Time to tell on myself...

I might have had a few faux-pas during the last 3 1/2 weeks (scratch that, A LOT) so in my effort to battle pride, I will share a few...

1) While riding in an auto-rickshaw (which they just call "auto") I wanted to try out some of my new Tamil skills. The driver asked if he was supposed to turn right, to which I replied, "Yes" in Tamil ("Amma"). He looked in his rearview mirror at me like, "What is wrong with you, lady?". I immediately realized what I had done. I had put the stress on the wrong part of the word. I had called him "mom".

2) (this one is both of us) We have been frequenting lots of shops in the area trying to get a feel of what is available in Chennai. There is one little treasure of a store that we found called Conne Xions (we weren't totally sure how to pronounce it, so we just called it "Connie Zions"). We kept giving auto drivers the name of the store, but they were always really confused. A few days later, Neil was cleaning up in the kitchen and started to throw away a "Connie Zions" bag. He looked at the website address and noticed that it said 'Connexions' all in a row. The store is called "Connections".

3) (I think this one takes the cake) I had been told that auto drivers strike fairly often in the city & that you have to watch out to make sure you aren't trying to travel very much on the days that they strike. We had just passed a group of auto's parked in front of a sign that said, "Stand for Auto-rickshaws". Me, trying to be really observant & savvy, leaned over to Neil while we were riding in the bus and said, "I think the auto drivers are getting ready to strike". I pointed the sign out to Neil and instead of the "What's wrong with you, lady?" look I got the, "oh my goodness, I can't believe you just said that," look. He responded to me by saying, "It's a place where the auto's park".

-c

Recommendation

Our friend, Marianne, wrote a beautiful post on her blog entitled "Why I Love Orphans". I highly recommend reading it... http://thegrossfam.blogspot.com/.

Our Father is good.

-c

View from our laundry

I was hanging clothes out to dry today and felt inspired. Here's the view from our laundry...

"Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel." (Isaiah 12:6)

Be blessed in the mundane today. He is near.

-c

The Night Life

Of the many things that we are adjusting to in India, one is the time that things happen. For example, our favorite restaurant doesn't even open for lunch until 12:30. When we go out for dinner and arrive at a place around 7, we are generally sitting in an empty restaurant. Most people do not eat until at least 8 or later.

This is a video of one of the more organized street crossings we've been to in a part of town called Saidapet ("side-a-pet"). Usually you just cross when there's a small break in the traffic, but here there were lights and everything. This was around 7:30, when things were just starting to pick up.

Perpetual Saturdays

While we were back in the States, Courtney said that she felt our lives felt like they were perpetual Saturdays. Not in the sense that we get to watch cartoons every morning and go outside and play. But in the sense that Saturday is the day that you usually get all those little tasks done that have been waiting on you all week or all month. Every day it seems we get to make a list of all those little things that we haven't got to yet...balancing the checkbook, running to the store to get some household things, catching up on email, fixing things around the house.

While this might sound appealing to some, after a year of it, we are both ready to have a reason to look forward to Saturday. It will be so nice to get into a routine and a schedule where we are able to see a lot of the same people, build great relationships, feel comfortable with our lives, know what to expect.

Saturdays are great, but I'm a guy who is actually looking forward to Monday.

Pressure cookers are not for soup

Despite lacking many useful items, I braved my way into the kitchen to cook my first dish: Eastern European Lentil Soup (I know, I know, not an Indian dish, but the only dish I had all of the ingredients for). One of the 'useful items' I don't have is a stockpot, which comes in handy for soup. The kitchen did come stocked with a pressure cooker; the only item large enough to hold the amount of soup I was cooking. It was all pretty uneventful until the last 10 minutes of simmering. I checked the pot, stirred it, and decided it needed an additional 5 minutes. I put the lid back on (*ahem, the pressure cooker lid) and unknowingly latched the lid. For those who have used a pressure cooker, you know that latching the lid is what guarantees the "pressure" part...

I'm sitting in the living room, checking email, when I hear a hissing sound. I stop, concerned it is the soup, but then resume my emailing when I decide it isn't. I keep hearing it. I stop again, this time deciding to glance into the kitchen. The closer I got to the soup, the louder the hissing got...I realized it was the soup. I quickly unlatched the lid and a subsequent "BANG!" was heard. My soup had been effectively pressurized.

This all came after Neil and I spent some time on our rooftop enjoying the stars and thinking thoughts that only come when one is under the stars. The kind of thoughts you don't have time to think about during the rest of the busy day. Ironically, one of those thoughts for me tonight was, "What happens if I burn the house down while cooking? We have no insurance here....hmm, I hope that doesn't happen."

Thankfully, I was spared tonight.

-c

What is it?

We will give a year's subscription to our blog + a postcard to the person who can first correctly guess what this useful item is.