It ain't me babe, no, no, no, it ain't me babe

It has been just about one month since I left you all back in chilly Minnesota. A lot has happened in one month here in hot India. I pretty much have given up the idea of getting a good night's rest. I have yet to fall asleep very easily since I've been here. I get sick about once a week, not majorly ill but a little stomach bug. My feet are never clean. I don't think they will be for the entire time I am here. Mosquito bites here are 10 times worse than at home, and 10 times larger. People stare at me anywhere I go in public. People even take pictures of me and my friends with their phones. I don't understand why. I know these Indians have seen white people before. I don't understand.

Despite all of these things, I cannot complain. I am just stating facts. Despite all those facts I truly love this country and am looking forward to spending the next 8 months of my life here.

Yesterday I went to Pune again, and the train ride home totally redeemed my previous local train experience. We found the woman's carriage and it was amazing. No worries. We almost missed the train, but God sent an angel at the front of the ticket line to let us in ahead of her then follow her, running, to the train. She was a miracle. The queues were SO long, we would have waited for at least 3 hours if we went to the end of the line.

I got my hair permanently straightened, no pictures of it yet, but ya'll have seen me with straight hair, so there's nothing to see, except that I cannot wash it for 7 days! Ay carumba. I cannot even get it wet. I cannot even put it up in a pony. I hope it's not too hot this week. Otherwise my hair will get sweaty and ruined.

I did not take any pictures in Pune because I was sitting in a salon all day, but I took some good pictures at Lonavala train station, so I'll put those up as soon as I feel like it.

Today we are studying Luke. We only have one day for Luke. No horizontal or vertical charts for this book, praise the Lord! We just have to do a BRI which is a paper answering some questions like, "what is the historical background of the book? What was the culture like?", "who wrote the book?", and "who is the original reader?" Things of that sort. I actually enjoy the BRIs for the gospels because they do not require as much information as they do for epistles.

Tomorrow we start Acts and I have to finish it by Saturday morning because we're going to Bombay for the weekend! It's two of our "leaders" birthdays on Saturday. Same day! Bizarre.

I think my favorite Biblical relationship is that of Moses and God. I was thinking about this the other day, and I have always loved reading about Moses. My favorite fact of their relationship is where it says that Moses and God had a relationship like close friends, they had a face to face friendship. I have always asked God for this kind of relationship with Him. I would love to just go somewhere alone and be able to see God, granted I would die if I did, but perhaps then Moses was hanging out with Jesus all those years ago. Jesus is God after all, and if Moses had really seen God he would have died.

Oh my gosh, I love Ben Folds. He just came on my iTunes and I am so glad I got a bunch of his music before I left. He is like the Elton John of my generation. Yeah, I said it.

My Christmas plans are up in the air. Please pray that something works out for me to leave this country over Christmas. Right now Nepal is looking like the best and cheapest option, so that really is the plan, I just didn't have time yesterday to go to the travel agent and book my ticket, so that will have to wait. Pray the flight prices don't go up. Oh India, why must I leave you after 6 months?

This was quite the random blog entry.

Oh my gosh! I just remembered I have laundry that's been soaking all night! I must go and tend to this matter. I really don't mind hand washing all my clothes, it just takes so long and then to dry takes even longer, and sometimes they smell worse after I wash and dry them than they even did before. Sick.

I will write a better blog entry perhaps next week sometime, since I'll be scrambling to finish Acts this week. I am swearing off facebook and skype just through Sunday. I will only check my e-mail. I won't have time to reply to anything this week.

Is your bed made? Is you sweater on?

Last night I fell in love with India. I was riding in a rickshaw "home" to the campus and it really did feel like I was going home. Sitting in a small rickshaw at night with my English friend, looking out the side of the rickshaw at people walking on the street and dogs laying in the middle of the road, that was the moment my heart melted for India. My heart grew 10 sizes that day. Like the Grinch, you know? I think I really was like the Grinch the last three weeks. Lazy, yet thinking of ways to ruin everyone's Christmas. Getting frustrated with honking cars, barking dogs, train horns, children begging. What's with all this noise, noise, noise, NOISE!

Last night I was able to go to one of the part-time SBS staff's home. She is from Australia and married an Indian man 10 years ago. They have a beautiful 4 year old daughter who is lively as a fish first out of water, only she doesn't eventually run out of breath and just lay there. She's always running around asking you to come up to her room and play with her. We got to watch CNN and BBC and find out the world is in some sort of financial crisis, also that the election is in three weeks, and I am actually wishing I had registered for an absentee ballot. Funny how three weeks over here is making me concerned about my country's leader for the first time ever in my life. Anyway, we got to do our laundry at B's house. Her name isn't really B, but I'm just going to call her that. She has a washer AND a dryer! I was so excited. Then we watched our first Indian film. We being the Norwegians, the British, and the American (a.k.a. myself).

Next week we are going through Mark. I just read it out loud today with the Norwegians. It only took about an hour. Can't wait for Isaiah's out loud reading. Or Psalms! Ay carumba!

Plans for going to Nepal seem to be way more complicated. I mean, I could get there fairly easily, but it's tricky once I'm over there, and I refuse to go alone, and the Brit can't necessarily come with because it's looking to be more expensive than originally intended. I mean, it's not that expensive, but she literally has NO money, and her parent's are not helping her in any way. So, if she can't go then I can't go because I am not riding a 30 hour train by myself to Delhi to get on a plane by myself to Katmandu to get on a 6 hour bus ride by myself. Pray she can go please, give money, whatever God puts on your heart. I really want to do this with her. We were going to go Trekking for 7 days in these beautiful mountains and this would work out well for both of us to make use of our visa agreement of only being in India for 6 months at a time. It would help us a lot.

I'm not feeling like myself lately. Physically. I feel sick a lot of times, randomly, and I don't feel like eating most of the time, although I still eat at every meal even though I don't feel like I can fit any more food in my body. It's so bizarre! I don't think I'll eat dinner tonight though, unless I'm hungry. Maybe I keep getting sick cause I'm eating even though my body is telling me not to.

Our first exam was on Friday morning. I don't know how well I did yet, but I am pretty confident I got at the very least a "B" on it. Three weeks ago I could not have told you what the main idea of Titus was, or why Paul wrote Philemon, or who Onesimus was, or what the culture of Ephesus was, but now I know it all! Crazy, crazy, crazy.

It hasn't hit me yet that I'm in India. I look around at this tropical environment full of Indian people and dogs and cows and trains and garbage, yet I still am not fully aware of my surroundings. I am not fully aware of what I have gotten myself into. Last night I wast talking to a DTS student and she simply asked me what my plan was after SBS and I told her music and she talked for maybe 20 minutes, but I don't think she was talking. God was talking through her. She said some really encouraging things and some things I never considered, or things I thought weren't for me so I never gave them a chance to grow or develop. She said I needed an open heart and mind for these things to grow in me. It was a lot to process,and I'm still processing it. I most certainly was not expecting God to show up in that room at that moment, but BAM he was there.

Okay, I could most definitely write a novel today, but I must stop and get yet some more rest before kitchen duty at 4. Having weekend work duty is actually pretty fun and I find myself wandering into the kitchen to hang out or help even if it's not my day. It's fun working in the kitchen with all the SBSers. I love life here. Right now I'm sitting outside on the internet writing in this. There is a cool breeze and I'm sitting in the shade of the classroom building/boys dorms. I can see a giant coconut tree in front of me. The coconut trees here look nothing like the ones in Vanuatu. Who knew there were even different species of coconut trees?

I found a guitar I am able to use quite regularly, and love, love, love when the DTS students are gone and I can just go into their classroom and sing. The reverb in the room would make even cookie monster's voice sound like an angels. It truly is amazing.

You have her pictures, you have her pictures everywhere

Galatians is due at 6:00 PM tomorrow and fortunately we have no class tomorrow, so all day until 6 is free and open for homework time. My plan is to get done by lunch tomorrow so that I can have a nap or do laundry tomorrow afternoon.

The pictures should be as follows...
Dining hall
A truck on the walk into town to go to our favorite study spot
Rickshaws!
Coffee Day (our favorite study spot)
The life of an SBS student
Laundry room, yeah, handwashing...not my strong suit
Some of the boys on base playing Rummy 500
My new good friend Karen and myself
Some other boys playing some crazy game

All taken on my wonderful Canon Digital Rebel XT that was formerly broken and God fixed it miraculously!

Pray for finances if you think about it. I still need to purchase a ticket home eventually and pay for my third quarter of school. Each are between $700 and $800 dollars.

As for Christmas break, Nepal is calling my name and hopefully I will be able to find a cheap flight. Pray for that as well, online they're looking quite spendy, but I'm hoping via travel agent it will be cheaper. Taking a train and bus is not an option, it's cheaper sure, but it will take too long and I won't get ANY rest before 2nd quarter if I take the train.

It's in the photograph, it's in the photograph, it's in the photograph of love.

God is so amazing! As some of you know the amazing camera Kristy gave me to use in India died the night before I left and it turns out they could not replace it the morning I left, so I took it with me to India and was going to call some number to get another number in India to find some shop nearby to hopefully fix it or replace it. This I was nervous about, being new to the country and not understanding people very well because of their poor English and my non-Hindi speaking. Today I thought I'd try charging the battery fully and put it in and see if it would work, so I prayed and put the charged battery in but it did not turn on. I was ready to call the number, I put money on my Skype account so I could call this number to get another number and probably another one, all this hassle to find somewhere near here to fix the dang camera. Right before I put the number in I said a quick prayer and tried turning it on one last time and the screen came on and it said there's no memory card in it! Before nothing came on, nothing happened it was just like being off in the "on" position! So, I put a memory card in and started taking as many pictures as I possibly could! It works! I don't need to take it in and now I have an amazing camera to capture the beauty of India! I am so thankful to the Lord right now! I can't stop smiling! God is SO good! This was my first miracle. I truly believe it was a miracle.

Go away from my window, leave at your own chosen speed.

The foreign girls were given a more personal and informal orientation yesterday about Indian culture since the large base orientation didn't cover anything for foreigners. It was eye opening and I understood things a lot better.

Today I am having stomach problems. I didn't think I'd get sick, but here I am. I'm about to go have a nap, but I wanted to post some more pictures before I lay down. I went to the market today with Lottie and on the way back we ran into some friends from campus, so here you go!

Life inside a music box ain't easy

Oh! Here are some pictures finally, none of which are necessarily "Indian"

Two Norwegian sisters, my new English friend and me, my new Indian friend and me, and then there's the SBS classroom.






Almost done with week 2 of the three week SBS seminar! We unfortunately had to say good-bye to the newest Lil' J addition to my life, Justin. He is going home to the states to staff DTS. He co-led our first week and a half with the other two American boys, but now his Titus outreach is over and he is going home.

Okay, so we are almost done with the book of Ephesians. I have finished my horizontal and first two vertical charts. I am putting off starting number three right now by writing this, but that's okay for now. We will be having ample amounts of time to work today. It is going to be very hard for me to manage my time to do work after this seminar when we're all on our own and will have nothing but open time to study. I would explain horizontal and vertical charts to you all, but you wouldn't understand, and I don't want to give too much away as to the secrets of studying the Bible. All I can say is this inductive method is amazing. I'll tell you the difference between deductive and inductive. This I can do! Okay, so most Bible studies are done deductively. Which means that you already have your own idea or opinion about something and then you go to the Bible to find verses or passages that prove your point. That's how 98% of Bible studies and sermons are lead I would say. Next, there is the inductive study method, which is what we are all busy doing here in India. The inductive method would be to lay aside all your ideas and opinions, all your cultural, educational, family influences on what you think and FIRST you read the Bible and observe, interpret, and then apply what you read to your life. So, read first, then form an opinion whereas deductive is first have an opinion, then read to prove that opinion correct. Ba da bing, ba da boom. Just a glimpse of what is swimming around inside my head right now (figure of speech). Okay, so enough about studying!

I can say that I am very blessed to have these Americans leading the first three weeks. I don't know that I would have understood everything if they hadn't been here. I am very thankful for them to be here. Plus, showing how small your world gets when you join YWAM, they all know a girl from my DTS who is, right now, on the base they all did their SBSs at.

I am slowly getting to know pieces of different students and staff here. It's really fun always sitting with new people at meals or in class. Indian people love to talk. That is one thing no one warned me about before I came, but it's completely true. They love asking questions and most of all they love sharing their testimonies. Sometimes it can get a bit overwhelming, especially when I have homework to do and I feel bad to interrupt them, but I better get used to it.

Hopefully it stops raining here so that I can walk up to the local coffee shop to study later. I don't know what I'd do without this nearby coffee place. You all will hate me, but I get the equivalent to a small iced mocha here for $1.25 whereas in Minneapolis it's around $4.00! That's right. You should all come to India!

I am loving the food here. Curry, chai, curry, chai, curry, chai. Basically that's what we have every day. It's more like chai, chai, curry, chai, curry. With mango pickle here and mango pickle there. I have begun to eat with my hand only for dinner. It's the way real Indians do. I think I am falling in love with this country as much as I hated it when I first arrived. It grows on you. I am more comfortable with it now.

I really want to take a nap, but I have no time for sleep here. Speaking of no time, I better get back to my builds which are on my vertical charts. Ahh, the life of an SBS student. I haven't even begun to taste SBS yet.

Blessings to you and yours! I hope it's not too cold for ya'll yet. Send me some snow if you think about it.

Where I walk now, oh where I walk now

Yesterday I traveled to Pune. Pune is nothing like I thought it would be. The girls here on campus are correct in saying that we should go to Pune when we want to shop, because that is what you do in Pune. You shop. All the foreigners in our SBS went on the local train. Four guys and four girls. The way there was pretty okay. It wasn't too crowded at first, but by the time we arrived in Pune people were packed into this train. If you are sitting you have 4 or 5 to a bench that fits only 3 comfortably. Then, there are people standing in the aisles and even in the aisles without handles to hold on to. It's really hot too and all those bodies don't help. There are all these beggars that come onto the train to beg for money or food while the train is stopped and they are mostly small children, like 5 or 6 or 7 years old and they come up to you and hit you and will not leave you alone. You have to just ignore them mostly. We gave away a lot of food this day to child beggars. Then we have the transvestites. They mostly beg to the men and I've heard some interesting stories from the guys of their first experiences with transvestite beggars on the train. Oh man. It's so sad to see all these small children begging and selling small things for money. They are so persistent and it makes me wonder if they have time to just be a kid. If they know life outside of begging or selling maps or books. Right now India and I have a love/hate relationship. Once we got there we ate some Indian food in the train station on the platform. I was excited to have Naan, but they don't have it until the evening, so I had to wait quite a few hours to eat it.

Our first stop was a nice semi-authentic Indian gift shop. It is a good place to buy gifts for friends and family back home, but not authentically made by Indian people. It was called Either Or. After that we went to a nice coffee shop called Barista. It is always good to have coffee here. I miss having coffee all the time at home. Be grateful for what you have coffee drinkers! After coffee we went to a mall. I didn't have too much fun there. I'd much rather go to markets and bazaars than a mall. Especially when the mall has stores you can find in America and when the prices are similar to America. No thank you! I was able to pick up a nice punjabi dress and am looking forward to wearing it tomorrow in some underground place. India is so cool. You can go to most small shops and pick out a fabric pattern you like, then bring it to a tailor and have them make you a Sari or Punjabi dress. All for you, fitted for you. Just for you! I didn't do that, but I got a really cool punjabi dress and got a good deal on it too! The small shop we went into was awesome. The man there spoke very good English and when I tried on the top with these really long leggings I came out and he wanted to take a picture of me he loved it so much. Then I went back into the changing room and Russell (the leader of TITUS project and the first 3 weeks of our SBS) came into the shop, not knowing I was there, and he was asking if they had pants for the other girls and the guy said that they did have pants and showed them the picture he had just taken of me in this punjabi dress and it was really funny to hear this later because Russell wasn't expecting to see a picture of Sarah in this tiny shop on some strange man's phone. Oh man. Good times.

After the mall we got into 3 rick-shaws and went back to the train station around 6:30 PM. We were going to catch the 7 o'clock train back to campus, but it was delayed one hour, so we just went back to that food cafe in the train station for coffee. After awhile we went back to the platform to wait for the train and there were so many people rushing to get on the train when it arrived, we were trying to push our way through the men and the guys we were with were behind us girls pushing and making sure we were safe. One man started grabbing two of the girls and then this fight broke out and we finally made it onto the train after that craziness. Once on the train a few of the Indian men who were sitting stood up for the girls so we could sit down, but that crazy man kept looking at me, but he was far away from me fortunately. Unfortunately, he kept moving through the crowded train closer and closer and finally he was standing right next to me and Lottie asked where he was because she previously told me to watch out for him 'cause he was the guy grabbing her outside the train. I told her he was standing right next to me and she stands up and yells at him "No!" "Get away!" and then all of a sudden all the men around us grabbed him and started hitting him and kind of kicked him out of the train. It was very scary for me. He didn't touch me thank goodness. After one more stop the guys we were with were able to move next to us girls and then I felt safe. We never saw that little man again for the rest of the train ride. Apparently there is a specific woman's car at night on the train. Next time we will definitely ride there, or else take a car and avoid the train altogether. Too much fright for one night!

By the time we finally made it back to campus I was so exhausted I took a shower and went straight to bed, falling asleep immediately. Next time I'm going with a local to Pune, a girl at that, and we're taking a car most likely. Or maybe take the train there, but a car back.

It's good to be back in a small town, and now this place doesn't seem so intimidating anymore.

Won't someone stop this train?

There are train tracks right next to our campus and I swear to you a train rolls by every 30 minutes. Chances are one is about to pass by as I write this. The horn blasts as the train rattles on past. It doesn't matter what hour it is either. 3 o'clock in the morning? No problem. Horns blasting. Of course it isn't as loud or as long as during the day, but they still blow their horn.

SBS is going to be the most stressful thing I ever do in my life besides get married. We have to do so many things with each book and, depending on the book, we have to do more or less with the historical background and culture stuff. It's really awesome though because we are training ourselves to read it as it is, a book. It was not originally written with verse and chapter numbers. The books were not named what we know them as today. First and Seconds were just one giant book or letter. During SBS we get to rename every book as to what we think the title should be, or mostly a title for us to remember the book by. We also have to title each paragraph and then split up paragraphs into different segments and split up segments into different sections and split up sections into different divisions. We get to map out every single book many different ways. I really am going to read every book at LEAST 5 times. I swear I've read Titus 148 times in the last two days. When I am done here my Bible will look like a clown sneezed on every page. I am beginning to notice sentence structures even as I write this blog. There's a time element, there's a simile, there's a connective, a mood word. And so on, and so forth. Those are just a taste of the things I am required to look for and mark somehow in my Bible.

We finished our first book, Philemon. It is only 25 verses long, but what a huge message! First of all, it's Paul's plea for Onesimus (Philemon's former slave who ran away and maybe stole from him). Paul meets Onesimus while he is most likely in house arrest because people can visit him and come and go freely. Onesimus gets saved and most likely either tells Paul his story, or Paul knows because he's friends with Philemon. Anyway, in the time this book was written it was a good thing to be a slave in Rome. Everyone wanted to be slaves. Why you ask? Because if you were a slave you had rights, you had to be treated a certain way, you had shelter, food, money, and a purpose in life. All these things provided for you. 80% of the population then were slaves. Too many times our American history taints our opinion on slavery. We see it as a horrible thing no one ever should be forced into only because our country did a horrible thing a few hundred years ago. But thousands of years ago things were different. Anyway, Paul writes a letter to Philemon and appeals for Onesimus. He says he could command Philemon to take Onesimus back as his equal, but instead he appeals. Paul hopes and trusts Philemon will listen to the Lord and make the right decision. In those days if your slave ran away or stole something the punishment was death, so Philemon had the right to kill Onesimus when he came back to him, but Onesimus had changed. Paul calls him his child, and tells Philemon to welcome Onesimus and he would welcome Paul. It's a wonderful book of forgiveness and equality. Even though Onesimus was a slave, Paul tells Philemon to treat him as a brother, an equal, because Onesimus was once useless, but now he is useful which implies he knows Jesus, and Paul said he'd pay for anything Onesimus owes Philemon which also implies that he may have stolen something. Also, the letter itself is written to the church but during it Paul only writes to Philemon and this is so that the church can hold Philemon accountable to what Paul is asking him to do, so the book is also about community and accountability.

Whew! And just think. That book was only 25 verses long! What's going to happen when Genesis comes along, or Psalms for that matter?

We finished our second book also. That's two down, 64 to go! Oh yeah.

Today me and some of the girls and guys will be taking the train to Pune. This I am excited for as there is ample shopping in Pune. We also may get to see a movie! Granted the movies in theaters here will be movies I probably already own back home. The U.S. is even 6 months ahead of England when it comes to movies released in theaters or DVD. One of the staff here last night was telling me he cannot wait for Wall-E to come in the theaters and I informed him I had already seen it three times.

After these first three weeks of just the seminar laying the foundation to the rest of the nine months I won't have any time for anything but maybe to eat and sleep for a few hours here and there. I will literally wake up, study, eat, study, eat, study, eat, study, sleep, and do that whole routine all over again.

My wet hair takes almost all day to dry here. It doesn't seem like the air is that humid here, but apparently it is. My hair is the same as after I took my freezing cold bucket shower 1 hour ago! Sometimes we don't have water and sometimes we don't have electricity. Things are never certain here. Nothing is constant except that we must be in class on time or else we're in trouble.

Last night a handful of us were invited to one of the major leader's house. She lives a few houses down from campus and we had coffee! My first real coffee since I've been in India. All we drink all day long is chai, chai, chai, chai. Don't get me wrong, I love the Indian chai, but it's nice to have coffee once in awhile. This woman was so funny and I can see her becoming like an Indian mother to me while I am here. She is beautiful and has a huge heart.

Sorry I haven't put up any pictures yet, I haven't felt comfortable enough with people to take any yet, but I'll for sure take a lot this weekend in Pune. If I remember... I desperately need a backpack. I didn't even think to bring one. I only brought my huge one. That doesn't work for day trips to other cities! Perhaps I'll buy one in Pune.

Well it is time for me to see if my clothes are finally dry after hanging for 3 days! It'll be nice to get these Indian clothes because they will dry a lot faster than a t-shirt or jeans. I don't even want to think about washing my jeans. It would almost be easier to send them home, have my mom wash them and dry them, and send them back. I should do an experiment. Wash one pair of jeans here and hang them up the day I send another pair home for washing and sending back, then we'll see if it arrives before my other jeans dry.