Take another trip back in time...

Well, I am blogging again, but some of it is a bit older. So if you are interested in the Taj Mahal and the visit of my friend Lori Clancy and what we did then, please go back to April and check it out.

But, as usual, be patient, it shows up a bit at a time :) !!

Miranda's Baptism!! (finally...)

Well, only 4 months after Miranda's 8th birthday, we finally had her baptism. The delay was mostly because she turned 8 just a few days before we headed home to Canada for the summer, and she had decided she wanted to be baptized in India. It was a very small group - our family and the Barnes family, and Sister Stella, the Primary President. We even had to go upstairs and pull a missionary out of a meeting so we would have enough witnesses! It was very nice - Isaac said the opening prayer, Sam and Alex gave the talks, Miranda and Kiera Barnes sang with Isaac on the violin. It was fun to be baptized outside in the backyard of the church! And later, after brownies and pop (her choice) she came home and opened some cool presents. (we don't usually do that, as the other kids were quick to point out!) I had made for her a scrapbook of just her, with a written message from Randy and I and the other kids. Aunt Kari made a pretty neat "quiet book" with scripture cards, and Grandma Brooks gave her a Baptism scrapbook, which she LOVES, and we have worked on for several days now. The vandenBusches even sent a gift! Miranda was pretty excited to be baptized, and we are proud of her. It feels like a big step to have all our family now official members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints!
I am adding these photos of the outside of the Church building which I took months ago and have never posted.

We meet in the bottom two floors of a 4 story house, and yes, people live upstairs. The first photos are inside the chapel area in the basement. The font is at the end of the driveway. There is a guard there full-time, since there are not really any outside doors. As I type this, I see that I need more photos to explain it properly - it is pretty different from church buildings at home!
PS if you go back to May you can read about her birthday!

back to the water park, but not alone this time.

Since the kids hardly go to school in October (festival season means 2 days off for Ghandi's birthday, 2 for Dusshera, and a week for Diwali, plus a bonus day in between for I don't know what) we headed to the waterpark again. Sam chose to be a grump and stay home. It is still plenty hot for swimming (about 92 that day) but unfortunately, it was a holiday, and HORRORS! we had to share the place!!!

They brought some chairs so we could sit in the shade and watch the kids.

It was more of the usual, except that we got a much clearer picture (literally) of the weirdness of Delhi-ites when it comes to apparel in the pool. I say that because in the south, apparently it is much more relaxed. This place rents swim costumes (the speedo looking ones for the men, and sleeved ones with bike-short length legs and a skirt) for women. One girl had hers on backwards (not so modest that way) and this mom kept her pants on!! What?! The lady in the brown outfit probably figured that wearing her clothes would be more modest than a swimsuit, but I think not. And the men... those swim tunks should be outlawed - WAY too much information revealed. And Indians are sort of hairy, so that doesn't help. Really, these are some wacky ideas.

This is video that illustrates the extreme volume of EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE in India. We are forever asking stores and restaurants to turn down the music so we can hear ourselves. During festival time, someone is ALWAYS blaring distorted music or chanting from a truck or a temple. And even at the water park, they think if it isn't deafening, it isn't loud enough.

Mehndi, again. Sam is a fan :)

Christelle's parents (who were here visiting for nearly a MONTH - more with them will show up on here eventually) were heading back to Belgium the next day, and we finally managed to convince her Mom to get some Mehndi done. This guy has a spot on the sidewalk at Omax Mall (the one across Sohna Road from us). Alex wanted to come but her dishes weren't washed, and Miranda didn't really seem into it, so just Sam and I went with Christelle and Frances.
I love to watch these guys work - what an art! We bought ourselves some tubes of the henna, but we are scared to try it. They make it look easy, but I am sure ours would look like stick people next to the Mona Lisa! (Incidently, a tube of the stuff they use costs 10 rupees in the market. Keep that in mind when you read what I paid! Pretty sure it is the White Lady price.) He had a binder with photos you could choose from - we sort of sign language what we want.
Sam wanted the full meal deal - both hands, up on the arm. (When we got home and it was dinner time. it presented a problem - she could not hold her own fork and Alex had to feed her!!) Frances was only brave enough to get one arm done, Christelle and I both opted for the ankle, she added one palm ("not the fingers, please, I need to cook tonight") I prefer the back of the hand. Less hassle while you wait for it to dry!

This much fun cost me 400 rupees, less than $10. Sam LOVES it. And it lasts several weeks, so its ok.

Alex? On the swim team? OUR Alex??

So. I am at home, minding my own, when the phone rings. It is the swim coach at GDGoenka (the kids' school). She tells me that there is a swim meet today at the American Embassy School in Delhi and they are short some girls in Alex's age group and could she go and swim for them?......uh, I guess so. (Can she swim an actual stroke, an actual length of the pool is what I think, but I don't say that.) So we arrange that I will walk out to Sohna Road and deliver a swimsuit, towel, goggles, and swim cap and sign the permission forms as the bus goes by on its way to Delhi. About 10 minutes later, Alex calls. I say, I forgot to ask if you WANTED to do this - do you? She says, well, yeah, whatever. So, suddenly I have a competitive swimmer in my family! Incidently, Sam IS on the swim team, but dislikes competition, and they have enough girls in HER age group, so she didn't go. Weird. Anyway, Randy knocks off work early and we drive to Delhi, since this could very well be the only swim meet we ever have reason to go to, and the girls relay is the first race. Alex swims breast stroke. At a blistering pace. haha. Not. BUT, she does it, she makes it, and we are both tired just watching, so there you go. Of course, the Goenka kids get SLAUGHTERED by the AES kids, who swim several hours a DAY (and this is their varsity team, too, not the B list kids) The other school at the meet is Pathways, the other Indian school we looked at. They are also bad, but not as bad as us. To be fair, Goenka has had a pool for less than a year, so what do you expect. Anyway, after the relay (and AES was done, while we were on our 2nd leg) the boys relay started, and about halfway thru, lightening was spotted. Everybody got out of the pool, it proceeded to DUMP with rain, and after an hour, they called the meet. And we went home. By way of KFC for dinner :) . Of course, the photos do not do justice to the amount of rain that fell. We were trapped under a stand umbrella on the far side of the pool from the kids.
This is the GDGoenka contingent.
One thing to notice - the swim suits on the Indian girls. I talked about this earlier, when we went to the water park, but to see a kid try to RACE in a suit with a skirt and legs was pretty weird. Oh yeah, and the other teams both had team suits, and matching towels, etc etc. Oh well. I am just glad I don't have to fork out $50 for a special "swim costume" (not suit, costime). Here is video of Alex, and we were very pleased with her performance. She got the job done, and we were happy with her willingness to put herself out there and give it a shot.
Alex has surprised us with how her swimming has improved. Actually, all the kids are so much better this year. We have been experimenting with snorkeling too, and Alex caught on right away - she dives down under with the snorkel and everything.

The BLOG HAS BEEN UPDATED!!! Check March, April....

I apologize again for the delay, but the blog is getting new stuff added all the time! Unfortunately for you, the fair reader, I am posting these events as to the dates they occured, NOT when I get around to finally blogging them. I am sorry - I know it is more work for you. But less confusing for me. So, to see our big vacation for real, (the cause of the blog delay) go back in time to March (which is when we went) and read the blogs in reverse order - they are numbered (1 to 15) for your convenience. Have fun! (the trip is the oldest stuff, and much has been posted that fits in the time frame since then, so check April - and soon May - too. ) Thanks for hanging in there, and being interested in our wacky experiences here. :)

we are famous! mis-quoted, but famous :)

So we were in Delhi shopping at Janpath market, buying pillow covers, and a girl approached us and said she was a journalist doing an article about tourists in Delhi and would we comment. We said sure, but we weren't tourists. She said ok and took our photo and wrote our answers down, and our names. We watched the papers and thought she must have either been scamming us, or decided not to use us. It was a whole week later that we showed

up in there, on page 4. And our names are spelled right, and match our photo, but that is where it ends - NOTHING she says we said, we actually said. We are NOT from France, we were NOT buying silk scarves, and we do NOT have GPS on our cell phones! So, my faith in the paper dropped a few notches. We have long known, tho, that what is in quotation marks here is a loose interpretation, and not an actual quote - we figured this out when they would quote Americans using words and phrases that no American would ever use! It also baffles me that they cannot tell the difference between an American accent and a British accent and a German or Dutch accent. I mean, really, we sound NOTHING alike! (oh yeah, we don't know anything about Sector 42, but we don't care either! and I think "besotted" is a strong word.)
But still, it was kinda fun to be in the paper!