Home Sweet Home

We arrived back from our trip on the Saturday evening after two long days of travel and exhaustion. We basically were sent into the city to learn about the culture and to understand better how everything works in India. Luckily for us, Anni was with us who was living in Mussoorie and traveled around India for a while. Thus, she understood a lot more about how to get around and how to not get scammed.

From the get go, we left and walked around to the taxi stop which was an easy 30 minute walk down the mountain from where we work. Upon arriving, we were swarmed by taxi drivers wanting our business, noticing that we're foreigners and charging us triple the amount. Anni bargained it down to 80 rupees which was still double the amount that we were supposed to pay, and that was our first encounter with being scammed. We then worked our way to the bus stop and got onto a bus, which has fixed prices and that was okay. However, Indian people from the mountain areas can not handle transportation and motion well at all. This created a huge issue as people were sticking their heads out the window and letting their lunch fly free from the bus. With their elbows hitting you in the head and liquid flying through the air outside the bus, it created a fun experience for all of us who were not expecting this turn of events.

The essential task of traveling to the city was to develop an understanding of the religious customs of the people as we ventured towards the Ganges river. We arrived to see people bathing in it, idols and statues surrounding the entire area and a 3-5 storey statue of Shiva guarding the area. We approached closer to observe (as it was one of our tasks) and spoke to people who were placing ashes of deceased loved ones into the water and others who were bathing in the water on the opposite side. To be honest, the water was not as I imagined it to be. The surrounding area was completely paved and well maintained, and the water actually looked clean. If I hadn't known any better, I would have assumed that the water was clean and touched it myself. The following day, it was actually within our to do list that we stick at least our toe into the water. Mm, it was pretty gross. What is more gross, is that we were actually given chai (amazing indian tea) from a man who had been working in that area for 43 years. . .from what I imagine, the water he used actually came from that river, but I don't really want to think about that since it would have been rude and offensive to not drink it. The water was boiled and placed through a filter (although, who knows when and how that filter had been washed). Yup, it was a pretty hectic and stressful trip as we were surrounded by beggars and scammed for most of the trip. It definitely gave me a different perspective of India since my original impression of India was in the mountains, with less people, more monkeys and in a clean area. It's definitely great to be back "home" and being able to relax a bit more before going out into the other city areas for our project trips.

I'm still finishing up with the orientation of culture and office etiquette in India, so I have not yet started the work. I will be traveling to the project site in February, so please pray that I will be able to put my skills to the best use and that everything will go well with the projects. From what I understand so far, we are to build a 7 storey building on a 700 sq ft plot of land. The other project is 1.7acres and I'm not sure what we're doing with that building yet. I will continue to update you all on the things we do and post pictures for you to see what I've been up to. The trip definitely had great views and we took lots of photos, so I will link you once I get them from our photographer. Miss you all!

 Yes, we do have settlers here =)

 The Furnace - our source of life energy

 View from the guys dorm

 THE FOOD IS AMAZING!!!!!

Our kids =)

Going on a 2 day trip starting in a few hours. We're heading off to two of the cities (just the 4 interns) and we're going to spend the night in one of them. We have some tasks that we have to accomplish so it's going to be like a scavenger hunt sorta thing going on. I'll update you all again after that. I won't have internet access or anything so I'll see you in a few days. I should have a cellphone by the time I come back. Cheers~

Arrived at Destination point!

 The "Line" onto the Airplane heading for India.

 Upon Arrival at the Airport in India

 Taxis outside of the India Airport

The flight to India was pretty good, we were switched to the continental airlines since United canceled our flights. There were over 100 movies available to watch. Likewise with the tv shows that they had available. When we arrived, we searched for our bags for approximately 30 minutes. After they didn't come out, we went to baggage claim to ask them to check out our baggage. We were told to speak to the flight attendants, who in turn told us to go back to baggage claim and speak to them. After another 30 minutes of going back and forth and also checking other baggage isles someone at the baggage claim told us that they could help. We found Stephen's guitar but apparently my bag is missing. All the clothes and water filtration systems I was supposed to bring, alongside my contacts and some food was found to be still in Chicago. So they said they would grab my stuff and send it straight to Mussoorie by tonight - 12am. 

Now for the ride. It was crazy with an accident and thus causing grid-lock. How do you bypass a grid-lock? You drive on the other side of the road of course! =) The place we arrived at though is awesome. Great toilet facilities! Huge amount of property and a great view for the office. Since we arrived at 7am, our morning exercise was chopping wood and of course it was my first time cutting wood. After doing that, I was rewarded with an office space on the loft area of the building. The engineers were placed downstairs and the architects up here. It's pretty cool being up here but the windows for the great views are down there. 

The Family

Allow me to introduce you to the EMI Family of interns 2011 Spring.

Flights

At the Newark Airport right now. Our connecting flight got canceled at Chicago so we weren't able to do anything. UA Airlines wouldn't switch our flights at first so we had to walk around the airport from one wing to the other and all the way back to get the flights changed to continental. =) That was a great flight here. So far Lauren and I have slept straight through both flights. Stephen slept for a small portion of the flights. One more to go - the 14 hour flight to Delhi, and then a 4 hour train ride to Mussoorie and then a 1 hr car ride to the main campus!

To all the interns: Hope all your flights and travels to the offices go well! Miss you all and we'll see each other again for sure! God bless and best of luck with your projects!

End of Orientation

I'm about to fly out to India in an hour. Thought I'd update you all on what we've been doing. There was a lot of training this week and the main focuses were on strengths, personalities, spiritual gifts and poverty. It's been pretty sweet getting to know the interns here. In just 1 week we have become family with everyone, not excluding anyone. Each meal we'd make an effort to sit with new people and continuously strive to get to know each other. It's been a real blessing learning, encouraging, and now serving with all of these great people. We learned everyone's name in the first day and then got to know each person more in depth soon after. It definitely does not feel like we've only known each other for one week, instead it feels like it's been years since we've known each other and I'm sure we will continue to know each other better for many years to come.

Funny story of the week:
My room has 4 beds in it, to which myself and 3 other awesome room mates crash at night. My bed is significantly closer to the bed next to me due to lack of space in the room. Paul, aka ninja, sleeps next to me and unbeknown to me at the time, he sleep talks and can hold a good conversation in his sleep. At roughly 2am, when I'm dead tired, he sits up in his bed, grabs my ipod and the conversation goes something like this:
P: "Hey.................Hey!....What's this?" as he points at my ipod on my bed since I was listening to music.
J: "It's an Ipod"
P: "A what?"
J: "an ipod......................."
P: "Oh! can I have it?"
J: "sure. take it! here you go"
P: "Oh! Can I have it?"
J: confused I say "uhh.. yah? I said you can take it.. here just take it"
P: *wakes up from his sleep talking* "OH! SHOOT SORRY!" drops my ipod back on my bed, flips to face the other side and passes out all in 1 second.

yup. he woke me up and I had the biggest headache afterward. and he did it all in his sleep so he didn't even remember the next morning.

Here's some pictures throughout the week of our events and Colorado Springs:

Outside playing Ninja since the rock climbing place was still closed and the owner was late.

Garden of the God's - the alternative to Rock Climbing was hiking.

An American Joke about Canadians =)

A bunch of guys got together after discovering some new land, so the decided to name it. So the first guy asks; "what should we name our land?"
Guy 2 "C EH?"
Guy 3 "N EH?"
Guy 4 "D EH?"

And so it was called Canada =)

I guess I'll work backwards on this post and list the things I did today in a reverse order.
During the cultural training that we had today the most important thing I learned was "It's not right or wrong, it's just different" The story comes from a big white guy who was walking through India, on the streets, and had large amounts of food thrown at him as he walked down the street. The main reason was because in India, they had seen white people before, but it was usually in a car as they were on their way to some place. Never had they seen a white person walking down the street. You can imagine how this guy must have felt when people were throwing food and other wonderful things at him as he walked down the street, but what he found out was, they just wanted to shake his hand or take a picture with him and that was their cultural way of getting his attention. So lesson of the day for me was "It's not right or wrong, it's just different".

Now, this ties into something interesting I found out about India as well, which I have read in books but thought to be a myth or an event that I would be able to fortunately avoid. However, with a strange twist of events, I have unveiled that it is true, and I will for sure have men in India approach me and hold my hand and/or put their hand on my leg. Yes, so for those that know me well and how well I do with physical contact of any person (male or female) at that point in time, I will be saying "It's not right or wrong, it's just different"

So with a change of pace, I mainly wanted to blog about the church I went to today. It's called open life church and it was phenomenal! There were easily 1000 ish people worshiping at the same time at this church and the worship was like an urbana worship conference!  People were essentially running up to the front like it was a mosh pit and then jumping up and down as they sang praises to God =) Here's a short clip of it. . . I had to make it really short cuz it was in service and it's weird to take pictures/videos during service. Sidenote for Architects: they have a crazy structural ceiling system that I forgot to take pictures of but I'll take pictures tomorrow when I go again. The I-Beams are rotated at a 90 degree angle, so it's more like an H-Beam. We spoke about that on the way back to base-camp and were unsure of why the structural engineer or architect would do that. The span that it allowed for was pretty big though.

So it begins!

First of all, thanks to everyone for the support that you've given me with fund raising, prayer and also the encouraging words that you gave me before I left. The parties were great! and I'll be sure to return the favor when I get back. A quick update with the support funds: I'm very thankful to have great friends and family that would support me as much as you all have. I'm pretty much paid off for the funds and will be paying the rest off myself. Any contributions above and beyond that will go towards the EMI who will put it to great use in their ministry.

The morning today began with the flight out from Buffalo Airport this morning at 8:00am. Therefore, waking up at around 6 to get ready and ensuring to arrive much earlier than 8am. The flight had multiple transfers, a total of around 9 hours and unfortunately, no food =(. Upon arrival was also an interesting experience. Imagine, stepping out of a plane and then not being able to breathe at all. . yup! that was me =). I was quite excited to see the mountains in this area but obviously more shocked by the altitude change. It took about 2 minutes to adjust slightly, but then it kicked back in when I started walking again.

Here's the first view of Colorado from the airport.

The dorm that we're staying at is surprisingly mansion-like. From the description, they mentioned that it was supposed to be like a bunker with a few dorms. But when we drove up it was like a typical house that you'd be able to find on Bridle Path. The backyard is huge and there's about 3 outdoor jacuzzi's, a ping pong table, an out door beach volleyball area set up and multiple meeting/family rooms. Today was just an orientation and getting to know people so we had to get to know everyone's name. Originally, I thought that there would be 26 people going to India, but it turns out that there are 26 interns altogether - 3 Interns going to India and the rest in other areas such as Egypt, Uganda, Colorado, Calgary and Costa Rica. The week is pretty packed with regards to the schedule so I'll keep you updated again as I continue through the week and when I get into India.