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

a break from the city

the last few days have been......eventful. on tuesday night we worked at daya don and there is a little boy there who can't be more than year old and has downs syndrome. after dinner i was putting his in his crib for the night when i realized that this little guy doesn't get held every night or rocked to sleep, no one sings sweet little songs over his crib when he's restless. so i picked him up and walked around with him and sang to him until he seemed to get sleepy. we all say that all people are equal and that handicapped people have just as much value, but it is so evident in that orphanage that they don't. if they did bashkar wouldn't be there, he would have never been abandoned or some family would have wanted him, but he will never be "normal" so he stays in his crib, just another orphan.
yesterday was exciting as well. if there are any avid blog readers out there see if you can follow me here. urmilla is jorah's sister as well as the wife of the guy we've taken to the doctor and bought medicine for, her family lives on sudder street and we gave them money to go to their village for a few days over christmas. on wednesday she asked stephen and i if we wanted to come to her village with her for the day on thursday and she would cook a big indian meal for us. i think she offered to do this as a thank you for all we've been able to do for her and her family. so we thought, only one day, sounds like an adventure, so we told her we'd meet her at 7am the next morning and go to the train station. we got up early and ate breakfast then met urmilla and her three year old daughter and left for the train. from stories i'd heard last time i was here i knew that in most cases that when you go to the village with a homless person you'll pay for yourself and them, but that was ok with us. so you can understand our surprise when she payed for her own train ticket, which was all of 7 rupees (about 40 rupees make a dollar). while we were waiting for our train i noticed that stephen looked a little under the weather, but he hadn't slept very well the night before and we got up early so i didn't worry about it. we caught our train and forced our way to a few crowded seats where stephen continued to decline. at this point i started asking what was wrong and he said that he was feeling achy and he was cold. i found this rather alarming since i wasn't the least bit cold, and if you know stephen and i you'll know that i get cold when it's like 75 outside and stephen goes shirtless in the snow. i tried to keep him warm, but there wasn't much i could do until we got off the train. our ride ended up being a little less than an hour and we arrived in kalikapur, urmilla's village. as we weaved our way through the streets stephen told me that he was continuing to feel worse. we finally got to the house that her children live in while they go to school that their aunt her daughter also live in. urmilla set to work right away cooking us breakfast over their little clay fire pit/stove. she made us each an egg sandwich like thing that could have fed a family. after one bite stephen said there was no way that he could eat his and not get sick, so we managed to tell urmilla, who speaks very broken english, that he wasn't feeling well and couldn't eat it. thankfully it didn't appear that this hurt her feelings at all and she rushed stephen into the house and made him lay down and cover up with a fleece blanket. he continued to feel bad and dozed on and off for an hour or two while we talked and i looked around. each time i went to check on steve i felt to see if he had a fever and finally about 11am i checked there was no doubt about it, he was blazing, so i called urmilla in there and told her that he had a fever and she became very upset. she told me that we had to go to the doctor and get him medicine immediately. so off we went weaving back through the village streets to a little pharmacy where she told a man that she needed medicine for fever and body pain so he gave us six pills, three to take with lunch and another three with dinner, and again urmilla paid for them, it did only cost 8 rupees though. since we were already back in the heart of the village urmilla picked up some stuff for lunch at the market with the money we'd given her to buy us food. she decided we'd have fish. we came to a man with a bucket of fish and she pointed to one, then to my surprise he pulled it out and smashed it against his dull blade until the head came off. he continued this until it was all cut up and then he wrapped it in plastic and gave it to me. once it was cooked it was great, but i kept having flash backs of the guy smashing it's head as i ate. anyway, we went back to stephen and had him eat a little rice and take the first dosage of the medicine. to be honest we didn't have a lot of faith in it, the ethnocentric part of us came out and we thought how can cheap indian medicine work on stephen? but two hours later we had our answer when his fever broke and he finally re-emerged from the house to join me for our rice and fish feast. he continued to feel better and was back to normal by the time our train left at 5. we spent the afternoon taking pictures like celebrities with all the kids in the village and awed them with the video capabilities of our camera.
you may think, oh how awful, but really being in urmilla's village was the best place for stephen to get sick. it was quiet, and full of clean air (of which there is none in kolkata), and i never would have thought to go to an indian pharmacy and get medicine, but it worked and steve-o is back to himself today. God continues to take care of us and knows just what to do and where to take us each day. that was definitely evident yesterday.
please pray that:
1. we'd continue to be healthy
2. we'd know who to give money/things to and who not to
3. we'd have patience and compassion for people that lie to and manipulate us (ie. tell us they need milk or blankets for their baby and then sell them back for half the price, after telling us they won't sell them back)
thanks!
kristen