Monday

The woman here at the embassy who is helping Kate with the one document she needs isn't having any luck with the people in Baltimore so Kate now has her congress person involved. We need them to work hard while we sleep tonight (Monday day for y'all) so we can get Sheetal's visa processed on Tuesday and make our morning flight on Wedneday. Our fingers are crossed and all prayers and good thoughts are accepted!

This morning we went to Old Delhi which was created in the 1200's by the Moguls and is currently inhabited by the Muslim minority population. The roads are so narrow that nothing motorized will fit on them so we took a bicycle rickshaw and tooled around. They have all these wholesale "shops" selling paper, spices, wedding saris, candy, fabric, jewelry and more. They struggle with integrating modern technology so there are wires all over the place in huge jumbles. Steven's favorite part was that I saw a monkey! It's hard to explain and I hope I can get the photos downloaded and that they do it some justice.

We then moved to Essexx Farms, a sort of Indian Chuck E Cheeses and was just as terrible of an experience (in my humble opinion.) The boys, however, loved it and road the bumper cars twice, drank soda pop, ate questionable spicy cheese sandwichs and played video games.

We had Terry and Elizabeth's driver for all these adventures and after taking us home, I had him take me to this huge Indian crafts emporium for some souvenier shopping and I took a rickshaw back home.

Silvie made us ratitoulle for dinner (yum!) and both Victoria and Juliana played the violin for us after supper. Sheetal was overtired and hyperactive, dancing and imitating what the big kids did. We were all laughing and having a great time. It will be hard to leave these wonderful friends but they are invited to stay with us in Minnesota if they're in town so I hope we meet again.

The poverty is getting more and more difficult to process. Whenever the car is stopped, there are usually people begging for money, "rupee." They generally have a baby in one arm and half the time the child will have on a shirt and nothing else. No diaper. No pants. The children walk around on the sidewalks barefoot and you see mother and child sleeping on the sidewalk. The guidebooks say not to give them money, instead to donate to programs which help them. So I try not to meet their eyes because it's so difficult when we have so much...

Well, we are nearing the home stretch now so we look forward to coming home and seeing all your faces again.

Happy Monday!

Love,
Corey