this is what it is like.

To whom it may concern, this is what it is like to pick-up Hudson from school.  Play-by-play.

Walk out our door and quickly out our gate.  I smell something unpleasant that reminds me of outhouses at cross country meets, and look down in time to dodge this hole.  I believe that it is an open sewer?!

Walk through this field.

Wait at this corner of the main road panning traffic until I spot the white bird on a bus approaching and get excited for a big hug.

And he is off the bus.  My ears are ready for the run-down of the whole day. I don't always get every minute detail that I am looking for but hey, I will take what I can get.

We walk home and if I am not busy taking pictures, I would have a hand in mine.

thoughts on transition...

In the past 6 months we packed and prepared to go back to the states for the second time in 2011 without Graham who was still working in India.  Graham arrived in Omaha and we all settled into mom and dad's basement.  We travelled an average of once a week during our 4 months in Omaha.  We had our fourth baby.  We packed and left to return to India and stay in an apartment in the middle of a suburb of Delhi for 3 weeks while Graham commuted into the city to find a flat.  We went up to Mussoorie to say good-byes and get our things.  We moved into an unfurnished flat in a neighborhood we know nothing about and in a city that is foreign to us.


I write this not to boast on how tough we are or how much we can handle.  As a matter of fact, during this 6 months we have had countless moments of frustration, despair, scepticism and pessimism.  We have been cranky with the kids and disconnected from our marriage.  I write these things to remind myself not to be discouraged.  To pause and give myself and Graham grace and respite from the feelings of disappointment when our life still doesn't seem put together and "settled".  As a result of this, we have had to stop and regroup and reevaluate many days and sometimes multiple times in a day.  We so often have unrealistic expectations for ourselves.


So...on Monday we took our "home-schooled" 6yo to school and will begin potty training our "potty trained" 2 year old.

...we decided last minute to send Hudson to school.  My home school books are getting dusty on the shelves and I am hoping to use them still, but for now we will send him to a good school for kindergarten and he has been waking up at the crack of dawn each morning anxious to get out of the door to the school bus.

...we will try to re-potty train our Everett.  Note to self, it it not realistic for us to try to train a 21 month old and then go back to the US for 4 months and travel around a lot and have a new baby and then move back to India and live out of suitcases and move into a new place.  He or she will probably regress and have accidents multiple times a day mostly because mommy and daddy are distracted and preoccupied which in turn leads perpetually washing out poopy pants.

So...goals of 2012 are simply to go from disorientation and disarray to a place of peace. To go from surviving and making sure that the kids are atleast fed and napped each day to  thriving inside the walls of our house and in our community.

too spicey.

She is thinking..."Really daddy and mommy? I have to finish all of my rice and dal and vegetables?  Really?"

tourist on a bicycle.

On a Saturday, I became a tourist here.  Our good friend set up a cycle tour of Delhi for a group of us.  At the last minute, I decided to go.  Graham stayed back with the kids.  It was the first time I had left a nursing William and of course he was a champ and I was able to see the city.  Actually, a small but significant portion of the city...Old Delhi.  Being on a bicycle offers a unique perspective to a place, covering more ground then on foot while still interacting with it in a raw and open nature.  The tour left at dawn and we all rode our shiny orange road bikes through the narrow alleys as the area slowly and gently erupted.  It was an explosion of the senses.  There seemed to be a disorderly order to the daily happenings.  


The smell of the meat market with skinned buffulo heads on a truck and freshly butchered goat and lamb being hung at the roadside stalls for that day's business.  It was hard to hold back the coughing as we got off of the bicycles and walked through Asia's largest spice market with red chillis covering the floor of the narrow passageways.  We were instructed to make room for the men carrying large burlap sacks of spices on their heads.  They don't move.  We saw burning trash and large pots of bubbling oil to fry the roadside food.  We saw old mosques, we rode by the expansive Red Fort which is a landmark and heard some history of Mughal and British rule.  We finished our tour at a famous 100+ year old restaurant and had yellow dal, slow-cooked mutton in gravy and tandoori roti.  Apparently, the BBC quotes it as the best place to go for breakfast in Delhi.  During the final stretch of the ride, while being confronted with the constant honking of various vehicles, I had a near collision on my bicycle between an auto rickshaw and horse drawn cart.  I came out unharmed and definitely recommend seeing a city this way.  Here are a few photos from my phone.
www.delhibycycle.com 

1aDay

One of our 2012 goals is to take a photo once a day and post it.  Capturing the moments.  Hoping that they will tell the story of our year.  1aDay