Miranda's birthday - 8 years old!!

For Miranda's birthday she wanted to try out the Fun Village at the Ambience Mall. It is sort of a ChuckECheese thing (oh how I HATE ChuckECheese!) with arcade games, rides and prize tickets. For the rides you buy a pre-charged credit card thing and just put it into the ride and the amount is deducted. (Better and cleaner than tokens) It was very loud, of course. But it was pretty fun. My favorite is the Dance Dance Revolution Game - it is cheap too, so we danced several times. Isaac is the king, since he does it tons at Grandma and Grandpa Leavitt's every summer. Later we played Whack-a-Mole and we ALL whacked - you get lots of tickets that way!!

At the end the kids pooled their tickets (somewhat willingly) and let Miranda choose the prize. A tiny brown teddy bear then came home with us.

When we got home, we had very chocolatey cake and presents!

Her siblings gave her a Princess colouring set with Princess crayons, extra stickers from Alex (Princess of course), puzzle and PlayDoh and Oreos and an artbook from Mom and Dad. And of course, the blanket from Grandma Brooks that she actually got at Christmas time!

I think she had a good birthday.

I think they call it monsoon...

Well, it has begun. Early this year. It started with a nice electrical storm that the girls went up on to the roof to watch - we could hear them screaming and singing and whatever else up there. The lightning is pretty good here. Sam has decided the storms are her favorite thing about India (altho I should add that the list is pretty short!). Anyway, that was a nice break, it cleans the air and keeps the dust down (by turning it into mud, of course!), even as the temperature stays the same (over 100 most of the time). After a couple days of rain at night, it really hit. We wanted to go to Delhi to shop but by the time I got to the end of the driveway I was drenched! And the problem is that many of the shops don't open because so much of their inventory has to be outside on the sidewalk or hanging on a wall or whatever. They use a lot of blue tarps, but they only work to a point. There were many trees down, and traffic is slow. People huddle under the overpasses to get out of it - especially the motorcyclists and bike rickshaws. It gets crowded under there!
This picture is of a parking area at the Omax Mall (the mall across the main road from our neighbourhood). It used to be grass, then they filled it in with dirt so it was less of a mosquito breeding ground, but now it is a lake!Can you see the truck on its side in this photo? The roads are poorly constructed and when the rain hits, there are so many potlholes and soft spots, that bad stuff happens. This one is a truck sunk to the bumper in mud/pothole/etc. It has been there in the middle of the road for 3 days now.

Then yesterday we really got slammed - SO much rain - the most on one day in May in 5 years. The temperature REALLY dropped - the lowest temp in May in 5 years - it was not over 74 all day! Which was great, except the laundry will never get dry under these circumstances!

The best part is, that usually it rains like mad then quits and the sun comes out. (I love that!) But in order to get that record-breaking rain yesterday, it rained ALL day, just like Seattle. No wind, not hard rain, just all day. Bleah. I thought I was done having to run the lights at noon :)
Randy had some excitement at work because the gutters broke, so water was pouring in the plant, and when he tried to go outside to see if he could fix the gutters, he discovered the guard had LOCKED THEM IN THE PLANT!! So he banged on the door until it was unlocked then yelled at the guard and said NEVER do that. Five minutes later, he was locked in again! Perhaps not the safest idea. No idea why he would do that. Anyway, he took these photos of the street outside Helac's gates - really like a lake. Drainage is poor and the rain comes down SO hard and SO fast - like pouring out a bucket. I tried to take a photo but it just doesn't do it justice.

New baby means an excuse to see a hospital!

On the same day that we visited the slum school, we also went with Sister Dunn to the Holy Family Hospital in Delhi to visit a woman from our branch of the Church who had just had a baby. (Missionaries in Delhi don't have cars, and it was quite a ways away, so it worked out for us to take her.) Christelle couldn't come in because they would not allow Niek (who is 3) to go in. We were not there in visiting hours, either, but there were 3 of us white ladies, and we just marched right in.
Someday I will blog about the crappy voodoo medicine they practice here - it is unbelievable the garbage advice people are given - you can't fathom that a DOCTOR would say such ludicrous stuff! But not today.
This is Theresa Fernando and her new son. She had been thoroughly prepared by the Dunns (he is a doctor!) but it was still scary for her since NO ONE is allowed in with you - no mom, no husband, no sister. Notice the furnishings right out of the 50s - metal beds, etc. And I wish the photos of the baby's diapers would have turned out better - these diapers are basically a triangle of single layer flannel (and not soft or fluffy at all) with strings on the wide side and a loop in the front. You put the baby on the triangle, pull the strings to the front, go thru the loop and tie. (You can see in this photo it took two of us to figure it out!) And if he actually does anything, it is a waste, since one layer of old flannel doesn't absorb anything! (I know this because I got wet whilst holding him!) And it barely keeps the other stuff off the blankets. Crazy. My baby gift to her was some velcro diapers, more than one layer thick! And I have never seen more of them to buy since then. You rarely see a baby with a diaper or pants on - al fresco is the way to go here, and since babies are almost always at home with a maid or Grandma, and all the floors are marble and it is warm all the time... who needs Huggies? If you do buy diapers, they come in ridiculously tiny packages (like, 10. what is that, a one day supply??) and they are ridiculously expensive.
Look at the hair on that kid! Cute, eh?

We visit a "slum school" with Sister Dunn

We went to visit a "slum school" with Sister Dunn, the LDS Humanitarian Services missionary in our area (with her husband). She had worked with these kids for well over a year, and they loved her. We went because the Young Women of our branch were working on a project (alphabet decorations for classrooms) and we wanted to see the school and meet the principal before Sister Dunn left India (which happened a few weeks later).
There is not much glass in the windows, no working A/C, no maps, no charts, no library. The kids are cheerful, clean, and neat in their uniforms. The principal seemed to have it going on, and doing great with her limited resources. These kids go to school year-round - not for classes, necessarily - she told us they have school in the summer months basically to give the kids somewhere to go. They mostly do art projects and crafts during that time, not core classes.
Sister Dunn had taught music to them. They sang with her one last time and she cried. It was very sweet to see the way they responded to her.
One of the fundamental things wrong with this country, in my opinion, is the lack of emphasis on education for everyone. There is no law requiring or providing education for everyone up to a certain age. (Even if there was, so few births are registered officially, who would know how many kids are out there that should be in school, and how can you force them to go when their family needs them to work? It is a broken system.) Many kids are working by 9 or 10 years of age, and even if they go to school, many attend Hindi medium school not English, which limits them somewhat. Teachers are paid little, the facilites are appalling, books, paper and pencils are in very short supply. In many schools, there is two shifts of kids - one morning and one afternoon - to get the most out of the school buildings. Many families send only their sons to school, just one more way they demonstrate how girls are of less value here. The newspaper started an initiative called "Teach India" some months ago, and they match volunteers with schools, to teach 2 hours a week. It has really caught on, with nearly 50,000 people signing up to teach across the country. It is a brilliant idea, and it certainly can't hurt, where the government system is such a joke. One of the guys at Randy's factory is teaching kids every Friday. Right now, there is a waiting list - of volunteers!

Alex's Birthday - oh no! another TEENAGER!!

Can you believe it, we are now the parents of TWO teenagers!!?? yuck. Alex's birthday was kind of fun - the Taylor twins snuck in and decorated her room when she was at school, then later we went to the mall to the ceramic painting place.

Sam painted a car, Alex a bunny dish thing, Harmony a clock, and Cumorah an egg plate to hold earrings. I painted a square dish to hold jewelry. We had fun! Who doesn't like the ceramics place?!

Isaac and Miranda came later, so they painted some fish magnets.






At home, we had a cake from the French bakery, and presents.

Alex's presents were a Disney Mix-Max (much to Sam's dismay - "what is the point of being 14 if SHE gets one when she is only 13!?"), a beaded mirror (in purple, her favorite colour), some books, chocolate from Christelle, a purse from Lori (who had just left), and stuffed things from the Taylors.

After a week or so we collected our ceramic things and had a group photo!

Happy birthday, Alex!