Visitors!

K, first of all, sorry that it has been so long since I last posted. Things were crazy, and then Mom and Karina came to visit (yeah baby!!) I feel like so much has happened…this may be a long post folks. I should have just posted a day at a time while they were here, but clearly I didn't.

Anyways, it was such a good 2 weeks with them! I'm so incredibly thankful for the time that they got to spend here, and all the sweet memories that were made. Definitely refreshed my heart.

I took the train to Delhi Sunday the 17th and picked Mom and Karina up from the airport. We spent two nights there and then headed back to ddun. Going to pick them up was interesting. I took the 5:10am train and got to Delhi about 12:45pm. After I got there I took a taxi from the train station to the mall and just hung around there for the day til their flight got in. It was a very big (and extremely nice) mall, but spending about 7 hours there, I definitely have had enough of it for a while. I think I literally went in every single store. I'm sure people wondered why I kept walking by….over and over again. Ha. I do have to say though, I ate subway for the 1st time in 4 months and it was so good! After a couple of hours I decided to kill some time by going to a movie. This ended up working out perfectly because I had my heavy backpack with me. I tried to get the guy at the information desk to just let me keep it there for the day, but he wouldn't let me. When you go to a movie though, if you have anything more then a purse they make you check it. So I could keep my wallet and phone with me, but my backpack had to go in a locker. After the movie I went out the back way and "forgot" my backpack for the day. I know that's kind of cheating the system, but the nice security guard man didn't seem to mind too much when I came back to claim it at the end of the day. It was so nice not to have to carry that heavy thing around all day.
Got a taxi and left the mall around 8:00pm to head to the airport. This was the part that Mel and I were a tiny bit nervous about just cause It was dark at this point, but it was no biggie and I got to the airport about 8:30. Mom's flight was delayed a few hours, so by the time they finally got in it was around 11:30. Oh my goodness, it was so good to see them walk through those doors. Didn't seem real. My mom and sister came to India! They were here with me. God is so good.
By the time they finally got through baggage claim, customs, etc, and I saw them, I had been waiting almost 3 hours outside the airport. People would come and go and I would still be sitting there. Everyone was curious about the white girl hanging out by herself and so over the 3 hour period I made lots of friends. By the time Mom and Karina finally walked through the door the whole group of guys who were also "waiting", were cheering. Haha. They were so happy for me. It was pretty funny. We hugged, grabbed a taxi, hugged, got to our hotel, hugged, hugged, and maybe hugged some more. Man, it felt like longer then four months since I had seen them last. It definitely did my heart a whole lot of good. There were some tears of joy involved for sure.

By the time we actually got checked in and settled in our room it was almost 1:00am. We were all starving and pretty disappointed to find that nothing was open. (surprise, surprise) so we settled for some of the many fruit snacks and granola bars that they brought me and got some sleep. Monday we just hung around the hotel and got lots of rest. It was a good day. Tue. we took the 5:50am train back home. That was an adventure to say the least. Getting to the train station and on the train was a little frustrating. My goal was to have a taxi already lined up the night before, get up early, and be to the train station with lots of extra time since it's huge and none of us really knew what we were doing or how to find the right train, car, seat, etc.
K, so 1st of all, our driver was just a jerk….he also ripped us off which was frustrating. He was late. Then started for the airport…not where we needed to go. Finally got going the right way, but then he stopped for the "luggage police". Luggage police, smuggish police. Yeah right. No one else stopped at this "check point" of his. He told us that they needed 1000rps ($22) before we could leave. I may be wrong but I highly doubt any of this was true. He was just trying to get some extra cash. Sadly it worked. He and I argued for a while, but he was refusing to go anywhere til I paid him and I was scared were going to miss our train, so I did.
We finally got to the train station. He and I had a conversation that went like this. Taxi guy- "park? It will be extra." Me- "How much extra will it be?" Taxi guy- "175rps" Me- "Why so much? It doesn't cost that much to park" Taxi guy- "I give you good price. 175prs final." Me- "Fine then, no I don't want you to park. Too much. Just drop us please."

Soooo. What does he do? He parks wayyyy on the other side of what technically isn't even the actual train station and tell us to get out. We're stupid and follow cause we have no idea what else to do. We split the heavy suitcases up between the 4 of us and proceed to climb over a little wall thing and over about 7 sets of tracks. Like where you're NOT SUPPOSED TO WALK. As we're dragging all the heavy luggage behind us. I'm sure we were quite a sight to behold. We f.i.n.a.l.l.y make it to the station with about 15 min til our train is scheduled to leave. Our lovely taxi driver tried to leave us at platform 1. He was ready to be paid and high tail it out of there. He knew just as well as I did, that we were not supposed to be at platform 1. And since the agreement was for him to help us find our train, that's what I wanted him to do. After 10 min of walking back and forth trying to find our names on the list and asking for help a few times, he and I finally discovered that we were supposed to be at platform 15. Did I mention we were at 1? We had 5 min to get all the way across the train station to the next to last platform and find our seats before it took off without us. Mr. taxi driver decide this is the perfect moment to let me know that he now needs his 175rps for parking. Ummm seriously? He SO did not park. Where he decided to "park" is partly what made us come literally like 1 min from missing our train. He frustrated me. I don't think I did a very good job of being Jesus to him. Oops. I should have done better. I know I have no excuse.
We ran across the train station and jumped on our train with literally about a minute to spare. But we did make it, which is all that really mattered I guess. Got here about 1:30pm on Tues, had some delicious lunch that Mel had sweetly prepared for us, unpacked a little bit, and I showed them around Rajpur. Wed. we got up and headed out to JoyBells. I took them out there the same way that I always do it when I'm by myself. It was fun for them to experience Indian public transportation for the 1st time :) Getting to take them to the place that I've fallen in love with to meet the kiddos that I adore, was so awesome. I loved it. They loved it. The kids loved it. It was really neat to get a chance to show them where I spend so much of my time, and super cool for them to meet the kids that I get the privilege of hanging out with so much during the week. We spent most of the day there and then headed home for some of Bimla's cooking, which I've grown to love and look forward to, but Mom and Karina certainly weren't big on. They ate it with a smile upon their faces though! :)

Thurs. we grabbed a tuk-tuk and headed into Dehradun for the day. We had so much fun! I took them to some of our favorite local stores and then we ate lunch at China King. (While they were here, I took them to all my favorite restaurants so far…this was one) After lunch we hit Melting Moments to grab a brownie for dessert(a place I tend to visit fairly often…can’t go wrong with a brownie and a coke for about $0.50) and then spent most of the afternoon at Palton Bazaar. It rained on us, (1st time in almost a month) but we still had fun. Did some fun shopping at all the little hole in the wall shops lining the streets. It was fun for them to experience the local market. After Palton we walked to Barista and had some coffee. Mel and I have dubbed it the place to go if you just want to kind of escape the craziness of India for a few moments…definitely visit at least twice a month. It's almost like India's version of a Starbucks. While we were there I introduced Mom to one of the employees that I've become friends with and he paid for her coffee. Apparently she made quite an impression :) After coffee we wandered around Dehradun for a little while and then headed to dinner at my favorite place (by far.) Motti Mahal. In my opinion they have the best Butter Chicken and Dal Makhani in all of Dehradun. We ate at about 6pm and since Indians generally eat so late, there was like no one else there. That turned out to be a good thing though, because we could not keep it together. For some reason we all thought everything was so funny. Part of what amused me were the things that Mom and Karina thought were so odd/different. I guess a lot of things that were weird or different to me at first have just become fairly normal now, and so it was funny to watch them wonder. Trust me, in India you "wonder" about a lot! It's just so different than home and what you're used to. We had so much fun though, and Mom ate the butter chicken like a pro even though her mouth was completely on fire. Her face was literally red and her body felt hot from the spice. That was another very amusing thing to Karina and I.
She has the most sensitive of a tongue out of anyone I’ve ever met, but she tried/ate everything regardless. Have I mentioned I love that woman? After a few pictures, many a pepsi, lots of good food, one to many laughs and thoroughly amusing/entertaining every server in the restaurant we headed home to say goodbye to Dave, Mel and the boys who where headed to a church retreat for a few days.
Fri. We got up and walked to the Block Printing place. It was cool to show them that neat place. I've spent many a morning there working on different stuff and have become good friends with sweet old Mr. Rahaman. When it comes to words, we can't communicate all that well, due to his lack of English and my lack of Hindi, but we've learned over time how to work together, and somehow we can usually get what we're trying to say across one way or another. He is seriously one of the sweetest old men I’ve ever met. We did some fabrics and then headed back to Rajpur, walked up the hill, (that becomes SO much longer when you’re walking) to Moravian. I showed them where all the tailors that we use work and showed them some of the previous stuff the either Mel or I had had them working on. It was cool for them to see that place, just cause now it's one more place that they can actually picture when I talk about it. And they got to meet all the tailors that we've (mostly Mel) been working with. After that we walked back down the hill, (If the hill is worth mentioning, you know it very big and very long. Just mentioning.) got on a tuk-tuk and went to Pizza Hut for lunch. After lunch we went and picked up our signs (tell you about those later) and then headed home for dinner. We had some left-overs and then made hot fudge sauce and home-made brownies, which we ate snuggled into warm pj's with vanilla ice cream (freezer burnt…cause apparently that's the only way you can get it around here) Yummy. It was a good night.
Sat. We went to block print again to try and finish things up and then also stopped by Moravian to check on a few things they were working on. After that we walked down to a little café/coffee shop right in Rajpur called Chhayah and had lunch. Let's just say I know now what NOT to order if I ever go back there for lunch haha. Everything that we ate were things that I had never tried there before…I've just always ordered coffee, or breakfast, never lunch. I think I'll stick to what I know :) After lunch we headed up the hill to Jojo and Richa's local home furnishing studio. That was fun for them to get to see. Mom purchased many a candle stick, among other things, that I'm sure will be appearing in our AR living room very shortly. They have SO much fun, cute, cool, stuff at their shop. They design and build it all. It's pretty cool. Anyways, after that we headed to the sign guy (later) and then we went and had McD's Indian style.
Sun. We went to the river. That was soo much fun. We had a picnic and then explored. I had been to this particular river one time before with Dave, Micah, and TP. We had explored a ways up the river and discovered some really cool, beautiful, waterfalls and caves. I wanted to take them there and show them what we found last time, and also explore further up the river with them. We walked all the way up until it dried, and you couldn't go any further. It just got prettier and prettier along the way. It felt like we were in some exotic tropical rain forest or something. It was gorgeous. God’s creation is just plain stunning sometimes. We had lots of fun climbing big rocks, finding waterfall after waterfall, exploring etc. After the river we came home and just hung out for the afternoon. Played lots of cards and relaxed. That night we went to Orchard for dinner. Easily the best restaurant in Rajpur. It was yummy.

Alrighty. Well, since this post is already miles long, stay tuned for the next week of our time together tomorrow. Adios for now.

Here's a few pics