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I wasn’t really in the mood to blog yesterday, but i wanted to give my faithful readers at least something to read. So now the details of my life in Kolkatta. warning: this may be long 
The city: Is similiar to other asian cities I imagine. It is like manila when I was there. They drive on the left side of the road, but the streets are crazy. Not like home with lanes and order. There are buses, people, auto rickshaws (google for a picture, we ride in these the most), cars, taxis, animals etc. People drive very close together, to westerners it would pretty much just seem crazy with no order and people just honk their horn pretty much all the time here. If you have been overseas its pretty typical of cities.Its smoggy, dirty, loud, crowded but intriging in its own way. People sell things on the street. All kinds of things including food. I have bought a wallet and bag. There are also local shops, everything is like a little hole in wall place. We travel by auto rickshaw, metro and bus mostly. We are learning the city and how to get places on our own. My home is a little further outside of the super busy city at least 2 rickshaw rides(30-40 mins) from where we go during the day. We have learned our stops and are able to tell the driver. its kinda cool to learn to nagivate your way a around a completely new place especially another country. I would say that slowly certain places are becoming more familiar and rountine. The mindset is more like I have moved to India, or I am living in India, rather then I’m just visiting India.
My home: My home like I said is a little bit outside of the super crazy crowded city. Near my home there is vegetation, a large pond, we cross a small river on a bamboo bridge to get to our house. There are slums across the river from us that we pass everyday. Our home is middle class for sure, very nice. We are sleeping on the floor in their living room. The other room is where there are two beds for my host mother and sisters. Then there is the bathroom, a small kitchen and small dining area. We shower with a bucket and no hot water. The cold hard truth is that Indians have squat toliets and they don’t use toliet paper. You can assume I have joined the left hand club My family is super nice. Kirin is my host mom. Her daugthers are Preety and Kanak. Kanak is home in the evenings with us. She speaks fluent english. She is studying to become a lawyer and get her MBA. Preety works at a call center through the night so we dont usually see her. Kirin is employed by WMF and works at Sari Bari. She is a christian who like us has a heart for the women in the sex trade.
Sari Bari: we visisted it for the first time today. like i mentioned they employ women coming out of the sex trade. the full time staff here visits the red light districts and helps these women come work for them if they want out of the industry. we will help at sari bari teaching the women math skills, reading, basic education. Most of the women on the line are uneducated. we will be there just to serve them and love on them. I’m looking forward to that.
The people: In the city its crowed, the streets are busy. Its hard to learn to not make contact when you walk in the city. The relationships between men and women is very different than the states. we don’t look at them, talk to them, and its culturally inappropriate for them to touch or speak to women they don’t know. Obviously foreigners draw a lot of attention here so sometimes they will try and speak to us, but we ignore them. Its strange to get used to, but we have to. Yes, mom I promise I am safe and careful. There are obviously alot of poor people. Children beg, girls/women with babies beg, people just sit on the side of the road and beg. I won’t go into much detail cuz well they are the poorest of the poor here. If you can even imagine it then you are probably right on.
Last tidbits: Food is alright here. I haven’t had anything super spicy. Everything is spicy by nature here, but my eyes have only watered once. Weather is warm and humid. Actually right now its managable cuz i like sun. maybe mid 80’s.But its only going to get hotter, not really looking forward to that. I already am sweaty all the time. I haven’t been sick yet. I have only been here 4 days, but so far no problem. Praise the Lord! Sorry this is so long. I shared what i could and left out a lot too. Hopefully other updates won’t be like this now that you have the basics.
Final thought: I saw grass for the first time today since I have been here. We drove by parks today and it made my heart happy. Space is a beautiful thing. Seeing the grass/park made my day.
Today was my first day at one of mother tereseas homes. It is called prim dan and both females and males are there. It is a home for the chronically ill or disabled. First we did laundry. Lots of laundry by hand. There were about 15 volunteers today, anyone can come and help. There are people from all of the world that come to volunteer. After laundry we helped serve lunch. This is a time to interact with the patients. Some speak english to us, most don’t. They call you aunty and are really affirmed by touch. So i sat with some as lunch was being prepared. I can’t speak much bengali yet so i just say, “nam” which means “name”. Then we just hold hands or i give them a massage.We will be here maybe 2-3 times a week so I’m hoping to build relationships with some of the women there that I will see when i go. This is our first opportunity to serve and love others with God’s love. There is a prayer on the wall all the volunteers read together before they go to the different homes. It brought tears to my eyes because I really do want Christ’s love to be seen in me and its so cool that it can happen by holding a ladies hand.
The two requests from my team members in India are chocolate and Nyquil. I emailed them all and told them I would bring whatever they still needed/wanted from the US and that was their answer. I’m assuming they are experiencing two frequent situations in missions; wanting comfort food and the difficulty of sleep when you are sick. Hopefully, its not the same person and if it is, well at least they have chocolate. Well, I’m off to Calcutta (well, salt lake to new york to london to new delhi and then calcutta but you get the point ) in the morning. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.
Bon Voyage! (again)
Well the upside to my flight being cancelled is a whole another week of life here in the US. I will try again next Thursday the 22nd with the same flight intinerary. The two guys from my team made it to London, but were delayed so they had to stay there for a night and Melissa, the other girl on my trip, will only be delayed a day and her flight leaves this afternoon. I will follow next week traveling the 37 hours solo, but arrive safely in Kolkatta Feb 24th where we will finally all be together. The upside to all this? Well so far has been pot roast dinner, grey’s anatomy, sleeping in unitl 11am today (cmon, yesterday i was up at 3:30am) and movie night with my sis tonight. This is only the first day of all the things I wouldn’t have got to do if I left yesterday. Still to come is hopefully a beach trip, dinners with friends, cold stone ice cream, the akwardness of seeing people that think I’m in India ;) and other random fun things that I would do if I had an unexpected week of free time. What would you do?
I’m a little bummed that I will not be able to travel with my team and I will be arriving a week late, but there are plenty of amazing things that I can do with this gift week. There are even things I will get to do that I didn’t have time for before. Next up…helping my mom put together a new vacuum. If we want to try and figure out why this happened and who is in control, we just have to look at my theme verse (hint: its in the title of my blog). Thanks for your prayers.
I was going to Washington DC for a week. I was all packed, ready to go, said goodbye to work and friends and I was at the airport. My friends had been so kind to drop me off at 5am in the morning to catch an early flight. As I was wandering around looking for the group I was travelling with it dawned on me that they were no where to be found. Luckily I had my flight itinerary so I re-checked what airline I was flying when it hit me, I was at the airport on the wrong day. Two days early to be exact…Unbelievable, I know. It was a funny feeling be completely ready to go to DC and having to go home, go back to work and do it all again two days later.
Now imagine that happening when I was ready to leave for India, darn it for 4 months! But this time luckily it was not because I was there on the wrong day. It was all thanks to the winter weather in NY at JFK airport. My flight was cancelled to JFK and every other flight there was either already overbooked due to all the cancellations or too late to make my connection to London. It was quite a scene trying to coordinate with my trip coordinator in Nebraska, the Delta airline attendent in PDX, the travel agent in CA and British Airways in London. It took two trips to the airport, lots of waiting and phone calls to get me where I am now; home. I had to overnight my tickets back to the travel agent in CA and she has to re-book it all, overnight it back to me and then I will be one my way. I’m not sure when that will be. Hopefully it will be within the next few days, the latest would be a week from now. I believe the rest of my team will get there before me. They had similar delays but because they are all on the east coast it was easier to re-route their tickets. Oh the joy of traveling. Keyword for the day and a shout out to Andrea who taught me this early on with missions trips…”flexibility.”
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I’m on what my dad calls my “Farewell Tour.” I have been running around seeing friends, saying goodbyes, spending lots of time at coffee shops and eating out. Just 3 days to go, I can hardly believe it. I have at least started thinking about packing however I haven’t actually packed anything yet. I might give it a trial run tonight. Some new details for those who may not know….I will be meeting up with my team in NY and from there we will be flying to London, onto New Delhi, India and then to Kolkata(Calcutta). Once in India Melissa, the other girl on my team, and I will be staying with a mother and her two daughters who are in there 20’s for the duration of our trip. Once we arrive and as we adjust to living in our new country, learning the language will be our top priority. Once our language skills are adequate we will make regular visits to the red light district of Kolkata to build relationships with the women there. Other ministry and service opportunities will be with the poor in Mother Teresea’s Homes as well as with Sari Bari, a Word Made Flesh business that employs women coming out of the sex trade.
Please pray for traveling mercies, unity and grace with my other team members and the Lord’s mercy for adjustment and cultural shock. Its been a blessing to see you all before I leave. It has meant a lot to me. I’ll will write again soon from my new home
