Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
India, 2012
Ramblings and writings from the mission eld of India. Saturday, February 4th MONOTONY
Travel, travel, travel. Huge amounts of boredom interrupted by very, very small bits of interesting stu and culminated by a good meal, odd rooms, and stuy noses. We were able to meet Joel at DIA. His college buddies drove him all through the night to meet with use at 4:00am to do the security and check in dance for the rst leg of our ight, Denver to Chicago. Joel has a neat story and Ill get to it on another day. The ight to Chicago was smooth and faultless. At Chicago we rst spent a good portion of our nearly six hour layover getting to know one another, talking about the mission schedule, and doing an I Am Second study. With less than about 40 minutes to spare, Taras plane landed from California and she joined the team. Tara is a 20 year old who is doing more travel and mission work before her 21st birthday than most of us will do in a lifetime. More on her later. Monotony. There is not another word to describe a nearly 15 hour ight across the frozen waste of the northern hemisphere. There is an old saying that its the journey, not the destination, that makes the trip memorable. In many cases that is true. In the case of spending more than half a day cramped in a droning tube of smell and bad food several thousand feet above the earthThe destination will certainly win out.
After our rst exposure to the madness that is called trac in India, we arrive at our hotel for the night. Charles checked us in, two to a room and we all went upstairs to drop o our bags and agreed to meet in the lobby in 15 minutes to exchange currency and go to dinner. Larry and I got teamed up together, which is just ne by me. Weve traveled together before and get on well. But.we dont get on so well that we feel comfortable sharing what seemed to be a wide twin size bed. That bed, along with walls a lovely shade of lilac and one of the most unique bathrooms I have ever encountered, are what we found in our room. We gured wed sort out the bed situation later. Right now its time to get down to the lobby and switch currency. Were switching not only an average of $200.00 in personal funds for each team member, but also enough to cover the entire teams hotels, vehicles, meals, etc. In all, several thousands of U.S. Dollars are exchanged for several tens of thousands of rupees. The rate is 48 rupees to the dollar and I feel like a prince when I get a sizeable stack of 500 rupee bills in exchange for my short stack of four $50.00 bills. The whole transaction takes place in the lobby of the hotel and for some reason I keep thinking that one of the Sopranos is going to come around the corner at any moment. Its all up-front and above-board, of course, but there is something odd about counting out all that currency anywhere other than a bank. There is one small spot in the lobby where the internet connection actually works with one tiny bar of signal strength. Needless to say, that is not where I am updating the blog. I was able to check my email and give my wife a little comfort by letting her know I had made is safely to Dehli. I also let her know how to make popcorn and encouraged her to take Eric up on his oer to help around the house, particularly with shoveling the estimated ten inches of snow that was due to come at any time. Eric, you can thank me later. Tomorrowmore travel. This time to our nal destination, Tezpur.
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Finally it turns dark enough that it seems the driver really is operating by sonar. There is no way to see the bicycles and water bualo who, it seems, are not equipped with reectors for some reason. Oh well. The dark makes it easier not to panic. We nally arrive in Tezpur. The hotel is nice and dinner is in about 30 minutes. The greatest relief is that we are now actually where we need to be to do the mission. These recent posts may have been interesting and all, but they are too much of a travelogue and not what I was sent here to do. Im really looking forward to getting to interact with the people of this country and share with them. I believe they have a lot to teach me. Tomorrow is Sunday here and well be attending church services with local believers an doing some additional training for the medical mission of the coming week.
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