We started this blog when we were adopting Zeke. After a while, life became normal again and the daily stuff didn't feel remarkable enough to write about. But now, we have entered a new, fairly remarkable chapter, and daily life feels interesting enough to write about again. That may be an understatement.
I actually started this post a week ago, at our two week mark, but now it's 3 weeks! So this is a bit dated... :) Bear with me as I get into a blogging rhythm...
From top: 1.Getting in the van to head to LAX;
2.On the plane to Dubai
3.In the rented shuttle to take us all to BMS, our boarding house for the first few days
4.A goat outside the slaughter house!
5.Jackson, Zeke, and Maegan trying to stay away at BMS, jet lag hit them the hardest
For those of you just tuning in, we have embarked on the adventure of living in South Asia for a year, or two. And it has been an amazing adventure already. We've been here 16 days, and the first two weeks feel like 4, at least. We left Dave's parents house at 10am Tuesday August 19, and we arrived at our hotel on Thursday August 21 at 2pm. We stayed at BMS, a great little boarding house down in the city centre, right next to Mother Teresa's Mother House until Tuesday, Aug 26. While at BMS, we went shopping to furnish our apartment which we moved into that Tuesday afternoon. When we moved in, we had sheets and towels, and shortly after arriving, a delivery truck brought mattresses, refrigerator, stove, washing machine, dryer, toaster oven (they don't use/sell full-size ovens here) rice cooker and blender, all of which we'd bought while living at BMS. The next 3-4 days was waiting for delivery guys (and trying to communicate on the phone with them about how to find our apartment), locating food, cooking everything in the rice cooker and toaster oven, setting up internet, fixing electrical things, cleaning (wow, the dirt), trying to sleep all night, etc. It's all a blur. But those initial set up days were really fun, because we were all cooking here in our apartment together (the girls and guys apartments are in other wings and towers of our complex), 3 meals a day - lots of rice, oatmeal, dal (lentils) and bananas. That was week 0.
Moving in - the boys room.
The view from our bedroom window - 10th floor of 20 story building.
Oatmeal in the rice cooker every morning! For a while our team was eating every meal together, so the girls brought their ricecooker down, too.
This past Monday (Sept 1), we started week 1. More delivery and service guys ringing the doorbell constantly, as we've continued to get settled, but also we've begun to get out on campuses around the city and meet students. This has been so cool. (More on this in our newsletter: we'll stick to cultural insights and adventures here.)
So today is our third Saturday in K-town, and it was a celebration day: we had our couch delivered! Up til this point we have had bare marble floors with a few bookcases (rented from Mr Mejumder, furniture renter man) and not much else. The delivery men started calling at 6am (in Bengali) to say...something. And then they finally knocked on our door at about 6:30 to "say" that they couldn't fit the couch in the elevator, so they wanted more money because they would have to bring it up the stairs. (Did I mention we live on the 10th floor of a 20 story building?? And no, the stairwells aren't air-conditioned,... or painted... or clean....or enjoyable.) Needless to say, we paid a bit extra to have them haul the two pieces of our L-shaped couch up the stairs on their backs. I'm sitting on said couch now typing!! It's so nice to have a place to sit.
Jenna ( a teammate), Addie, me, Dave at Family Dinner Night in our Living room.
Another victory today is that we made pancakes. Our tradition in the States is that Dave makes pancakes for the kids every Saturday morning. We found pancake mix this week (no syrup yet, but we're still looking) and we finally got a gas hose installed to connect our stove (which arrived the day we did). Interesting tidbit: you have to light it with a lighter or match every time. Anyway, the stove hook-up was one of yesterday's victories. Today's victory was using it to make pancakes! We topped them with butter (Another victory about 3 days ago- we found real butter!!) and sugar (the sugar here is very coarsely granulated, bigger than sand, almost like candy nerds size). They were so delicious! We served them with a cut pineapple that I bought in the market outside our gate a few days ago for 40 Rupees (about $.60). After breakfast we sat on our new couch and skyped with one of Dave's brothers. We're feeling almost like our old selves today!
OH! Another major victory - Dave's phone. He's had an Indian SIM card for about a week, but hasn't been able to use it because his phone was "locked" (despite him going to great lengths before we left to buy an unlocked phone - he was deceived apparently). Last night he spent 3 hours on the phone and internet researching and talking to AT&T in the states, asking them to make an exception and send him an unlock code. We woke up this morning to see that God had blessed his efforts: AT&T sent him the code for free!! So he now has a working Indian phone (we've been sharing since we got here). All we have to do now is go to the Vodaphone "booth" across the street for a "recharge". You pay for minutes and internet as you go here, recharging at a booth every 2-3 weeks.
So we're a happy South-Asian family today! Thanks for all the prayers!
H
Maegan in the "Bathtub" - affectionately called "Bucket Bath"
Cow, grazing in front of our furniture store as we wait for a taxi
Soaking the apples in filtered water with Grapefruit seed extract to kill the nasty stuff. Hooray for the water filter!!
Heidi, Ellie, and Addie at the beach.
The Kids + Karris swimming!
The Beautiful beach!
