Steve McQueen does Kolkata

After a brief time between computers, it's now our 2nd day in Kolkata. We arrived safely, but not calmly, on wednesday night, and took quite possibly the craziest cab ride of all time from the airport. It was like we were in the chase scene in Bullit and Steve McQueen was driving, except he was blindfolded and there were no lanes on the roads and all the other drivers were acting similarly. But, we got there nonetheless, and eventually haggled our way into a room at the Times Guest house on Sudder street. We might have the only double bed in Kolkata, as well as a western toilet. And it's the cheapest place we came to that wasn't a dormitory.
We eventually got to sleep the first night feeling pretty overwhelmed. It took me like half of the cab ride looking out beside the streets that we weren't driving through a poor part of town, it was all like that. Thursday, we woke up and discovered that, like cab-drivers and the like seem to do, all public transportation was on strike for the day, and as a result, most of the shops and such were closed too. That may sound bad, but for my first day in this crazy city, it made it a lot calmer trying to walk around. We ate breakfast at Blue Sky Resturaunt where for like $2 we got a cheese omlet, "musli fruit curd" (amazing), and orange and pinapple juice that were squeezed when we ordered it. After breakfast, we went to look around the city and quickly discovered that a family that had lived on our street when Kristen was here before was still there. She had spent a lot of time with them previously and when we came walking down the street, Jorah, the mother, recognized kristen and came running out to meet us. We sat and talked with them for a while and told them that we had gotten married, which prompted them to throw us a wedding feast. They have almost nothing to their name, and in the past, Kristen and the other people she was with would ask Jorah to cook them some go0d indian food and give them the money to buy the food. This was what we did this time as well. So, we went off exploring for a while longer and took a nap in our room until 2:00 when it was time for the party. There was chicken, rice and dal, and chai for everybody and was fantastic. They even went easy on the spices for us. The rest of the day was pretty standard; a parade of goats through the street, a hindi cover of the theme from "Chariots of Fire", and some rummy (I won). Our stomachs have been great so far. Today we're going to try to find the Missionaries of Charity mother house to get set up working. Pray that it would be clear where God would have us work and how we can best minister to the people here. There is so much poverty that it hasn't really even hit me yet. There is so much that can be done with so little, but it's so hard to figure out what to do. Thanks again for your prayer and support.

Stephen