala at the southern most tip of India. Enough talking, here are some pics. sorry that they are out of chronological order...

Robin and Jesse washing feet

Katie getting ready to lead a game of duck duck goose. We called her Kate a lot here because the word Kadie means robber and we didn't want to scare the children,

eeeww. maggots!

Yes, we finally allowed the women of the house to dress us up in Saris. This was minutes after we challenged the children to a game of soccer.

Katie, Charity and some of the most wonderful people in the world- Gracie, Daniel and Samuel (we spent 10 days hanging out with this family)

How many people can fit in a rickshaw?Katie, Charity, Robin and Teri

Robin and Papa sharing a really cute moment. I think she was walking a bit funny because she was sympathizing with the Lepers

    

Super Stars!

We've been doing various children's programs in the villiages around the KGF and one in Bagapelli.  We've done our share of singing, dance, dance revolution, scrub races and have played more than our share of duck duck goose.   The kids are so sweet and we are planning on taking two of them home in our bags. 

We also were able to do three eyecare clinics.  Our hosts Gracey and Yesudass, had reading glasses left-over from previous trips so we counted them and found that we could serve about 1,000 people.  The clinics are renegade heathcare at best--adjusting the patients seats based on the daylight, using a six-year-old and an eight year old as translators.  Nevertheless, the people that we are able to help are very greatful.  We've had several ceremonies where we are honored with gifts and a brief history of the KGF mine.  And we even were featured in the newspaper. 

Check out the attached pictures.

Rules of the Road in India

We spent our first two days in India in Bangalore where we learned very quickly that it is best to close your eyes while riding in the car. Cars, motorcycles, trucks, rickshaws, pedestrians, cows, etc share the road and no one stays in their lane (if there are painted lanes) and no one stays on their side of the road. Instead everyone just honks their wildly to say 'Get the hell out of the way or I will run you over without remorse. The first night in the city, one of our contacts in the city had his driver and his 9 year old son take us to the street market to do some shopping. I've never seen so many cars, motorcycles, bicycles, cows, dogs, goats, people, etc in such a small space. I also think that our driver wins the award for worst and best driver all at the same time. We came millimeters from hitting people, cars, buildings animals numerous times. If we needed to turn around (which we needed to do often) he would just back up no matter what/who was behind us. Once while backing up, he bumped into a couple on a motor scooter. The couple drove forward, punched the driver through his open window and yelled at him profusely. The driver didn't seem to care. He told us that he had been in the city for one month and had already hit 6 objects/ people (no one seriously injured). At one point the driver also stopped in the middle of the road to argue about whether or not we should get out and walk around without him or if he should park the van. The people in cars behind us started shouting and laying on their horns and someone started chanting loudly. Once again the driver didn't seem to care. We were glad to get home without injury and without starting a riot.

Feeling brave at having survived the night before in a van, the next day we decided to brave the streets in a rickshaw. Our first ride was scary but fine and Katie is quite the pro at haggling a price down 20 cents. The second ride took a more dramatic turn. Once in the rickshaw, the driver told us that he was going to take us to his family's store for just a few minutes. We said "no" and that we needed to go straight home but he was having none of that. He kept insisting that we go to his family's store. When we came to stop at traffic crossing we told him that he needed to proceed directly to our hotel or we were getting out. He didn't move the rickshaw so we jumped out as quickly as possible and ran away.

more to come about what we are actually doing here to come . . . just think lepers, widows and alot of dancing to the "peel bananas" song

plan b

we arrived in bangalore at 5am, collected all of our bags and bins of glasses and headed straight to customs where we were detained for 7 hours. the men at customs thought that we were trying to smuggle in glasses to sell on the black market. they held our passports hostage and made us count the 10666 glasses one by one and then let us know that if we wanted the glasses we would need to pay almost 250000 us dollars. since we don't have 250000 we were discouraged and had to leave the glasses behind. we met up with our contacts in bangalore and tried to regroup and figure out what we are going to do now that our eye clinics are impossible...we are now in kgf and are the new event planners for the church youth. more on that to follow very soon! and pictures are coming.