Visas and Servants

This is what I look like right now as I'm typing this, just so you know. You can't see it but I'm wearing a necklace from the tribe of my fiancée. A dear friend gave it to me. He is Angami (that's the tribe name!) and so I always tell people I'm also Angami, but I tell him I'm Penobscott, which is the Native American tribe my ancestors come from. Don't I look so Native American to you?

If you remember from a previous entry, I love the United States of America. But have you guys ever thought about how privileged you are to be American citizens? I have never even considered the blessing it was to have been born into a family in the United States. Life is so easy for me. Living in India has opened my eyes to how difficult it is to live in a different country, a "third world" country at that. So many Indians are trying to get visas to the US. I understand the need to be strict and nit-picky about who they let into the country, but when it comes to my best friend and the man I'm going to marry, I get so frustrated with my country. It is SO hard to get a visa to the US guys, seriously. For me to get my 10 year (TEN YEAR!!) tourist visa to India I just had to fill out an application and mail it to Chicago with my passport and they sent me back my passport with the visa in it a few days later. 

Over here it's a different story. Fill out the application in one city, go to another city (1.5 hours away) and pay the fee, come back to the first city to make the interview appointment, go back to another city (still 1.5 hours away) and turn in the application, go back to the first city and then wait a few days for your interview and go to Mumbai (three hours away) to have the interview where there's a 99% chance you will be denied your visa.

SO, my dearest fiancée is going in tomorrow morning which is Monday night for you Americans. He is going for his second visa interview this time with new letters and pictures and also a letter from our dear and beloved Senator who just so happens to be this guy:

Al Franken is awesome. My littlest brother and I shook his hand once in a parade in our hometown and we did not wash our hands for like an hour afterward.

Please pray for my fiancée: peace, calm, and wisdom of what to say to the interviewer, and also pray for the interviewer to have a soft heart and believe without a doubt that Romel's intention is not to immigrate to the United States.

I decided to dye the ends of my hair on a whim the other day. They're just a little blue, and I like it that way! You cannot even really tell now because it has washed out a little. You cannot find proper hair dye in India unless you want black or henna, which oddly enough turns your hair orange. So I had to use a permanent marker diluted in some water and just dipped my hair into that. It worked pretty nicely I'd say. Here's me with straight hair which lasted for one minute tops because of the moisture in the air from monsoon rains.

My favorite drink EVER!!!! It's called Thums Up and it tastes like magical fizzy masala madness! It could kick Coca-Cola's butt any day of the week, and the world knows it which is why it's only available in India. It must be contained. I will miss it so much when I'm home, but at least I won't drink any soda then. Thums Up or bust!

I have begun to get things organized and packed away to sit in my house and grow penicillin for three months while I'm gone. Here's a photo of some well-thought out organizing and a very old, very rusty trunk that we found in our storage room. The same room they found a cobra in before I moved in. Yikes. I am a bit terrified still to go in there sometimes because of that story, and a few months ago when I went in there I saw a GIANT SPIDER!!! I'm serious, it was huge and scary. It was black and had some white spots and yellow on it. With its legs sprawled out as usual. It was about the size of a compact disk with the legs spread out. The body was not so big, bigger than a quarter, maybe if you put two quarters next to each other, that's the body, then the legs. Spiders do not typically scare me, but this one was terrifying. Needless to say, I hate that back room, and won't go in there if I don't have to.

This is an outfit I wore the other day. I was just trying to think of other ways to wear kurtas. I love Indian tops, but they're so long and have slits up the side and so you pretty much can only wear them over jeans, leggings, or punjab pants. You cannot wear them with nylons or tights because of the side slits. They go up past your hip sometimes and then people would totally see your undies. One mistake I think Indian women make is they wear white leggings with them a lot. Or nude color leggings. You have to avert your eyes when that happens, especially if they're standing to the side.

And this is just a picture of the hair I used to have and adore. I long to cut it like this again, but my fiancée would have a cow. Literally. But a girl can dream, right?

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I sure did. On Saturday we had General Clean-Up which means all staff and students get together and clean the entire campus for four hours. It's much needed and only happens once a quarter. It's always dreaded, but then when the day comes and goes you always look back on it with fond memories and you totally had tons of fun cleaning mold off the walls and scrubbing toilets with others. The main topic of conversation this past clean up on Saturday however was, "Where are the leaders and staff who live off base?" because there were just a few staff who live off campus there to help. It is also quite ironic I think because it was just one day after a staff meeting where it was stressed that the leaders were here to serve the campus yet most of them did not come. It's a funny word, "serve." We throw it around so easily as Christians yet I don't think we fully understand the meaning of the word. When I hear "servant" I think of something completely different than when I hear "serve." You can serve the church. You can serve a term in office. You can serve dinner. You can serve a prison sentence. You can serve a subpoena. You can serve someone by beating them at something (a.k.a. "You got served!")

So in all actuality to serve someone or be a servant has many different meanings, but what does it mean to us as Christians today? How can we "wash the feet" of others? How can we be a servant in this world no one seems to want help anymore?