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.