Recharge

By choosing to live in a village, there is much that we embrace with enthusiasm and a few things we are slowly learning to accept.  I love being part of a tight knit community in which my children drift in and out of a couple neighbors’ homes all the time, and theirs do the same in ours.   We help each other with daily life stuff, like picking burrs out of the kids’ clothing and minding babies.  Being the introvert that I am (I do love to connect with people, just recharge ALONE), it is challenging to never know when I will get a minute to myself at home.  Just when I have my own children set up for a rest time so I can sneak off to eat some American candy and read a book by myself, the doorbell often rings and I welcome in whoever stands there.  Neighbors float in and out randomly all day long and many others visit too, often seeking a consultation with the Doctor Sahib, my husband.  Most days I make 3-4 cups of tea, some days closer to 10. 

After months of this I started feeling a little panicky at times…”WILL I EVER HAVE A MINUTE TO THINK A WHOLE THOUGHT ALONE!??!”  I considered how I handled this feeling at other times in my life (believe me, as a mom of four little ones, this is NOT the first time my introvert boundaries have been challenged).   I remembered that at other times in my life riding a bike has been an excellent escape for me, (sometimes hauling little people in a trailer, but still alone on the bike...the little people in these pics are just so cute I had to share!  Great memories of VA).  I am a nicer person when I ride a bike, a kinder, gentler me.  The endorphins of a good workout are a fantastic mood lifter, as is getting out of my house. 

My husband was quickly agreed  when I proposed getting a bike for me (he likes a nicer wife, who wouldn’t?)so when we were in the big city this past January, we got a Sanity Saving Cycle and hauled it back up the mountain.  Once most of the snow had snow melted I went on my first ride and it was rekindled love to have the wind in my face as I flew down the road alone.  Usually I ride out on a road that is slated to be the next national highway but right now is perfect for riding because it’s a work in progress so there isn’t any traffic besides the flocks of goats and sheep on their way to pasture.  It is bumpy and rocky and a loooooong way down to the river, but it’s nice and wide for a bike.

Sometimes I just have enough time to coast out 20 minutes (downhill) and then pedal hard back to the house 20 more minutes (uphill).  Other days I have time to ride till the road ends, turn around and camp out on a rock, spending a couple hours watching the eagles, reading, journaling, thinking, meditating, praying before I ride home.   

I still can hardly believe I get to ride my bike in the Himalayas!!!  It’s such a gift, a fabulous benefit of living here.

Walnuts

One of the many perks of living here is that our generous neighbors share their plentiful crops with us.  In the Fall, and occasionally in the Winter, we are given apples by the bushel.  All Winter and into Spring we are given dried local apricots and walnuts in the shell.  I recently took advantage of our beautiful Spring weather to open the walnuts we had accumulated the past few months.

We do own an American style hand nutcracker, but I've grown to prefer the two stone method and love that our newly five year old has mastered it!  One benefit of the two stone method is hanging out with neighbors while shelling the nuts, and then everyone enjoys a good snack at the end. 

 Random: we had to briefly clear out of the way while our other neighbor brought some hay down the path to his house. 

Birthday Boy!

My big FIVE year old!! We had a party with nearby friends.

I made a sheet cake and  my 8 year old decorated it for me, using plastic army men and marshmallows.  Our friends' son shares our boy's birthday (he is now four!) so they also brought a beautiful bakery cake.  It was a good thing we had both because we had about 20 kids and several adults.  I love the simplicity of birthday parties here: eat cake and chips, open presents, and play Doggie, Doggie Where's Your Bone.  Then the kids played together for a while and the adults drank chai and chatted. 

I love getting to borrow our sweet baby neighbors!

and it's now 2012

As a good friend reminded me on FB yesterday, it has been a long time since I posted anything on this blog, over SIX MONTHS!!!  Now that we have more consistent electricity and internet I'll give it another try, although most of you probably keep up with us on FB.  This post is a little rundown, for me as much as anyone, of a few highlights from the last several months. 

September:

Found a house we could rent in the remote area we’ve been hoping to move to for years!

               

Some dear friends from NC visited us!
 

October:

                We moved house for the 4^th time in 2011 J  Our kids say that this is the best place we’ve lived in India because of all the great outside places to hide and play.

November:        

We began settling into village life, enjoyed attending weddings and getting to know our neighbors.  Why yes, Sara and I ARE wearing matching dresses....her dream come true that we have matching Indian suits made AND that we wear said matchie matchies to a 'function' like a friend's wedding.  Sigh.  I love my daughter, what can I say? 

December:

                We continued to settle into village life and had a great first Advent and Christmas here, with guests coming and going all Christmas day and evening to share in the celebration, a first for most of them.   For our Advent wreath we use local clay oil lamps on a steel plate.   It Our kids make gifts for each other and my favorite this year was a secret hiding box Sara made for Caleb. 

January:

To comply with our Visas that give us permission to be here, we have to leave the country every 180 days, so we spent 3 weeks in Thailand, attending some meetings, and enjoying WARM vacation with precious FAMILY--Mark's parents and his aunt met us there, allowing us to have a year's worth of dates in 2 weeks.  It was a wonderful break to be effortlessly warm and eat lots of yummy fruit, salad, and meat, the things we miss here.

While we were in Thailand, our village got pounded with snow.When we returned the last week of January we were welcomed by icy roads, plenty of the white stuff and frigid temperatures.

February:

                Two weeks after we came back, Mark and Sara headed back down the mountains to pick up our friends who have moved here.  While they were gone we got a foot of fresh snow, our pipes froze and broke, and our electricity was out for days.  This winter has been a great time to live like Little House on the Prairie times!  Below is a picture of me organizing the woodpile on our back balcony.  I always dreamt of living like they did back then and have had many days like that since we’ve moved here. 

March has been full of many other exciting events that deserve their very own post.  (In other words, I'm going to bed and hope to post again soon.)

The Darjeeling Limited, Fox Style

 On the train

Waiting to get on the train

 YAY! The first leg of the trip was over!



 Our lunch stop, very tasty fresh hot bread with lentil curry

  The gate that is the international border

 Pigs wandering about at the Immigration Office, Mark is in the background with the official.

 There is a lot to look at in train stations!

Ready to finish this trip (I promised my giggly 9yo I would post this picture she took)

Last week we took a whirlwind trip to ‘neighboring’ Nepal.  We are fortunate to have 5 year visas, but each stay can be no more than 180 days so we have to leave the country about every six months, and going overland to Nepal. We left our home on Monday around 11:30am in a taxi, then had dinner with some friends in a city about 4 hours from here, then we got on an overnight train for about 14hrs.  We arrived around 10am in that city, found our taxi and drove about 6.5 hours to the Nepal border, then were stuck at the border in various offices for about 2.5 hours.  All the paperwork to leave India and enter Nepal is done by hand so I did Crowd Control in the taxi cum sauna (it was humid and well into the 90’s) while Mark went into the offices.   We all would have liked to get out, but there was no place for us to play besides the swampy mud the pigs were enjoying or in the road full of rickshaws, horse carts, buses, bicycles, and cars.  We finally arrived in our hotel in Nepal around 9pm, about 34hrs after leaving our home. 

This little hotel we’ve stayed at once before is run by a quirky, hospitable American and it is a gem, so clean and it has the best American food we’ve ever eaten in Asia.  As much as we enjoy Indian cuisine, it really was a treat to have some down home American cooking!  Dinner was fried chicken and salami and cheese sandwiches with SALAD (a huge treat!!!).  We picked out our black nose boogers (a fun perk of traveling in polluted cities), scrubbed off the grime, cranked up the A/C (wow, it’s hot in the plains!) and tumbled into our beds, exhausted, and slept well.  We woke up to a breakfast of homemade sausage, waffles, and real brewed coffee, and had a leisurely morning, pondering why we had decided to stay just one night at this food oasis.  We could just camp out and eat for a couple of days, but then they might have to roll us back to India.  J

 

As we were eating our lunch just before getting in the taxi, Elijah started throwing up.  We’ve done this same trip before with a pukey child and it’s gross, so our hearts sank.  Mark ran out to the market to get some cheap towels for the taxi ride while Elijah and I hung out in the bathroom, me trying to direct his throw-up away from my traveling clothes and onto the tile floor.  He couldn’t keep anything down, including the No Throw Up Medicine, so Mark was looking for an injection of that in the market too.  We prayed for mercy and healing, and Elijah threw up once more, then was fine.  All the while we are supposed to be leaving to make it to our evening train back in India, so eventually we got him dressed and he was able to keep down some No Throw Up Medicine (Mark couldn’t find the shot version), we swaddled him in a towel and we got in the taxi for the 15 minute trip to the border. 

Elijah conked out and I was better prepared for Crowd Control with the other three watching a movie on the portable DVD player while Mark was in offices to get out of Nepal and back into India.  Unfortunately, the DVD player battery fizzled after just an hour so then the children took turns visiting Daddy in the office, carefully avoiding the pigs and water buffalo between the taxi and the office until Nepal had released us and India had allowed us in again.   

And then we were off!  The road for the first 4 hours or so is really rough.  It’s not curvy and nauseating like our mountain roads up here, but full of car-eating potholes.  When these are filled with water it provides some entertainment and excitement because you never know how deep the puddle is.  With our sickie delay, by the time we reached the city it was time to go straight to the train station, no time to go to a toy store or a book store or restaurant, bummer!   Our train was on time and we gladly boarded, stretched out on our bunks and were rocked to sleep, waking up in the morning as we reached our destination.  The fun thing for children traveling by train in the early morning is watching people poop in the fields as you whizz by in the train; many people living in rural India do not have toilets and do their Main Business once a day around sunrise.  It does fertilize their crops... 

We walked to our hotel from the train station (about 10 mins) and then I left to spend a few days with some American girlfriends while Mark and the kids spent the day in the city.  The next day they took a morning train about 5 hrs north, then got a taxi for the last 4hrs home.  Norpur this weekend, planning to stay for at least a few weeks, hopefully even longer, so I may not be able to post again for a while (internet is too slow there to upload).  But we can receive emails, so please stay in touch!

Back to school

Inadequate…

This is the word that resonates over and over in my mind when I sit down at the beginning of the week to write copywork in small books, think about how to best convey new math concepts, and try to mesh the timeline of ancient history with our Main Book.  I’m not a history buff and still trying to figure out why the same events are assigned dates differing by hundreds of years (and who is right?). In college I majored in Biology and minored in Anthropology, thriving on growing bacterial cultures, staining them, viewing them in the microscope, writing ethnographies as I learned to try to view the world through the lense of people living in it, and dreaming of a life overseas.  I wondered why, given the choice, anyone would choose to instead spend their days cutting out letters and student teaching.  Now I’m wishing I had done a bit of that myself.

This will offend some of you.  I am a reluctant homeschooler.   My reluctance is based on my personal insecurities, and the current limitations in our life, not based on doubting homeschooling itself.  I believe that sharing life and educating one’s children at home can be a wonderful thing and many of you do it so well. I admire those of you who sense a mandate to educate your children a certain way, and I wish I had that conviction.  In this season of nomadic life (which we love!) homeschooling is really our only option and so we do it. 

I was homeschooled.  I hear some of you saying, “That explains a lot,” and maybe it does, and I’m grateful for every bit it explains, so there (haha). My mom did an incredible job in an era when there were very few homeschoolers and fewer resources.  She spent hours at the Goodwill store and library searching for books.  We went on field trips to mountains and figured out gas mileage along the way, then identified birds, real life learning.  A dear friend of ours taught us the higher maths in exchange for us watching her baby boy.  I attended outside tutorials for foreign language, art, science.  I learned a lot and came away with a lifelong love of learning (a repeatedly stated goal of homeschoolers).

This time of year homeschool blogs are full of excitement about ‘back to school.’  Pictures of immaculate rooms overflowing with well organized books, inviting reading nooks lit with matching candles, neatly sharpened pencils, crisp stacks of paper ready for the filling, walls plastered with engaging maps and posters, each one mocking me.  Is that someone’s house or an IKEA ad?    Our homeschool room in this house is such a gift.  We don’t have much empty wall space for art and charts, but we do have huge windows looking out on monkeys and hillsides.  We have space for everything: two small tables for seatwork, one bookshelf of books, and a cupboard full of puzzles, games, art stuff, coloring books, and pencil boxes.  But when we travel (which is about half the time), my homeschool room is an untidy black plastic trunk full of books, papers, pencil boxes, bits of yarn, scraps of fabric.  I’m often just a wee bit afraid to stick my hand in there in case a creature has made a home in it.  Inevitably I forget to bring something…hopefully not a whole subject.  

I glory in my mess of it, knowing that He is made perfect in weakness, and I’m so weak in this area.  It’s another chance for me to trust in a nitty gritty way, another way to put my faith into action instead of it swimming around in my stagnant heart.  I hate the possibility of my kids getting to college age and being limited because of my ignorance or inadequacy.  It is a heavy burden for my husband and me to be the only ones regularly investing in their lives…no Boy Scout Troop Leader, no soccer coach, no Sunday School Teacher, no aunt or uncle nearby. 

Do I really believe He knows the end from the beginning?  Do I really trust Him to orchestrate my children’s educational opportunities and life experiences in accordance with the good works He has planned in advance for them to do?  What about team sports, music lessons, public speaking, and science camps?  What about a teacher who can communicate more knowledgeably or passionately?   He Who clothes the lilies of the field, feeds sparrows, and gives us our daily bread in a miraculous way can also feed these hungry minds.  He is even gracious to give occasional glimpses of this being a good thing for them, instead of a reason we ought to be putting more money in their Therapy Accounts (you know they’re gonna need it).  And He is constantly inviting me to trust Him more.

This and that

This post has pictures of our daily life here the past few weeks.  We've had several lovely pockets of sunshine too, for which we are so grateful!!

Nothing like a crowded, bouncy bus to put our littlest two to sleep on daddy's lap.

The kids in our building performed Little Red Riding Hood for us parents, and they put their money together and even provided refreshments after the play.

Our little 2.5 year old Elijah is giving up his nap in favor of an early bedtime but some days he can't quite make it all day without falling asleep.

Much of our learning occurs just in everyday life, but this is where we do some seat work.  The most exciting school thing lately is learning to read in Hindi and recognizing words around town!

Last week we got the car we ordered when we arrived in April.  God has provided so generously for us!!

We are studying ancient history and enjoyed a YUMMY traditional Egyptian meal: boiled cabbage, whole what flat bread, hummus, pomegranate, melon, cucumber, radish, and sweets made of figs and almonds. Most of the ingredients are readily available here, and the only thing missing in our meal was the roasted goat (we keep a vegetarian house).  Another day we made a sugar cube pyramid (see below).

A cardboard box makes a great boat, train, or an army convoy! 

Sara and I both got a special souvenir when we were in the village last month: LICE.  She has had a better attitude about it than I have and was delighted at the hairdos she could create with the treatment cream in her newly shorn locks.  Love how my girl finds the bright side of things.