just down the street.

eMi has officially moved.  Graham obtained the keys a couple of weeks ago and two moving trucks full of office equipment arrived and have been unloaded.  The view from the office windows now are not of the himalayas.  Actually, there is really no view because it is a basement space.  On the bright side, it will be much cooler in the summer and temperatures are already rising.  There is an apartment above the office that will be used for interns and volunteers.  The kicker is that the office is two buildings down from our place.  I am trying to convince Graham that this means that whenever I need help changing a diaper I can holler and he will be right over!  We are thrilled that we figured out how to dodge the Delhi traffic with such a short commute and so far all of eMi staff have been able to find residences close by.  The unpacking, rebuilding, painting, plumbing and wiring have begun.  With architects on our staff there is no doubt that the basement space will be tastefully designed and it will eventually feel like the new eMi home.  The kids and I visited today(see photos below).  Graham is off on a project to Ryalanka island in the south doing a flood/community development/errosion control project.

The brick building is the new eMi office and if you look down the street at the end of the photo is our white place above the small black gate.

wedding season and late nights.

Our landlord's son got married last weekend.  From what I could gather, it was a very proper arranged marriage.  The families found each other on a match-making site or advertisement.  The couple met a few times before the marriage in a very formal and chaperoned setting.  After the marriage, they will live either short-term or long-term with the groom's family.  India is changing and relationships and marriages don't all happen this way, but this one seems to be a bit more traditional.  

Indian weddings are a cultural experience.  A multiple day affair full of events, worship ceremonies, dancing, sweets, beautiful dress, bands, horses and parades.  We got invited to this wedding and attended.  The reception festivities did not start until nearly 9PM and so we made the decision to go even though it was well past our kids' bedtime.  Notably, we did not get home until after midnight, but the kids rose to the occasion and had a great time.  The next night our neighbors had a BBQ and that dinner did not start until nearly 9PM and lasted until well after midnight.  Two record setting late nights for our little ones, but we feel like we are getting to know our neighbors and sometimes it takes adjusting our family clock a little to engage and make new friends because clearly India is on a different time schedule.  

Here are a couple of videos from the event.    The first video is from our balcony as we watched the groom mount the horse.  This was a very small processional.  Usually they are very crowded with huge bands and a large group dancing behind him in the street. During the reception we looked over to see Everett alone breaking it down on the dance floor.  He single-handedly started the dance party.  A short while after, he peed  on the dance floor which was tracked around by unaware dancers.

Wedding parade. from Carrie Frank on Vimeo.


Punjabi style from Carrie Frank on Vimeo.

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.