Trains and taxis and rickshaws oh my

The train to Agra took about 21 hours. The bed was comfortable, the light was sufficient, the ride was quiet (-ish), and I had Wheel of Time. It was the most rest I have had in a while. They even served vege- samosas in the train! Fantasitc. There was a guy who walked up and down the train, for 21 hours, saying "chai! Coffee!... Chai! Coffee!" He was funny.

We arrived in a little town out side of Agra at about 1700. The rickshaws wanted to charge us hundreds of rupees to travel to Agra, but we found a bus for 40. It was fully awesome. Then after a short ride on a rickshaw, we found our hotel. Not too bad, and only sort of expensive, the drawback was lots of mosquitos.

Tuesday morning we got up and did the Taj Mahal. India was worth it just for that hour and a half. The girls kept wandering off, which made our tour guide mad, so he hurried us. It was still beautiful. I'll have pictures up soon. Words just can't describe. I was just raptured...

Tuesday night we split up. Olga didn't want to fly, because it was too expensive. We didn't want to take the train, because we wouldn't have enough time in Darjeeling. I wanted to fly so I could make my flight back to Thailand. Phil and Olga stayed to take the train. Annie, Nikki, and I took a taxi to the airport in Delhi. We stayed the night at a fairly nice little hotel in Delhi, and when I awoke in the morning, I discovered that the water we had purchased during the car ride was bad. I had noticed that the cap didn't seal, and had been a little worried that it would make me sick. Sure enough, it did.

Tuesday night and Wednesday morning were miserable. I had constant diarrhea, and in the morning i threw up. I thought it was over after i hurled, but no. I threw up twice on the plane, with constant diarrhea. When we arrived in Bagdogra, I was far too miserable to take the train or jeep up to Darjeeling. I got a hotel while the girls continued up the mountain. My hotel was nice, and in the morning I got up, got a rickshaw to the airport, and prepared to get on the plane. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to print my itinerary. This meant that I couldn't enter the airport building. Also, the internet was off, because the power was off, so I couldn't even get an itinerary printed. I wasted 2 hours with the lady at the airline counter, until someone finally found that I was indeed on the flight which was now scheduled to leave in only 30 minutes. I hurried through security and into the terminal, to find that my plane had been delayed more than three hours. Still not too horrible, because I had my Wheel of Time books.

While we waited, there was almost a small riot because of the delay. Idiots. Flight to Kolkota was fine, although I have not yet mentioned that I was still throwing up.

I landed in Kolkota, collected my bag and got a taxi to the hotel that Mom had booked for me. I then found out that it was 70 km away from the city. It took 2:30 to get there. It was a beautiful place, but getting back to Kolkota to make my flight was looking like it was going to be a nightmare.

Continue Tomorrow...

So very sleepy.

But before India...

I forgot to write about our trip to Kampong Thom to open a new church. Phil and I shared the back of the truck. After a long ride up, which was fun, we arrived at a hotel. We went out to eat before sundown, and then it was off to vespers. The church was very nice, with modern wiring, and a beautiful interior. The services were alright, vespers, church, and sabbath school. They fed us several meals, of which the highlight was excellent mango. That mango was sooo good. On the way back to Phnom Penh, we stopped at a feed and read school. I got to see a lot of it, and I am both very impressed with the work that they have done, and glad that I didn't choose to go somewhere like there. I got absolutely fired on the trip. I only stopped peeling when we went to India

Surrender Cont.

Oh hey! Before that... i forgot about the periodic table! And science fair! How could I forget about the science fair? It was pretty cool. A lot of my students did awesome, and I just loved some of the projects! Some were irredeemably lame, and some focused pretty much just on presentation, but over all, my students did well. I kinda miss doing science fairs.

Periodic Table. I offered extra credit to my students for doing full page element layouts. This way, i can make a giant, student made, periodic table. I am probably not going to be able to finish it though. too bad.

So, India. First, we had to get visas. that involves going to the embassy, filling forms out, paying $77, and leaving my passport with them. All that would be just plain annoying if only they didn't also require the pictures on the forms to meet certain, unrevealable conditions. The first time we went there, we couldn't even find the embassy! When we finally did, we were too late, since they only accept applications between 900 and 1100. When Phil went back the next time, my application was returned because I was missing a page. That is understandable. Then, when I sent it again, it was turned down because the pictures were "wrong." No more explanation than that. There was a scratch on it, so I came back the next day with fresh pictures. Great, except the scratch wasn't the problem. The background was blue instead of white. Went back the next day, and the background was STILL too dark, but he took it and told me to bring better pictures on Friday, the day I was leaving. Fine, came back with new pictures on Friday, and he told me to come back at 1430. Flight was at 1700. Grrrr! Fine! Went back, paid my fortune, and fortunately, Gary Rogers had offered to drive me since i thought i would probably need to hurry, so we went to the airport.

Finally on the way! Got to Thailand, and we were too late for the van up to mission college. So, we stayed the night in Alex's room, and left for the van at 0500. Very early. Long trip up. Got there just in time for church. It was so so so awesome! A real church... Hymns, pews, sermon in English, and cool bulletins. Absolutely loved it. We spent the afternoon with Pastor Ashlock and his daughters, which was also completely awesome. Then we had a fantastic supper, and played a game called Puerto Rico, which I totally got my ass kicked at. Grrr. Oh well. I have gotten kind of a reputation for sucking at games. Which is odd, cuz I am after all a nerd. I have played more Risk, poker, apples to apples, settlers of catan, and the like than anyone else here, and i still manage to lose consistently. Bah!

Pastor Ashlock, who let us stay at his house Saturday night, made us delicious pancakes of deliciousness for breakfast with homemade peanut butter and syrup. I ate so very much. Rarely have I been so happy for pancakes. Sunday, we rode back, hopped on the plane after meeting up with Nikki at the airport, and flew off to Kolkota. We grabbed our bags, and headed to the train station, where we proceeded to wait for 5 hours to get on a train to Agra. I had some good Indian food, so it was ok. They had 2 guys bathrooms! One was just for peeing, and the other one had squatpots. that was cool. We almost got kicked out of the restaurant for playing dutch blitz (another game that i suck at).

Got on the train after much wrangling, and headed off to Agra. 21 hours...

Continue tomorrow night.

Go to bed all you people!

Surrender

Ok. I don't post often. This thing is kind of dieing. None the less, I shall attempt to catch this thing up. Weeks back, we had alumni weekend. Bad enough to have that. I dislike Alumni weekend, and it is worse because i don't know anyone here. To make it much MUCH worse, two of my friends were hit by a truck on Sabbath afternoon. Neeha and Aliya. I didn't know much at first. All the responsible people vanished, either to help or to get in the way. That left me with a bunch of panicking kids and some adults with empty heads. I spent the rest of the afternoon telling bible stories to the kids to keep their minds off of whatever had happened. No one had told me anything yet. Halfway through the afternoon, the mission president's wife and the librarian from our school came back to give an "update." This of course gave little actual information, and mostly accomplished scaring the children again. At least i finally heard who was in trouble.

After vespers, we had the talent show to do. I was MC, but it kind of sucked. There were some fun events, but since most of us had Neeha on our minds there wasn't much energy in it. That evening I walked over to the Mission to finally hear news. I got there just before the ambulance came to take Neeha away. That was when i found out that she was dead. I was really numb. There wasn't really much I could do, as the Aliya was still comatose, and I really couldn't stand being around any more. I took the students back to the school and went to bed. I didn't really do much for the next few days. Barely paid attention to what I said in class, and just laid around mostly. I think the Memorial service was on Tuesday. It was hot and miserable, and a lot was in Khmer or Urdu. Afterwards I talked with Aliya for a little while, said hi to Avak and went to hide. Slipped in my own tears and fell down the stairs. It hurt (both things did). Since then I've kind of accepted it and I am waiting for heaven. I would still like to remove the skin of the miserable scum-sucking vermin that hit them, but otherwise I am back.

For the next week or so I didn't have a terrible lot of energy for much of anything. I fell behind on grading papers and cleaning, and most everything else. I have been working on catching up since, but there were still a lot of mistakes in my midterm grades that i didn't have time to work out. {If Sharon is reading this, they won't be on the final grade, and I've talked to the affected students, so everything is OK (hopefully)}. I am still getting caught up with everything. I got in the habit of staying up late during those few weeks and listening to music, which is yet another habit i am gonna have to break. Just as I was getting my feet back under me, it was spring break! or rather new years. (songkran in Thailand by the way)