Think it will rain? Oh, my mistake...

Yesterday, as I was leaving the Charitable Hospital, I looked up and saw several clouds in the sky. "Hmmmm," I thought to myself, "I haven't seen those in a few months."

So I turned and said, "Kya baraish ho ja-yega?", which means, "Do you think it will rain?" or more literally, "Is rain going to happen?"

They all looked at me with blank stares.

Oh yeah, I thought, my mistake.

There was nothing wrong with my Urdu grammar. There was nothing wrong with my vocabulary. There was nothing wrong with my pronunciation.

It was a problem with my world view.

Local people do not speculate about the future. They just don't do that. Why would you ask if it is going to rain? It obviously is not raining right now. Why would one try and guess if it is going to rain at some unspecified point in the future?

Have a Merry, Merry Christmas ... And a Happy New Year

We had a delightful Chrismas, if somewhat tiring.

Nora Grace was Mary in the Fellowship playon Christmas Eve, and did a good job of displaying her "melodramatic-ness". Miriam was a sheep, and with several other toddlers, acted like sheep; wandering about here and there, going places where they should not be, and generally ignoring their shepherds.

Chrismas Eve we had clam chowder, made from a can of clans we brought back from Thailand this summer. We ate well.

Christmas morning started with a phone call from Grammar and Pop-Pop, then breakfast, and proceeded to gift opening, which proved popular. Miriam was so excited she could hardly speak. (I recognize the fact that she can hardly speak anyways, but the excitement of the moment had her jumbling and mixing up what words she does know). The screetchyness factor from Nora Grace got a bit much at times, but what to do with a five year old.

For lunch, the lovely deVries family came over. (Their two teenage boys may not appreciate being called "lovely", but they really are a lovely family). Since they have two teenage boys, we got them food as presents. Makes sense, doesn't it? We had roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, baked corn, peas and carrots, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pickles, and cucumbers, and Esme's pickled Chow-chow, and then hot cocoa, pumpkin pie, cherry pie, and Christmas cookies for dessert.

Then the visitors started, and we had visitors straight through from two in the afternoon till 8PM . Between having loads of children running about, not having had time to clean up in a couple of days, and all the new presents, the place got pretty chaotic by bedtime.

And a good time was had by all.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

Preparing for the Big Day

Busy week getting ready for Christmas. We got a little tree, and finally got a few presents under it. Nora Grace is ecstatic. Miriam is happy because everyone else is happy.

The extended time in Delhi put us way behind.

We haven't sent anything to our families for Christmas, since we were going to order things off the internet, and our computer is not cooperating. Sorry family!!! Hopefully we can send some things from Thailand.

But we are singing some good songs, and eating some good food, and Lord willing, will have some good fellowship in the next few day.

In Urdu, Christmas is just called BaRa Din, or "Big Day".

Back in Varanasi

Well, after ten very long and frustrating days, we are back in our fair city of Banaras. It is good to be home. We can stay at least through Christmas.

We had a good time in Kathmandu. What a great city: we ate at Mike's Breakfast (he is from Minnesota!) and the Roadhouse Cafe, bought mittens for the girls, rested a bit, and most importantly... got back to Varanasi.

The stamps that Nora Grace and Sam have in there passports expire on January 8, so we have a couple of weeks to decide what to do. We are leaning toward the Thailand option, but shall give it a few more days of thought.

The city is a pleasant 70 degrees during the day, and down to 50 overnight. A little fog in the morning, which will likely thicken in the next week or so. Our house is dusty, but it is our house. What a deal.

We'll keep you posted.

Made it to Kathmandu

Well, with the stamps we have in Nora Graces and Sams Passports, we were permitted to exit to Kathmandu, so Amy and I will not be in violation of our visas.

I took a poll of officials in the New delhi airport yesterday, and the majority said we could come back in tomorrow, so LW, we will return to Varanasi.

So we can at least have a normal Christmas, and then begin working on real visas for the two.

As James says, "As the LORD wills..."

The Continuing Saga... Where will we spend Christmas

In the continuing saga of the visas for Sam and Nora Grace, we now have some sort of "Observation" stamp in there passport, that alledgedly means they are permitted to leave the country. (We tried to fly to Kathmandu yesterday, and were turned back, as they told us the paperwork we had for Sam and Nora Grace was insufficiant).

Amy and I need to leave soon, or else our visas will be in violation. So, LW, we will fly to Kathmandu tomorrow. Then comes the big question...

Will they let Nora Grace and Sam back in the country? The stamp is vaguely worded, and in polling other people who have delt with the Foreign Registration Office in Delhi before, people are split 50-50, some saying they can come and go till January 8 (when the stamp expires), and others saying it only means they can legally leave, but can't come back without new paperwork.

So will we have to split up? Amy stay in Kathmandu or fly to Bangkok to work on visa issues for Sam and Nora Grace while Lowell takes Miriam back to Varanasi to get back to work?

Stay tuned, eager readers, stay tuned.

Discouraging Office visits

The past few days have been discouraging for us.

We came to New Delhi to get a visa for Sam, and for Nora Grace (who just got a new passport, as her old one expired). For Nora Grace when she was born, the process took one long day. We have been at it for five days, and now we only have a thirty day visa for them.

On Friday, we were told to go to the airport with a letter from the (oddly named) Ministry of Home Affairs, and we would get six month visas there. So today, with air tickets in hand, and a letter directing the customs officials to give Sam and Nora Grace visas, they refused to do it and sent us back to Delhi.

After another long day in an office, we now have thirty day visas for the Sam and NGL, and then we have to figure out what to do after that.

Hopefully, we can still get to Kathmandu this week, and at least have Christmas at home, before tackling the Orwellian Offices again. We shall see.

After that, I guess our only option would be to go to Thailand and try to get a visa from there.

It seemed like a good day for Miriam and Sam to have the dierrhea.

So many people are praying for us. This is the LORDS doing.

Still no visas

We are in New Delhi trying to get visas for Sam (who just got his passport), and Nora Grace (whose passport expired, and we got the new one, and now we are trying to get her a visa also).

We have tickets to go to Kathmandu in three days for a visa run for ourselves (we have to exit the country every 180 days, and for Amy, Miriam and myself, our time is almost up).

We have spent 12 hours a day at various offices, getting shunted around, sent to different places, and so on, and still no visas are forthcoming. The latest is that we were told to pick up a letter (but not open it) and give it to the customs officials at the airport on Monday which will allow us to exit and re-enter the country one time, and thus we can continue the process later).

Amy has taken the bulk of the name-calling, yelling, shouting and so on, that gets piled on people who go to government offices here, as she has Sam, and I have been taking care of Miriam in the waiting room. She has been a real trooper.

Goodness, we could use some prayers on our behalf.

PS: if you are trying to contact us by email, our computer is down, and we may have lost a couple of hundred emails.

PPS: For those of you who know Lynnette Stephen, she just had a little baby girls this moring.

Traveling to New delhi again.

We leave Tuesday on the overnight train for New Delhi. We will pick up new passports for Sam and Nora Grace from the US Embassy (that we applied for last month), and then head to the Indian government offices for getting Indian visas in those passports. And then we have tickets to fly to Kathmandu next Monday to get everyone else's regular visas renewed.

We will stay at the SB guesthouse in New Delhi, and then LW at the Tibet GUest House in Kathmandu.

The visas could be painful. Last time we did this for Nora Grace when she was born, I had to put up with quite a few people screaming at me, cursing me, threatening violence, and so on. But such is Indian beauacracy.

Maybe I will send Amy with Nora Grace and Sam and I will stay at the hotel with Miriam. If Amy goes alone and dresses in blue jeans, and refuses to speak Hindi, and acts like a dumb foreigner, maybe they will just do the visas without all the bribes and so on.

We shall see.

It is technically a one hour proceedure, but we have four days scheduled, just in case.

And we go to the carol sing at the Australian embassy, which should be fun.

Going, going, ... not quite gone yet

Our laptop computer appears to be totally dying. There are a couple more things I can do to try and fix it. I may try saving all my files to disc and re-booting the harddrive (not sure if I said that right).

Oh well, what to do next.

We will be in New Delhi for the next week to work on passport and visas again, so that will be a good time for me to go through the psychologically healthy period of mourning for the death of this old friend, before moving on to another.

But where to buy another one? That is the hundred dollar question. Should I wait till February when we go to Thailand, and I can get the best quality (and in the meanwhile just use Internet cafe's for all our computing, which is no fun), or should we get one locally, which are much slower and poorer quality?

I think best about such things by mulling them over for a few days. So we will be doing some Mulling in New Delhi also.

Reguarding Apostrophes

"So what are the jobs an apostrophe currently has on its CV? Before we start tearing out our hair at sloppy, ignorant current usage, first let us acknowledge the sobering wisdom of the Oxford Companion to English Literature..., "There never was a golden age in which the rules for the possessive apostrophe were clear-cut and known, understood and followed by most educated people.""

That is taken from Eats, Shoots and Leaves, the Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation! by Lynne Truss.

It is a really fun and well written book about punctuation, if you are into that sort of thing.

My wife and I have on-going battles about my alleged over-use and her alleged under-use of possessive apostrophes. (Note I did not put an apostrophe there).

Want to know what is really funny? I am at an Internet Cafe, and the keyboard I am using does not have several key punctuation parts, namely the colon and semi-colon. What a deal.