Last one for a while...

Well, I washed my clothes by hand for the first time yesterday, and what a chore it was! We only had these 40 liter buckets to work with (the same ones we use to bathe with) and made the mistake of doing our laundry all together at the same time. I also used too much soap and had to rinse out my clothes 3 or 4 times before the soap was diluted enough to hang to dry. This consisted of plunging the soapy clothes in and out of a bucket of fresh water until the water was too soapy to continue, wringing out my clothes (again by hand) and then fill the bucket with more water and repeat. The clothes are still hanging outside now because they weren’t completely dry this morning. I think the whole process took me about three or four hours.

We haven’t really sunk into a daily routine, since orientation ended last Wednesday and tonight we leave for Mumbai on our project trips, but we always have a daily devotional at the office around 8:30. We have lunch at 12:30 and chai at 3, and dinner at around 6:30. After dinner, the interns and Ryan head back to Tiperary where we usually play games or cards. By the way, they do have Settlers and Risk here! After we come back from our project trips, we will get involved with local ministries and churches.

On Saturday we took a hike to Bare Hill, which was only about 40 minutes. We saw our first rhododendron tree in bloom. As the weather warms, we’ll be able to see more and more red scattered through the hills as the rest of the trees open up. There is a lot of flora and fauna here, which can actually be a nuisance at times. Monkeys are everywhere, and while I haven’t had a run-in yet, they have certainly woken me up once or twice in the orning. The one pictured is a grey languor, there are also brownish rhesus monkeys as well. In addition to the monkeys, there is everything from leopards (very unlikely that I will ever see one, but we got a great picture of Oopi inspecting some fresh droppings!), flying foxes, tons of birds, weird cat-like things, scorpions, and spiders the size of your hand. However, we’ve only seen monkeys, birds, and some medium sized spiders.

As my birthday is tomorrow and we’ll be spending the entire day on a train headed to Mumbai, we had a small birthday celebration during chai today. Everyone is looking forward to the project trips, and the chance to see more of India. I would love to keep you updated in a timely fashion, but it’s unlikely that I’ll have any e-mail access for at least two weeks. So I will

leave you here and look forward to the chance to tell you more about India. And if there is anything you want to hear more about, or if you’re curious about something specific please let me know and I’ll write about it. Thanks and take care!

This is Corin, the Nepali-Chinese-Canadian-Indian son of our friends Bogut and Evey, wearing his Chinese New Year outfit. This kid is the essence of adorability and might possibly give my cousins a run for their money.