Once again its been forever

So it has been about a month and we have not updated the blog. Yes so much happened in that time but there are a few things you must understand before you allow yourself the frustration much deserved you. The dynamics of our trip shifted immensely when we arrived in India. It felt like to us that we were on a completely different trip, and in a big way we were. Europe as you well know was situated between a ton of different cities. Two or three days in one city and we were off to the next city. India began on a much different note. Leaving Europe we were a bit burnt out on all the movement we were not really experiencing much of the cultures were saw in Europe and knew that we couldn’t compromise as much energy in India. So getting to India knowing this and having already decided this amongst the both of us we felt a sense of relief, we were in the troprics, didn’t have to worry about finding a place to sleep, didn’t have to worry about where our next meal was going to be, didn’t have to worry about getting out of the weather, and most importantly we didn’t have when we would be able to be of service. We were in India and we were going to spend a full week just soaking up the ministry and service that Daniel was apart of.
So that is what we did. I left you guys in Pune. We had just gotten there we spent a day of rest and dedicated it all to the blog. I spent 12 hours blogging and that kinda blew my mind. I think in part that 12 hour trip might have been some of the reason why it has been so long since. HaHa. So this post might have to be more concise and less drawn out.
Anyways we dove right into the business that Daniel and his friends were a part of. We met some really amazing people there. Daniel is roommates with Theo. Theo is a six foot four inch Dutch guy! Amazing man! Theo was manager of a candle project in the factor. Oh yes before I begin to introduce people I will describe what the organization that all these people work for is about. Daniel and his friends are employees/missionaries working for this business that designs and engineers different things. Anything for the most part. They have a variety of Industrial tools that aid them through this process and what they do not have tools for they outsource. So a retailer decides that he/she wasn’t a chair built for them so this retailer submits a general idea of the function and maybe even some specific dimensions and Frank (founder/head engineer/man with dream) takes this general design and makes a some two-dimensional drafts of what the product could look like and those are sent to the retailer and are critiqued until a design is decided upon and from there a three-dimensional auto-cad draft is constructed or depending on what part or type of product is being constructed a two-dimensional copy is given to Daniel and he takes that drawing and they create a prototype product which is displayed or given to the retailer for inspection and when an appropriate product is found they begin to mass produce those products depending upon the retailers request.
So as many as three or four projects can be underway at one time. Theo is in charge or candles and he instructs a crew of three or four Indian workers. The day after we got there they had to lay off half of their Indian staff because they did not have enough work for everyone. The crew was going to be notified the first of January if they were to be needed further. So that was a big bummer to see. Those were valuable relationships kinda lost. But the factory kept on moving and shaking while we were there we got to be part of the completion of a shipment. When an entire order is completed huge semi sized trucks come in and haul off all the pallets to the shipping yards a three hours drive away in Mumbai where they are sent to the retailer most of the time Europe.
The shipment days were long days, on that day we worked from 9 am to 3 am and by the time we left everyone was burnt out. The company has to work around odd schedules at times. The power goes out on Thursday so Thursdays are off. So the shipping day was on a Wednesday and we got to have the next day off. India is funny like that. They power does what it wants. It will go off for hours on ends whenever it wants and that is not even questioned. Every time it rains it goes out so you can imagine the frequency of that during the rainy season. I don’t know if this stands for every community in India but we were told this was the case in Pune.
Ok now introductions to some of the staff. Frank as you head already is head honcho. He started the company and he has experience in Engineering and is from Holland. Olco is an accounting graduate from Oklahoma. He is a great guy! We got to go out to eat with him a couple times. Once at an Arabic restraunt and the other time at a going away get together for Ican who is another guy from Holland who was there for a business internship. Then there is Frank’s family his wife that I am so sorry but forgot her name. They have a handful of children and they have a house a five minute walk from Daniel’s house. This is where Olco is currently staying and was where Ican was staying. There are a handful of other India administrative staff that I didn’t get to know very well but the rest of the staff Josh and I worked everyday face to face with so we got to know them better and they were all local citizens of India. So there is Rufus who is an amazing guy! He is about 21 I think is what he said and he is from a caste that originated in the Mumbai area and they are a Christian caste apparently. I still don’t know exactly how the caste system is situated in the Indian culture. But he could speak the best English and helped translate for others. He know English, Hindi and the language of his caste. Then there is Mahroti (im sure I chopped the spelling of his name) who is another really great guy who knows how to weld real well and he was always a very energetic and driven worker. That is what surprised me though about all of the workers no one was really complaining on any level. They were all so positive about having a job. No one expected to be treated a certain way as an employee they just knew that they had a task to accomplish and they were excited on the simple fact of that. And the last guy worker is Ragess who is a character. He has experience as an actor and can pull a lot of stuff off. He is a smoozer in a good sense. He was looking for apartments for Theo and Daniel because they were planning on moving by the end of the month. So yeah he has a wife that works with the company as well. The last day that we were there Ragess really wanted to treat us to something so he brought us out to eat and took his by his home neighborhood! That was really great to see and very nice of him to do. So yeah then there were the lady workers who we really didn’t get to know very well one because they were doing there own lady deal and two cause they didn’t speak as much English. But they were very nice there was one by the name of Rika who was the head boss leady and kinda directed everything. She made sure everyone was in line and doing what they needed to be. Most of the workers had up to a middle school education some had a highschool education.
We worked and ate with them all for a full week and a half then booked tickets to Kashmir and then to Delhi. So that began the second stage of the trip. *If you would like to hear more about the Daniels a part of please check out Josh’s previous update he has a few different link and addresses for you.
Kashmir was a winter wonderland in comparison with Pune we got flights out of Mumbai to Srinagar the capital city of Kashmir. And when we arrived in the airport we were greeted by a man who wanted to offer us a room in a houseboat for 400 ruppies a night. So we accepted it and went took a taxi to the river where the houseboat was anchored. It was an amazing decorative cozy little boat with two or three bedrooms and a sitting room. I believe each room had a small woodstove which was the primary form of heat. The temperature averaged in the 30s so we had to get into another gear mentally in order to deal with the drastic change in temperature. But we got to know this Muslim family really well and they taught us a lot about Islam. Every night we had a deep conversation about spiritual stuff that happens frequently in Kashmir. So we got to hear some about the personal side of the Islamic life. I was stoked to hear so much about Kashmir and what the people were all about there. I don’t know just everything was new to me. We went up into the Himalayas some. We traveled a days to this place called Gulmarg that was a sky resort and had snow monkeys. The whole place was drenched in snow. Maybe like 50 feet of snow is dumped there every year is what we learned. That blew my mind! I never heard of anything like that. So Kashmir was great we stayed there for about 4 days. We learned alot about the Kashmir culture its position with India in terms of its automacy. The tea there is the best in the world.
So while we stayed in Kashmir we were actively making connections to in Delhi so that we had a place to stay and people to help out. Josh and I ended up having mutual connections. I had a friend that came to India two years ago and spent a lot of time here so I contacted him and he gave me Micheal Gunderson’s information and I contacted Micheal and told him that Josh was given the contact of the Malakars by a mutual friend Bjorn that went to school with Josh’s sister. So he did and it happened to be that he lived a 2 minute walk from them and all the work he was apart of was with them. He is the roommate of Mrs. Malakar’s father Dr. Tom Halstead. Dr. Tom Halstead is the Head Chairman and director of the Bible department at Master’s College. He has been teaching as a professor there for… I think 24 years now. So that was an amazing coincidence. We got to spend time with them and they directed us around Delhi. The ministry they are apart of is really cool the first night we got there they had a bible study going on and then on Sunday they had a church service that Mr. Malakar’s father taught. Then later on in the evening we had a Christmas service. So that was great to hear. Doc taught that. While we were in Delhi we just mainly sight saw and sort of interacted with the schedules of the ministry that everyone was involved in. We got our own rooms a bathroom and a kitchen to use whenever we needed to. So that was really cool. We took a day trip to Agra on the train and saw the Taj Mahal and Red Fort where the rulers of that part of India, the Mughals emperors, lived and ruled out of. We got a tour through that whole structure and the history behind the five emperors who lived there. Then next few days were spent in Delhi sight seeing and touring around. Then we booked a last minute train to Kalkutta.
Out trip to Kalkutta was a bit scattered we left ourselves three days in Kalkutta. So we booked a ticket on a sleeper train for like 9 dollars. It was to be a 20 hour trip or something. So we got to the Delhi train station the next day and realized that our ticket was on a waiting list and that we didn’t get a refund or to get on the next train. So that kinda shocked us, but we saw a travel agency on the way into the station so we went across the street and booked confirmed flight from Delhi to Kallkutta on a sleeper train the next day that left at 7 am. So we got a really cheap hotel in the heart of Delhi and ordered some Chicken fried rice and got up at 5 to go to the Old Delhi Train station. So when we got out of bed we saw that we had accidentally kept the key to Mike and Doc’s apartment. So we had about an hour left before the train arrived. So I initially forgot about it when we woke up I was like focused on getting this train. But when we got there Josh pointed out how close we were to the apartment and that train was going to leave for like 2 hours so I grabbed the key and took off! I sprinted to the nearest rickshaw driver and didn’t slow down until I got into his rickshaw. I was like “Kingscamp, North Campus Delhi University!” and we went. I got there and the outside door was locked. I didn’t have the key to that so I was going to leave the key in the ignition of his motorcycle. But the night watchman rang the doorbell which was this hideous retched bird scream of a noise and it was loud. So Mike came stumbling out like not know what hit him and I who should have been in Kalkutta by now, handed him this small little skeleton key. And the first thing he asked was “You didn’t come all the way back just to give me this?” Haha. I told him the situation and he went back to bed. And by that time it was like 6:10 a.m. and our train was to arrive at 6:40 a.m. so we sped back and I got there with about 10 minutes to spare before it even arrived in the station. So that began the adventure to Kallkutta. The train ride was pretty ridiculous. The bed were stacked three high which wasn’t too crazy but there were a couple people who snuck on the train and as the ticket master came through this guys who was sitting shoulder to shoulder with Josh was asked about his ticket, and all he did was put his hands together and bow his head in shame. So without even thinking the ticket master pulled an emergency stop lever and grabbed the guy by the shit, brought him to the open door and by that time the train had slowed down a bit, and the ticketmaster pushed him out of the moving train. The train then sped up and that was the last of him. No one seemed to surprised about the whole situation so yeah that was that. The train would stop every five minutes to let another train pass because the track was only one track wide most of the time. But the unfortunate part of the train trip was how dirty it was. It was so griamy. The air pollution, and dirtiness of the cars kind of got ridiculous at times. We had to dash for food at random stops not knowif the train was going to take off without us. I had a really cool conversation with a Tibetan refugee monk who was teaching the Tibetan language in Buddhist monistaries across the country of India. The train was about half full with monks of every age and race. They were from Mongolia, India, Tibet, Nepal, and other various places. They guy I talked with was very friendly and we had a great conversation talking about his flee from Tibet to Nepal over the Himalayas. It was a month long journey on foot with only a backpack full of rice and noodles. He didn’t pack a sleeping bag he just had a think jumpsuit on and put a piece of plastic over him when he slept. They had to look out for Chinese guards as they went. It sounded like a very risky journey but a great one!
They last hour of the trip a massive group of young people got on the trip they were probably our age maybe a few years younger and they were pumped up! Josh and I were attempting to sleep but they were shaking up to get up so we did and they were all coming from the surrounding Kalkutta area to go to a massive conference that was being held in the city. Apparently a communist leader from somewhere in Asia was speaking on a communist uprisng that needed to occur in the state of West Bengal. We didn’t have any clue how big of a deal this really was until we got into town. The entire time we were on the street there were tons of semi sized cargo trucks full of people rallying and screaming while holding this flags with the red star on them! It blew my mind! Everyone was stoked on it. There were five to ten million people involved in this rally. The entire city was in a ralley frenzy! I didn’t know how to deal with it. No one was getting violent it was just like a happy go lucky feeling of “yeah communism is what we need!” I didn’t get it. So that went down for a few days. We got a cheap hotel a five minute walk from Mother Teresa’s house of the Destitute and Dieing. So we went over and checked that out. We didn’t get to see much cause it part of it was closed for some reason. It was right next door to the headquarters for this United Employee Union that was getting all excited and worked up for the rally. The Mother Teresa head quarter place was across the way from the National Treasury I think too. It was some form of Treasury.
Kalkutta was much more tropical then Delhi the people of West Bengal have a different culture and way of doing things. I learned a lot about how diverse a country can be while in India. It is a very vast place in allot of different ways. That was that we got on the plane and headed out to Bangkok. Bangkok airport is so huge! Compared to Kalkutta Bangkok seemed like a five star hotel of an Airport. Kalkutta is supposedly the biggest city in India and it has an international airport the size of Bozeman, Montana’s airport. It was dinky. There were only a handful of airlines that actually fly in and out of there I guess. But we were relieved to be in Bangkok by the time we got there.
Getting to Bangkok marked a whole new part of the trip. Every time we get on a place that what it seems to mean. I feel like a whole new trip begins. It was very hard not to compare the amount of pollution in Kalkutta to the amount in Bangkok. Both cities of at least ten million and I haven’t seen such a huge well kept city. Even the air which would seem almost impossible to keep clean was very clean. You can see for ten miles without a problem in any direction! The day we left Kalkutta we couldn’t see beyond a two kilometer distance! I got physically ill because I wasn’t used to it. So yeah that was different. All of Thailand is this clean. I think it is cleaner than most places in the United States and that is impressive to say about Asia. It has been a constant refreshment to take in this tropical, warm, clean, calm, and welcoming environment. We were in Bangkok for like two days. We saw some malls, got to ride on the Metro, and just toured around Bangkok. It is hard not to be blown away though by the open sex trade that is happening all over the place in Bangkok. We booked some flights while we were there and then got a 12 hour night bus to Chiang Mai where we are now. We rented some scooters the first day we were here and have been exploring the city ever since then. We got a little guest house and spent Xmas here. The guest house has free wireless internet so we have been able to Skype with friends and catch up before we head into the village for two weeks. The Thai team will have left by the time this is posted. We have been waiting for a few days now, and I am so excited to see my friends and the village that I have been able to serve in for the last couple of years! In a lot of different ways this the pinnacle of the trip for me. We will be the most involved in doing some hands on serving alongside some of my best friends in the world! On the other side of the world! ☺
Hopefully I will find time to update the blog as soon as we get back from the village but we will see. And again please forgive me for such the delay in the update.