Meal like Home

We were so excited to eat a home cooked meal just like in America. Although I've cooked a lot of meals here, this was the first one so far that I've made with a chicken that I had to clean and prepare myself. Before now we've had meals veg style, or with some chicken from a local restaurant. Neal was gracious enough to have the chicken butcher take the guts, neck, and other crazy stuff out of the bag before bring the chicken home to me. Although that stuff was removed, it was still gross cleaning it. Neal even said after watching the process it makes him want to find and purchase the packaged and frozen stuff instead. However, we had a wonderful meal of bbq chicken, green beans, and potatos...so good!

Monkeys

It's very normal to see monkeys almost everywhere you go. They like to sit and hang out on the roof tops, in trees, or just about anywhere. Sometimes you also see them doing other things, such as crossing the street by the cable wires overhead. Neal got this cute video of a mama monkey with her baby on her back crossing the street. 

Our Cleaner and Her Boys

When we hired a lady to wash our dishes and clean our house we didn't know the package would come with her two youngest boys. She is such a precious, gentle spirited woman, but her boys aren't always as gentle. I guess with boys you can expect things like hitting each other, jumping on each others backs, running around, grabbing, pushing, and moving your furniture. It hasn't always been so easy to love the boys when they don't listen to the rules in your house. However, one thing about it is they love Elijah, and he loves them. I've tried to practice loving them well and doing things with them like sitting down and reading a book, or letting them sit and play with Elijah. They are good about sharing their toys or other things, like sunglasses, with Elijah, which is very kind. They like it when he plays with their things. 

The local people have told me to not allow the boys into my house. They've also said to not trust my cleaning lady and to always watch everything she does. However, since I want to follow the teachings of Jesus I know that showing love and kindness to this woman and her children is all part of it.

Apartment Shopping

Neal has faithfully been out looking for apartments for us. He talked with the dad of the family we've been living with, but he couldn't help as much as we hoped. So, Neal has traveled throughout the city stopping and talking to almost anyone and everyone he saw working on or close to a new apartment building. He finally found one that had an opening, so he took Elijah and I to see it. None of us were very thrilled with what we saw, or smelled. As Neal says, "It smells like someone died in there." Not our first choice, needless to say. 

From there we wanted to ride around on a rickshaw a bit to see if we could find anything else. Our rickshaw driver with incredibly smiley and nice. He figured out what we were doing and started helping Neal talk to the people at each apartment building. He would follow us up to see every apartment we looked at and would walk around smiling. It made Neal and I laugh so much, but we were very thankful for his kindness and patience. Whenever Neal would take pictures he would always 

try to stick his head in or tell Neal to take one of him.

We decided to pay him well because of all the help he'd given us, but unfortunately it came back to bite us. We got a knock on our door two hours later and our cleaning lady was telling Neal he needed to give more money to his rickshaw driver (we didn't know why she cared). Then here he comes around the corner...of all the rickshaw drivers in the city this one just happened to be the cousin of our cleaning lady...and one who wasn't satisfied even when we blessed him.




Our visits to different apartments were really good for us in the long run. Even the landlords were so kind and they wanted to hold Elijah while we looked around the apartment. We found the apartment we wanted to purchase during our visits. When we walked into the apartment, even though it wasn't finished, we both loved it, especially me (Kristen). So, praise the Lord, we found our place and we've even finalized everything and will be moving in soon.

These are pictures of the apartment we ended up renting and will move into within a week or so. It's not finished yet, so it might be hard to picture how nice it is, but trust me, it's wonderful!

Washing Clothes

We haven't purchased much since we're not in our permanent place. A washing machine is one of those things we have not yet purchased. We were getting low on clean clothes, so we started brainstorming what we should do. There's a dry cleaner in front of our current house, but we knew that option would be kind of expensive for the amount we would need washed. We'd heard of a person who could get your clothes from your house, wash them, press them, and then return them for a small fee. This option sounded wonderful. The only problem was that we didn't know where someone like this was located or how to find them. Therefore, we knew we needed to ask the family we're living with.

I (Kristen) went next door to talk with the mom about what we wanted. Since my language is very limited, I tend to use a lot of hand motions. They understood what I was talking about, and suggested the dry cleaner. When I expressed my reason for not wanting to use the dry cleaner they understood. The next door neighbor came by to visit and the mom told her what I was wanting. Neal thought he'd seen one of those types of clothes cleaners coming to our neighbors house one day, so I asked the mom if she used one. They discussed this in length, and I didn't understand hardly anything. Then the mom told me that she (the neighbor) could wash my clothes because that's what they do. I asked if they did that as a business, and they said yes. They told me the price and said I could bring the clothes over later.

The next day I got together all our dirty clothes, and took them to her house. When she came to the door she looked at me like I was crazy. I asked her about washing the clothes, and she went to get her daughter who spoke a little English. She translated for me that Friday she would come to wash them at my house. I was surprised that she would do them in my house, but I told her Friday would be great. 

Friday came, and she didn't show. Neal and I just laughed because once again we think we didn't understand correctly, or that we just confused them. Why does this happen so often! It's so funny!

So, I had no other option but to wash the clothes myself.

Neal and I took turns washing the clothes because it was taking a long time and we at different times had to leave to do something else. 

We would have dried the clothes on the clothes line on the roof, but our neighbors had company over and they were all on the roof. So, we rotated the clothes on the chairs with the fan blowing on them. 

Of course, this was the night the grandmother of the family we're living with decided to come visit us and see our house. I was so embarrassed! 

Mango Season

It's mango season here in India, which is great. Mango's are grown all over India and they are wonderful! We bought our first mangos and decided to make a smoothie. Not everything I would usually put in a smoothie (or anything for that matter) is readily available here, so you use what you have and hope it's good. 

I was super excited to use my new blender! We'd had it a couple of days. We didn't want to go too cheap on the blender knowing they can burn up or break pretty easy. However, ours was more ghetto than we thought. The knob broke right off. I couldn't turn the black piece that held the knob, so I asked Neal what he suggested. The fork was the best solution. Although it bent the fork, it worked.

Yum, Yum! 

It made a lot more than we expected. As you can see, Neal's cup was huge! 

Elijah Loving Some Apples

Elijah has been quite fickle about eating actual food. He tends to like something for a very short time and then throws his head back and refuses to eat it. I've tried to feed him things a few days in a row hoping the response will be different, but not much had changed. 

However, we found something that he really liked!

We cut a few slices of an apple and put it in his food net thing (not sure what it's called) and he went to town eating it. At first he looked and examined it on every side, like usual, and then he put it in his mouth. Once he discovered he could chew on it and some juice would come out he didn't want to stop. He started biting hard and then sucking to get the max amount of goodness.