Manorama Hotel Vijayawada

... day of traveling. (Literally, we are traveling along with the sun, so we'll have a few extra hours of Wednesday to deal with. I can post from my blackberry, and I can send pictures as well, and they would be posted at the end of this. Okay breakfast is ready, and we have a lot of work to try and do in the next two or three hours, so... thanks for checking this thing, and goodbye for now.

... sweet smoothie that really pleased our curry-soaked palettes. The four of us, (Susie decided not to join us guys on this adventure), sat and thoroughly enjoyed two cups each of this treat, deliberately disobeying the advice that we had been given all week. We thanked both Anil and his friend, and politely refused when he offered to make us more. So be praying for us, that we wake up in the morning with good health. After all, Anil promised to take us on another walk tomorrow night!

... came to visit us. One was selling lace cloth items sewn by local villagers, the other was selling wooden artifacts imported from the Kashmir region. I purchased a small wooden endtable for 500 Rupees (about 10 dollars). I still have a few rupees left for purchasing snacks from the shop here on campus! We sat down and looked at the items, and one of the staff members bartered on our behalf. It was a very interesting experience! I have posted pictures ...

... treatment to anyone in the community. Thanks to the connections of the chairman who is a phD in the States, they have had a lot of medical equipment donated which allows them to do many advanced diagnoses and treatments. The Doctor, Arun Noah, was recently hired to lead the campus. He is a very capable leader with a great vision for the project. So we started out in the morning at the Children's Center for a small assembly with the children there. Then we moved on to staff devotional ...

Hop off the bus and get to work! We had breakfast, a quick tour of the campus, then we went to a house dedication in the village. This was a very interesting experience. After racing through the village in the school bus, we hopped off and wandered into the neighborhood until we arrived at a brand new, four-room house wedged between a few brick huts with thatch roofs. It was just built for one of the teachers at the school ...

... in Guntur. Onze kamer is hier intussen wel werkelijk ingenomen door de beestjes... ik weet dat ik al veel over beestjes ben bezig geweest maar dit slaat echt alles. Hoe die het op 2 weken zo bond hebben kunnen maken... Mierennesten aan elke deur en in de kast (die kast doen we NIET meer open, echt niet...), de geckos hebben zitten kweken volgens mij want zijn NOG in aantal toegenomen en dan zijn er nog wat leuke spinnen... ahja en de rat hebben we ...

... dan dus de bedoeling dat we elke dag van daar uit naar ons dorpje gaan, Pedapatnam, om daar te werken. Het gaat om een dorpje dat wordt heropgebouwd na de tsunami, maar de werken vlotten er niet zo goed. De werf heeft 1 jaar stilgelegen enz... maar nu zijn ze dus terug volop bezig. We moeten wel goed op onze strepen staan om effectief te mogen helpen want 2 blanke meisjes lieten ze in het begin liever niet met bakstenen en mortel slepen, maar ik denk dat zze intussen ...

... nog telloze bezoekjes aan mensen thuis die allemaal toch oooh zo graag wilden ons thee en koffie trakteren. Altijd heel leuke momenten! - bezoeken aan dorpjes, waar we telkens bloemetjes (al dan niet in ons haar) krijgen bij ontvangst en waar ze staan te dringen om ons een hand te geven. Vooral de kinderen zijn altijd zoooo geweldig en hebben niet liever dan dat je een foto van ze neemt en die dan laat zien op het schermpje... zalig hoe snel je mensen hier kan ...

... time we had driven with it, so we were getting used to it. There was no way we could hold any kind of conversation over the racket, but the mood we were both in at this point, we weren't for doing much talking anyway. We came across a mechanics, and he took a look at the engine - missing screws required - before writing down what we needed. There was no way we were going to buy them ourselves, so we got him to drive us to a parts place, where ...

... was even a hierarchy amongst the two villages we were helping, which was apparent in the way they dressed, the size of their living quarters, and the way they treated each other. But as ARV was trying to bridge the connection between India and the Dalits, we were also trying to build friendships amongst the villagers and apparently it's working. A year a go the youth from the poorer village were too afraid to cross the line ...