Last Week was quite the adventure!

Aside from our usual adventures in India of constant power outages and Internet interruptions.   This week was unique in that I learned I could face some of my greatest fears and survive.

It started out as a perfectly normal day.  I have a very small washing machine.  It does four towels at a time or a couple a pairs of pants etc.  Which is good that it is small because I don’t have dyer so everything is hung out on the line.  I don’t like to have the laundry hang on the line over night so every morning I do two or three loads of laundry and hang it on the line then every evening take it down and fold it.  On this particular day, it was four o’clock in the afternoon and I was standing on my baloney hanging a dress on the line, when I heard a noise above me (noise is a constant in India, I don’t think it has ever been quiet here since we arrived) and as I glanced up, a dark cloud was descending around me. In the space of a few seconds my thoughts were the following:

• ·      What in the world is going on?
• ·      Something is landing on me?
• ·      Oh no it’s bugs
• ·      Oh no it’s bees!

At which time I took off running into my apartment, literally flinging my clothes off as I ran.  Three bees were kind enough to hitch hike a ride in my hair but all in all the other couple of thousand were left outside on the patio.  After I calmed down enough to find my cell phone, I called my husband and told him, “Get home now!”  To be honest I didn’t calm down until the next day.

Fortunately I wasn’t stung.  I have known since coming to India that the Lord was protecting me but never more so than that day.

view of the bees on the 6th floor

view of the swarm from my balconey

When my husband arrived home he told me some masons had been working on the sixth floor and had stumbled upon a bee swarm building a new hive.  (Actually what they had done was open a window were the bees were attached to the ledge and caused them to fall on me).  The bad news is what I thought was maybe a hundred bees was more like a couple of thousand.  For dinner that night we had comfort food!  My husband was kind enough to fix me some rice pudding and we watched one of our favorite tv shows.

view of some of the dead bees from my kitchen door

The really sad thing for me is, as much as I don’t want to have bees near me (or particularly on me) they are all dead.  Instead of moving the swarm (OK I admit it is something I have only seen on the Discovery channel on TV.) They poisoned them.

My latest swap yarns for my sock yarn
blanket!

Decorations for Dewali at our hotel!

We've had a busy couple of weeks.  We traveled to Mumbai and stayed at the Oriental Hotel in West Bandra.   These pictures came from the front steps.  I love the drawings and think they would make great quilt designs.  Dewali is the festival of lights and they really celebrated.  Lots of fireworks!  They were even throwing fire crackers in the stairwell of our apartment building.  Something that was very startling to me!  The tradition is to give gifts of fruit and nuts.  India has a lot of holidays that are just cool.  My favorite is Brother/Sister day where you give gifts to your brother or sister depending on which day it is!

 I made this Christmas stocking for my son, Mike, who is currently serving a mission for our church in Los Angeles, California.  I will be mailing him a package this week with some wonderful indian things like a beautiful leather wallet that is embroidered.  The women here do amazing work and I am lucky enough to live near where it is all made.

My children are coming to India for the holidays. It will be wonderful to show them all the sites and just be with them.  They are very excited to have the opportunity to see where we live and meet all the people here.  I am sure we will spend several days visiting the markets not to mention the sites here in Bhuj.  We are also taking them to a wild life park which I am sure they will enjoy.  I sure do miss being near my children.  Mike will miss out on India this year but he will be coming here after his mission.

Mike has been having great success teaching people the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I am still amazed and grateful that someone took the time to teach me the gospel 29 years ago.  What a difference it has made in my life.  It has truly taught me that "Men (and women) are that they might have joy"

Navratri Festival

A huge festival in town and the noise was incredible. The festival was Navratri which means nine nights, it honors the Mother Goddess-Divine Shakti.  She destroys evil and grants boons to her children.
Here of pictures of the sea of humanity that walked by our apartment building on the way to the festival.  It is estimated that 800,000 indians came to town for the festival and it turns out we live on the main entrance to town.  They walked passed us at all hours of the day and night. Lots of music, loud speakers encouraging the pilgrims as they walked along.

They played music and danced until all hours of the night, and they didn't stop during the day.  Making it very difficult for us to sleep. I understand that there is a lot of dancing and beautiful traditional clothing worn. Dave of course had no interest in heading into the sea of humanity for a closer look and so I can't attest to that being true or not. : > )!

 Dave needed to travel to Mumbai for business so Tim and I joined him.  We stayed at the Suba Galaxy hotel near the airport.  All three of us stayed in the same room on 3 twin beds, Tim's was a pull out chair.  The hotel had very good air conditioning and was clean.  The beds were thin mattress on wood so think very hard, no give at all.  But it was nice to be in Mumbai, it afforded us with a chance to attend church and to hang out with other Americans.  We played charades for the first with two other American families, the Williams and the Dickens.  It was wonderful to be able to talk and share ideas with others who are having a similar experience.  Although I was struck by how different the vegetable markets were in Mumbai, there was a much greater variety of vegetables and of higher quality than we were able to get in Bhuj.

A Muslim Mosque 

We had a wonderful driver by the name of Robin, who worked for Only Friends.  He spoke English and took Tim and I to see the various sites in Churchgate.

The Mosque is a beautiful site on a peninsula. The walk way was filled with people heading to and from the Mosque.

 I love this plaque in the Hanging Gardens.  Good health really does bless the generations.  It's interesting I did a life clock.  If I live in the United States, I will live until I am 79 years old, but with changing nothing other than the fact that I now live in India it cuts my life expectancy to 67 (only 17 more years to go).  Which is funny because my housekeeper says Americans aren't healthy and we need to be more like the Indians, but then she also says her bread is healthier because it's made with wheat?  Gee, since we are using the same flour to make both the breads, her comment just doesn't make sense to me.  After all, wheat flour is wheat flour or is it. ; > ).

Here are some more wonderful pictures we took.  This the view from the Hanging gardens down to the beach.  I think the thing that struck me the most was
how clean everything was in Church Gate.  Unlike
the rest of Mumbai there wasn't trash littering the park or the beach.  I loved looking at the incredible buildings.

The gateway to India

SeaLink Bridge

Mehndi Adventure in India

Mehndi hand painting, Liz had her hands and legs painted and then bought the stuff needed to take to America with her for the ultimate sleepover activity.  The designs are very intricate and beautiful.  It goes on like a your are decorating a cake, the same type of bag is used to apply the paint, which is actually a clay like substance.  You then let the paint dry for 24 hours before chipping it off (which makes a horrible mess)  and you are left with the designs.  They would make wonderful quilting designs something that I will explore when I get back from my visit to America. That said, I really hope none of my children ever get a permanent tattoo.  It is startling and not in a good way every time I see Elizabeth's.  And I keep telling her to go and wash her hands.  She just rolls her eyes!  By the way, you are encouraged to not wash your hands for the 20 or so days it is on your hands because the water wears it away.  Elizabeth is thankfully not following that tradition.

We found some wonderful clothing when we went shopping this week which was important as I will be taking some back to the US for my daughters,  Liz loves the leggings that they make here.  She says they are very comfortable.  I am having 3 more dresses made from some wonderful fabric that I found while shopping.

The really great thing is they fit the tops to you while you wait if they don't fit you!