Hung out with this guy All.The.Time.

Met my cousin's new baby!

Visited with my grandma frequently & celebrated her 91st birthday!

Continued to deny having allergies while Burke visibly suffered...

Now, don’t judge me for the next photo; I’m looking particularly rough.  Dad and I took the dogs for a bike ride or a run just about every day.  One day I thought it would be extra fun to put both the dogs on the bike.  Marley (the black one) really liked it because about every time after that he got strangely close to the bike, as if he wanted on again.

This is a recumbent bicycle, definitely not made for a person and two dogs.

We also made good use of our time helping out with Corner Shack, the amped up version of the youth group I went to in high school.  It was fun to see some of the kids that I remembered from when I volunteered at Kidmunity (sunday school) and kids that I coached on the swimming team.

The week we spoke was a record high for number of kids, but there are 50-60 weekly.

Then we routed through Indiana to go to Chicago.  It was the best weekend ever.

So, so, so good to see these friends!

Then we went to Missouri to hang out with a lot of Burke’s family.  My parents came along, and it was the first time they had seen each other since the wedding.

It’s about an eleven hour drive from where we live in Ohio to Joplin, MO.  On the way, we stopped at the St. Louis Zoo and on the way back we stopped and had dinner with Burke’s cousin Rick and his family!

It was the first time I met Rick, but I'd been hearing about him for years.

Shortly after returning from Missouri, we went to Harrisburg for one of my college friend’s wedding.  Julie looked so beautiful, and we had a great time catching up with other friends at the wedding!

Our last stop on the tour lead us to Philidelphia, where we flew out to San Francisco.  Fortunately I know a lot of people who live there including my friend Marilyn!  She hosted us so well during our couple of short hours there and even prepared a lovely picnic lunch.

Picnic basket packer extraordinaire

It was so great seeing friends and family while we were in the Midwest (and Southwest, Southeast and Northeast!).  We loved visiting with you all and are already looking forward to next time!

We really liked it.

When we came back it was just a couple days until we had our graduation!

Our lovely group

Maybe you know, but our last few days in Slovakia were actually spent in England.  When we came back, our friend Janko picked us up from the airport.

Despite having made at least four or five trips through Bratislava before, Burke felt like we’ve never really seen the city.  So he asked Janko if he’d give us a tour before we went back to his apartment with him.  Since Janko is such a super nice friend (and single, fyi ladies), he agreed to give us a midnight tour of the capital city of the country we’ve called home.

Janko was a great tour guide.  For some buildings and streets he knew the details and history, but other times he met my questions with colorful answers.

Me: Hey, Janko, what’s that a statue of?
Janko: A soldier.

Me: Janko, what is this building known for?
Janko: People work there.

A bridge.

While we were finishing our program, I spent most of my free time working on two videos and going to the gym.  If you haven’t watched the videos yet, you can find them here.  The gym was small, primitive, and inexpensive, so it worked out just fine.  I really got a kick out of the power button on this machine.

Here’s my last funny thing from Slovakia.  When we came back, there was a sign out at the bar across the street from our home.  They were having a happy hour-type promotion where you could pay only 45 euro cents (60 US cents or so) for a shot of hard alcohol between the hours of 8 and 9 am.

For those of you who like to get an early start on the day, I guess...

Maybe you haven’t heard this story yet, but on our way home we were asked if we would like to be bumped to a later flight meaning we would get accommodation in London for a night AND 500 USD each.  Boom, sign us up.  In the end, they didn’t need to bump us, but they gave us first class seats for being willing.  It was amazing, especially since it was the longest leg of our journey.

I decided riding coach is for chumps and I’m never going to do it again….  yeah, I wish.

In the next post, I’ll tell you about what we’re up to in Ohio; but for now, this concludes this portion of our amazing overseas adventures.

I’ve fallen off the blogging boat.  Obviously, we knew this would happen.  Going from India back to Slovakia, it is easy to just live life thinking that there isn’t much to share.  In doing so, I have completely neglected to tell you all what we are doing next!

Right now, what is going on is that we are finishing up our program (If you are thinking what program? then you should read about it here.)  We only have about a week before our graduation, but we are filling every moment of our free time between now and when we leave with our respective creative projects- maybe our next post will even direct you to a new video or website to check out!

So what’s really next?  Well, we have a lot of big dreams that we aren’t really ready to share.  I think that’s why I haven’t yet.  But I can tell you the logistics that we know.  On March 28th, we will be returning to the U.S, indefinitely. To our surprise, we feel like this is God’s next step for us.  Like last summer, we will start out in Ohio making our rounds and catching up so please email us if you want to get together!  We want to see you and we will be there for much longer than the short 2 weeks of last summer.

How much longer?  We can’t say exactly, but we will probably be heading to CA mid-May. From there we will begin the most normal life we will have had, and I am thrilled.  We’re not promising any permanent settling down, but you are guaranteed to be seeing a lot more of us in at least the next year than you have in the last three.  So, get excited, we are.

This guy is excited too!

I was most definitely sick before going, but decided to go anyway knowing that if I didn’t get better, the option of leaving with half of the team after only 1.5 days would be available, although Burke and I were planning on staying for the 5 day duration. The majority of the first day was spent preparing for a program that we were putting on for the people of the village and the neighboring villages.  First we cleaned the room, then moved in speakers, and then went door to door inviting people to the program.  We quickly learned about village time.  We were instructed to tell people to come at 5, meaning they might arrive/we could start by 8.  There is an amazing story about how the program almost didn’t happen on the other blog, so you should seriously read it!

This lady is making concrete from scratch.

The next morning half of the group went home, I stayed in the village with the understanding that we would be “off” for the day and I would have plenty of relaxing/healing time.  Wrong.

We hiked down the mountain to a waterfall.  It was so beautiful that despite feeling pretty awful, I kept saying that deciding to stay was one of the best decisions of my time in India.  For lunch we had homemade momos, a Tibetan cabbage stuffed pasta. This is one thing I am looking forward to trying to recreate at home! 

Momo dough

We had to hurry back from the waterfall for lunch at 1 so we could be to the soccer game which was supposed to start at 1:30.  The other team didn’t even show up until 3:30.  Village time. We loved watching the football game.  Our home team wasn’t doing so hot for the first half, and there seemed to be a huge number of fans for the away team.  After the game we asked our host why that was and he said all the fans for the other side were from Risheehat, they just cheer for the other team because their own team cheats.  And we saw that firsthand too. 

Hands on.

The next day we hiked through the tea fields to the neighboring village.  The hike was amazing.  Every turn exposed a beautiful view, and there was even a baby enjoying the ride.  We visited many houses and invited people to our open-air program, similar to the one two evenings before.

The funniest part of the program was that we were just playing it by ear.  After we performed a skit, we looked to our leader and asked what was up next.  He said, “Oh don’t worry. Vivek (our host) will tell us.”  And not ten seconds later Vivek came down from the stage and looked at us all and asked, “So what’s next?”

Before leaving that evening, we asked about church the next day.  We were told that one of us (me) could prepare a very short message but it would not be the sermon because there was a guest pastor speaking.  No problem.  “What time does church start?” we asked. “9…9:30…Okay maybe 10.”

In church they wear scarves over their hair... one lady couldn't find her scarf.

The next morning we ate breakfast at 9:30 and walked to the church at 10:45 and were the first ones there!  It started sometime shortly after 11 (Love that village time!).  The real highlight of the morning though was that they wanted a whole sermon!  I wasn’t prepared so instead we filled the extra time with short testimonies and songs.

We really learned to go with the flow and adapt to the village lifestyle in Risheehat.  I’ll even say it again, deciding to stay in the village was one of the best decisions I made in India.

The village was only one street and this was the heart of it all.

Kanchenjunga- the 3rd tallest mountain in the WORLD

Well, let me tell you something interesting about this city: it’s FREEZING. Literally, it freezes at night. All those of you who imagined us in the tropics sipping mango lassies, wrong-o. So what? There’s a foot of snow outside my house right now…. you may be thinking. Well I’ll tell you what. Because it’s India we’re in and it is hot for most of the year, they don’t have any of the following things:

Heat.
Insulation.
Hot water.
Running water. Half the time anyway.

When I lay in bed at night, complaining about my frozen toe-cicles despite the four pairs of socks, sleeping bag and two thick blankets they’re under, I can see my breath. This normally wouldn’t be a problem, as I generally can fall asleep within a few minutes of trying (Burke will grumpily attest to this fact), but let’s remember the first thing that Darjeeling is known for. The tea. The amazing, caffeinated tea that is offered around every corner at every hour of the day. When the Nepali’s (because that’s who actually lives in Darjeeling) find out that I prefer tea without milk they smile and say with a wink in their eye, “Oh, I’ll make you pure Darjeeling tea then.” So instead of struggling for a few minutes in the freezing cold before falling asleep, I lie in bed breathing the moist recycled air trapped under my sleeping bag, half-cursing the many cups of glorious tea I inhaled during the day.

Samosas in the making...

To find out what this kid is doing, go to www.burkeandlizzie.com/ywam

As I meandered, I stopped to take many photos along the way.  Inevitably kids along the road ask me to take their photos as well and I’m usually always pretty happy to do it.  Sometimes, adults ask me to take their photos as well, so I wasn’t all that surprised by one 20-something guy slowly walking along nearby me.  I also noticed that the straps on his sandals dragged on the group with every step and served no visible purpose.  Eventually this man rallied the courage to approach me.  Instead of immediately asking me for a photo, he proceeded to have a conversation with me entirely in Hindi, despite my insistence that I didn’t understand anything.

I welcomed a bicycle delivery man’s interruption and saw it as a chance to get on with my photo walk.  The young man caught back up and eventually understood that I was just walking around taking photos.  So he motioned for me to follow him to a good photo location.

So I did follow him.  And he did take me to a beautiful place.  I’m not so good photographing landscape, but the field and the houses beyond were definitely a beautiful sight.  I looked at him to show my appreciate for the scene, but he gestured to the kid pooing in the outdoor toilet behind him.  Yuck! He wasn’t taking me to the field, but to the Indian portapotty.

By this point the guy was my friend.  I used my two Hindi sentences on him and impressed him thoroughly.  The only problem was he couldn’t get my name right for the life of him.  My name is Lizzie.  Raji?  Li-zi.  Liji? Li-Zi. Lisi?  As we walked further I would sometimes hear him say something quietly like Raju or Ruji, then I’d correct him again and we’d repeat the conversation.  (Truth is, I can’t remember his name either.  It was something with an A, so lets just call him Ameer for the rest of this post.)

You can see the toilet gutter behind him.

Mostly I was just walking along and he and a few kids were following me.  That’s really quite normal in India, so when he suggested a second place to go, I didn’t mind acquiescing.

The next place Ameer took me was to a house and he immediately ran inside and motioned for me to wait outside for a moment.  Before I could even look at my surroundings at least five new kids ran up to me and wanted me to take their photos.  The older girls knew a few English words and told me they were his sister.  They pulled me over to the adjoining house and dragged a woman, who was sewing, outside to have her photo taken as well.  I supposed that it was the woman’s husband who came home in that minute and told me No, thank you.  The girls pleaded and he conceded, so I took a few photos of their entire family.

After the photo session, I said goodbye and started to walk away.  As I walked by the house where Ameer was, I saw him next to the water pump very intently grooming himself.  He was still clothed, but he was most definitely washing his entire body, completely sudsy, and washing as fast as he could.

The girls insisted I take their grandmother’s photo, and that I sit down to do so.  They pulled up a red plastic chair and I sat down, snapped a couple photos and immediately Ameer came over sporting a new shirt and shoes.  He gave me a How do you like me now? look and then the entire family encircled me with expectant eyes.

They want me to marry this man!!! The thought screamed through my head as I quickly stood up and made my escape.  To my dismay, Ameer followed me and continued walking with me.  My pace was brisker this time, but that didn’t deter him any because now he was wearing polished white sneakers!

Even as we walked away from his home, he continued offering me chai and coffee because he realized they were two words we had in common.

Then, all of the sudden out of NOWHERE, Ameer knew a phrase in English.  “Kiss me,” he said.  Ick, no way.  I sternly told him no and even glared at him, but he continued to walk with me, even singing as we walked.  You wouldn’t believe it, but he had another phrase tucked away.  “This is my girlfriend,” he said to me, about me.  This time I stopped and looked directly at him and said no.  I stepped up my game and I said “I am…” and then I pointed to the center of my forehead (the dot) and indicated a line just above that where my hairline meets my forehead. (The combo of the two indicates that a woman is married.)

Victory! He understood!  We continued walking, my destination in sight.  He asked if I had a baby and when I said no baby and not pregnant I think I lost all credibility and he didn’t believe me anymore.  No matter because we reached my destination.

Had I been interested, I am certain I could have had a second husband.

On one of our first days in this new town, I wanted to buy some bananas.  I know that a banana costs about 2 rupees each, but they are generally sold by the kilogram and they are usually sold on push carts scattered around the city.  So I approached the first banana man, a youngish man probably around my age and asked how much they were.

Banana man: 12 banana, 40 rupee.
Me: That’s a little pricy.  How much for one banana?
Banana man: One banana, 2 rupee.
Me: Hmm.  Not 12 banana, 24 rupee?
Banana man: 12 banana, 40 rupee.
Me: I guess I’ll take two.

It was kind of funny, but the next time I wanted to buy bananas, I couldn’t immediately remember who I had wanted to go to, and I wound up at his cart again.  His prices didn’t change, but this time I offered him, “5 banana, 10 rupee.”  He was visibly puzzled and said, “6 banana, 20 rupee.”  And for me, the situation went from comical to sad.  He so clearly couldn’t figure out the math, it made me feel really bad for him.

Later, I told the story to a Dutch woman who lives here and she said that most of the people who sell fruit are completely illiterate and dependent on the wholesaler.  They’ll ask the wholesaler how much they should sell each item for, and they trust whatever he says with no way of reasoning how to negotiate prices with customers.

My next story isn’t sad!  Our second day in this city was a kite flying holiday.  Silhouettes  of children lined the sky, as they stood on rooftops piloting their kites as high as the kite could incline.  The next day was Sunday and when we went to church, one amazing little girl, Mercy, gave Burke a kite!  Burke was so happy, but when it was time for lunch, he asked the rickshaw driver if it would be safe to leave it in the rickshaw.  The driver said, “I’ll take it, and if something happens to it, I’ll get you a new one,” and then he carried it into the restaurant with us.

How many kites can you spot in this tree?

After lunch, when we were ready to go, the kite was nowhere to be seen.  Burke asked the driver where it was, and so he went back into the restaurant.  He was gone for a l.o.n.g. time.  I thought surly it was thrown away or destroyed and now our driver was on the road somewhere trying to buy a new one.  Five to ten minutes later when he came back he not only had Burke’s kite, but a second kite too!

We actually went to another church service that day, and again Burke left his kites in the trusty care of our driver.  We didn’t realize until we got home, but somehow, the driver turned Burke’s two kites into three!  Naturally, Burke thanked him profusely, but the driver never really said how or why he kept getting more kites.  We look forward to the next time we use that driver again, hoping he’ll have even more!

Leaving the Taj Mahal, camera still in hand, I was ready snap photos of the monkeys and goats along the sidewalk.  I squatted down to take one monkey’s photo who was hanging out on a bench, and he immediately went from cute to angry!  He slapped both his hands on the bench and fake-out started at me.  He didn’t actually get up, but he really wanted to make me think he was going to.  So I decided I would be a little more careful when taking photos of monkeys.

Check out the angry face on this guy.

When we got home, I went into our hotel room only to find a giant lizard on the wall!  He scurried from near the head of my bed to behind our non-functioning television.  I only caught a glimpse of him before running out of the room, but I saw that he was definitely about six inches in body length plus another five or so in tail length.

You can see how close they let us get!

Now onto the real monkey story!

We were at the train station and walking to our platform.  I was carrying the team fruit- two papayas in a plastic bag and a dozen or so mandarins in another bag.

I pointed out to my friend Nicholas all the animals on the platform, “Dog…. dog… monkey.”  And as we got closer to the monkey, he started to walk towards us.  He was big.  And then he ran towards us… no, he ran towards ME.  And he was screaming!  If you didn’t know, monkeys totally scream and he wasn’t definitely wasn’t holding back.

Standing and screaming he stretched his claws out at me and grabbed the bag of papaya.  I was still holding on and I remember distinctly that he was pulling so that the bag was at about a 45 degree angle.  He was really tugging.

It happened very quickly but I remember wondering if I should let him have it.  If he was so angry, I didn’t want him to bite me or scratch me over a papaya!  Fortunately, an Indian man coming in the opposite direction knew what to do.  He stomped a few times and made some loud sounds and scared the monkey off.

Not exactly a near death experience, but it definitely shook me up.  One of my very favorite animals turning vicious on me!  We continued on and walked up the stairs and over the rail to the third platform where we were supposed to board our train.  I declared forgiveness because my love for the furry little people-like animals was greater than my fear of that one monkey, but, sadly, it wasn’t true.

About ten minutes later we were all standing around and I saw another monkey walking towards us.  In the second I saw him I gasped, and then disappointedly thought hmm maybe I’m scared of monkeys now.  While otherwise non-threatening, this large monkey sat down near where we were and just looked at our group…. and then he singled me out!  It was the SAME monkey! And he was staring me down!!  I wasn’t holding the torn fruit bag anymore, but it was clear to me and everyone standing with me that this monkey had his eye on me!  And then he started to make his move!  Slowly this time he started walking towards me, about the same time I shrieked and moved to the comfort of the center of the group.

This time, my friend John scared the monkey away with his makeshift monkey weapon (which he proudly refers to in his version of Dutch as an oppen wopen).

Baby monkey at the Agra Fort

So that’s the end of my monkey story.  It was pretty scary and I’m glad there aren’t any monkeys in the city we’re in now because I may or not be afraid of monkeys forever….

We had a drab little room, which we were very grateful for, included in it was even a bathroom with a western style toilet!  Yahoo!  Here is our bathroom.  Maybe you wonder what the bucket is for… Well, in some bathrooms you have to fill the bucket and dump it in the toilet to flush it, ours actually has an official flush so that’s not what it is for.  Instead, the buckets are filled with water, and we use those smaller scoops to dump them all over our heads and that is how we shower!  Burke and I had the very rare water heater in our bathroom- it worked about half the time- the other half we joined the ranks of the rest of the group and delivered our empty buckets to the kitchen to acquire boiled water and then transport it back to our shower space.

Remember, we were the lucky ones.

From about 6:45- 8:15 every morning, there was no power in our bathroom.  There were a couple mornings this didn’t effect us, but mostly it would.  That played out in the form of a small station set up near the hazy window- contacts, make up, hair was done there.  I had a two inch compact so I could kind of see myself.  It was when I wanted to see the back of my hair that I got creative.  I received a flashlight-keychain for an early Christmas gift and have found in incredibly useful.  I took it into the bathroom, shone it on the back of my head, which was facing the big mirror, and stood facing the opposite wall with my compact in my other hand, positioned just so that I could see a couple inches of my hair at a time.

When we first arrived, we were told that the staff at our location would do our laundry for us.  Then we saw what hard work it was for them, and most of us began to do our own.  The most commonly sold laundry soap is in the form of a bar of soap.  It is held with one hand and rubbed against clothes, and then the clothes are scrubbed on a giant smoothish rock.  Cold water is poured on the clothes to rinse them.  Once they are all rinsed, they are whipped against the side of the slate to get rid of excess water before being taken to the clothes line.

Here is the kitchen.  You might be a little fearful of the food that comes out, but it was delicious!  In India, you have to take major precautions of the food you eat- the biggest warnings are against street food, raw vegetables, and “cold” diary.  So naturally, when we arrived we assumed they were preparing our vegetables to a standard that our western digestive systems could handle.  In only took a few minutes in the kitchen to see that they certainly were not.

Sometimes we "helped" make dinner; I think we slowed them down.

It is very common to cook/ store pots with food in them on the floor!

I made sure to document the making of naan bread.  It’s way more work and way less common than chapati (Indian tortillas).

When we first arrived, we were woken up by a pack of roosters. Our last week there, there were no roosters to be found... These skewers are put into the tandoor.

Naan dough, the best tasting, least healthy of the breads.

They make a ball and spread it over this wet cloth-covered rock and then push it against the wall of the outdoor oven.

It just sticks up against the side for a few minutes as it cooks. The oven has to be the perfect temperature other wise it doesn't come off.

They fish it out with these spears when it's done and then it is ready for dinner!

These are just a few of the menial things we did daily.  It was really fun to be in this position where we could laugh at our situation, yet fully, truly appreciate what we did have.  This blog couldn’t be complete without a couple pictures of the dogs at the location.  Towards the end I took these dogs on a daily walk and I am certain that they miss me already.

Rachi... maybe she is a little special.

This one on the left is Boyfriend. He may or may not have been the father to the babies on the right. That's Mama on the right.

The puppies!

Baby Taj

The Botanical Gardens.

The Agra Fort.

The Taj Mahal.

The Agra Bazaar and this fun little outdoor restaurant.