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