finally.....

for any faithful readers here are a few pictures of all that you read about.

our first day in kolkata, these ladies threw our marriage feast, we may have gotten giardia right here, what a first day.

another family we got to know that lived on the street. their little girl loved stephen, she'd come running every time she saw him.

urmilla and mohammad; the family that we got to know really well. we went to the village with them and took them to the doctor. there is a good chance we got giardia from eating with them too.

village life.

this is urmilla and mohammed's little boy who lived and went to school in the village while his parents lived on the street in the city.

we became celebrities when the camera came out, children flocked to us from all over the village.

brrrrrrr, darjelling.

ummmm, tea.

the christmas band that came through our hotel playing a spirited combination of jingle bells and for he's a jolly good fellow.

our christmas feast with the other volunteers.

sultana and i.

what?

Biscuits and Gravy

After a grand total of a little over 47 hours in transit, we're home! My mom picked us up from Tulsa this morning and we just got home following breakfast at The Cracker Barrel. We're pretty completely exhausted and ready for a non-bucket shower, and basically glad to be out of airports. It's fantastic to drink tap water again. My head is a jumble of thoughts, so in the next day or so I'll start posting some closing thoughts on our trip and I'm sure Kristen will do the same. Thanks for all your prayers and know that you've all been in our thoughts as well. Now to brush my teeth, because it feels like hair is growing on them.

Stephen

The home stretch

Once again, we're in the Singapore airport. Currently, we're in the last couple of hours of a 13 hour layover that's gone surprisingly quickly. Kristen and I are both feeling well and the trip has gone as planned so far. We had bagels for breakfast this morning and nothing has ever tasted so good. We did get to visit IJM before we left and it was very interesting, but due to lack of internet time and sleep, I'll save that and post about it after we get home. Our next flight is about 6 hours to Taipei, Taiwan, then the 14 hour marathon over the Pacific. Singapore Air is the most luxury we've seen since...well we flew into Kolkata. Assuming no snags, we should be arriving into Tulsa on Friday morning and sleeping as much as possible. We'll post again and go into more detail of our thoughts and feelings about our time in India once we have more time to think about it and more time to type. Until then, sleep well.

Stephen

The last few days

Since we last posted, we've returned to Kolkata for the last few days of our trip. It seems crazy that we'll already be getting on our plane home tomorrow night. Anyway, here's a recap:

On Saturday, our train got into Kolkata at about 6:00 AM. Our stomach troubles had started coming back a little bit so we frantically searched for a hotel, mainly for the bathroom. We ended up slightly overpaying for a room for one night and mostly laid around to recover from our lack of sleep on the night train home.

The next day, we went to church and met up with Kristin and Sarah, two girls Kristen knew from when she was here before, and they invited us to stay in their flat until we leave. That's great because; 1. we don't have to pay. 2. It gets us out of the touristy part of town. After church, we met up with Julian and Charlotte, a couple from the UK and went to the new KFC to get some chicken to take on a picnic to the botanical gardens. There, we got to see the "Great banyan tree" which is in the guiness book of world records for something. It had strange trunks that grew down from branches as it spread out. We have cool pictures we'll be able to post when we get home. Julian and I discovered that the lid of the KFC bucket actually made a fantastic frisbee and threw it around until it landed in the nearby lake/pond. We tried to get it with some long sticks, but couldn't reach it. Then, the park policeman took matters into his own hands. He made some nearby kid roll up his pants and wade out into the pond with a stick until he could reach it. A pretty huge crowd gathered to watch and we clapped when he finally got it. We also gave him a tip. Nothing of note happened the rest of the day.

On monday, my parasite seemed to be back in strength. We spent some time trying to contact the IJM people and Kristen went to a birthday party for a girl that she lived next door to in '05. I took it easy and drank rehydration salts most of the day. By nightime, I was feeling much better and when this morning came, I felt pretty normal. We're definitely going to get some more medicine for cheap prices before we go home though. Today, we are going to visit Sari Bari, the business the girls we're staying with set up to get girls out of the sex trade. They teach them to make blankets and give them a source of income so that they're able to get out of the trade. After that, we're going to the IJM office to meet with a guy named Don. We've been told that all the people that work there are really cool people and that it should be an interesting visit. They just got a new lawyer in his early 30's who was previously a District Attorney in Pennsylvania and moved to Kolkata with his family to work in IJM. Hopefully, we'll meet him too. We've heard some stories about the stuff they've been investigating and I'm really excited to hear about it from them. I'm sure we'll have some stories to post about it.

Well, tomorrow will be our last post before board our plane for home. The last month has gone really fast...and slow, but it's nearly over. Next, we'll be trying to adjust to the 11.5 hour jet lag.

Stephen

A little catching up to do...

It's been a few days since we posted, and quite a bit has happened. Let's catch up.

We took the night train from Kolkata on Monday night and ended up sitting next to a guy from massachussetts, Nathan. He's been travelling through Thailand, Laos, and India prior to our meeting. After a night of several trips to the train bathroom, we got to the end of the train ride. Luckily we borrowed some blankets from our friends in Kolkata because as we climbed during the night, it got colder and colder. After the train, we still had to take a 3 hour jeep ride up the winding road through the mountains. We started getting worried because the temperature continued to drop as we went, and since we hadn't originally packed clothes for the Himalayas in winter, we weren't adequately dressed. We finally got dropped off in Darjeeling to some 20 degree temperatures and made an attempt to find our hotel. After some wandering through incredibly steep streets, we found it. Andy's Guest House was very clean and had hot water. The only problem was that there was no other source of heat.

Now, as you know, my stomach hadn't been normal for a few days and I hadn't been feeling really well, so the thought of a freezing night in that hotel seemed awful. We ate some soup for dinner and bought scarves and hats to keep us warm, then went to the hotel to our night of cold. We filled old water bottles with hot water from the sink and put them in the bed with us for some help. Also, the beds had blankets as thick as matresses that seemed like they'd be warm. To get ready for bed, I brushed my teeth, and took my sandals off; then just got in in all my clothes. The blankets got warm pretty quickly, but when we tried to read our book, our hands nearly froze from being outside the blanket. We fell asleep fairly fast, though, and in the morning, we were actually pretty warm.

Our stomachs were still bothering us though, and after a suggestion from our parents via email, we found a medical clinic. Good old giardia. Amoebic giardia in my case. Go ahead and celebrate Gennie. I've joined the club. Anyway, we got some prescriptions and bought the medicine all within the next hour and the pills have been working great. I actually felt normal today. Kristen still hasn't felt quite herself, but hopefully, she will be well soon.

In Darjeeling, we've been wandering around being very touristy. While we are in the Himalayas, it's been too foggy to see anything of the views for the first two days, which is disappointing. We have eaten some good Tibetan food though. It's interesting to see how much more the people here look Nepali or Tibetan than Indian. I guess that makes sense though. There are some rosy cheeks to be seen. Today, we spent like 4 hours hiking around the city trying to find the Tibetan Refugee Self Help Center. We asked multiple people and saw lots of other things looking for it, but we could never seem to find the right road. We finally got some good directions, though and fter walking down the mountain for about 1000 ft in elevation, we found it. We saw some Tibetan Rugs being made and other such things and it really made me think about Khaden Rugs and their operations. The sun also came out some today and we got our first views of the actual mountains. Freaking huge. They don't look a whole lot different than the Rockies, but their base starts thousands of feet higher than where we are, which is high in itself.

Last night and tonight, we got a different hotel that has a woodburning stove in the room. It's a really old hotel and very cool. The fire was nice last night and we were brave enough with the heat to take showers. It's been quite relaxing to be here and we're really glad to have a bit of a rest before we have to go back to school. We've drank a lot of fresh darjeeling tea, which has been amazing, and developed a taste for baked beans on toast for breakfast. That being said, we're really excited to get back to Kolkata so we can visit the IJM office and see the company that our friend started with girls in the sex trade. It will be nice to be warm again too. We catch a night train again tomorrow night and get back to kolkata on saturday morning. Less than a week until we leave. It seems crazy. Could someone comment and tell us what the weather is like in Fayetteville? Going from 70 degree temps to freezing cold has thrown off all sense of what it's like at home.

Continue to pray that our medicine would kill whatever is living in our bodies and that our stomachs would return to normal.

Stephen

we win, we beat you to 2007

Happy New Year! we had a great time last night; my friend kristin, that i stayed with last time i was here, finally got back to kolkata and she had a new years party. we played pictionary and there was even a little beer. but stephen and i didn't partake because we've both got something reeking havoc in our stomachs. she and her roommate have a big flat so we stayed the night there and had french toast for breakfast this morning. i guess we haven't posted in a while because we haven't mentioned that we're going to darjeeling tonight. since we're spending our entire christmas break here we decided to spend about three days in darjeeling and relax since that will be our only chance before we start back to school and work. we're taking a train tonight then we'll have a two or three hour jeep ride up into the mountains. it's beautiful there and they have bacon, which stephen is really looking forward to.
that's really about all, stephen has been sicker than i have and i'm off to a pharmacy to find him some medicine so that his train ride won't be a horrible experience. please pray for him, he's had a rough day or two, as well as for me. when we get back we're going to meet up with some people from the ijm office and go to one of the red light districts, so we're looking forward to it, but some time of rest will be nice. our next post will be from the himalayas!
kristen