q and a.   Wednesday, January 12, 2011 Okay dear friends.  Because I love you and because this blog is just as much for you as for me, I’m going to do a question-and-answer post. Several of you have been emailing/facebooking/commenting with questions about our life.  Great questions.  Questions that others are repeating.  So I am gathering them together and will answer them here, for you all. This is not meant in any way to replace personal responses, but I am a little slow to email these days, and, well, it’s just fun.  Thanks for caring about our life here. Q. Does Amie get tired of getting passed around…

  writing. Wednesday, January 12, 2011     This week it’s “standing lines” and “sleeping lines.” Thank you for praying for Judah’s adjustment to school.  Last week, after Christmas break, was horrible … he screamed when we dropped him off, while he was there, and, the worst, was picking him up afterwards and seeing his red-rimmed eyes.  We agonized.  We prayed.  I laid awake at night.  Maggie said, “Give it two full weeks and then you can decide what to do.”  So we stuck it out.  And after a week, just like that, he settled in.  Now he lights up when he sees his teachers each morning.  He dashes in…

  eighteen months old. Tuesday, January 11, 2011   Miss Amelie turned a year and a half yesterday. She is known by our team as “the laid back one” of the six children.  She is sweet-as-sugar charming and easy to entertain. She is happy ninety percent of the time, but when you cross her, you’re gonna get it.  She has strong opinions and a fierce temper and has been known to hit her head against walls or tile floors during temper tantrums.  Judah responds by bursting into tears when someone hurts him, but Amie’s first reaction is to hit back.  Spankings hurt her feelings excruciatingly, and she is quick to…

  sunday. Monday, January 10, 2011   I tried to write a blog post today. I sat on the sofa and thought and wanted to put into words this welling-up feeling of frustration I’ve carried around the past week, and then today’s bursting-forth irritation and tears and fights with my husband.  I tried to explain just what exactly it is about living here that gets under my skin so much and makes me snap at my children and blame David for every little thing that goes wrong. I thought and I typed for awhile, and then I closed my laptop and went into David’s office to have our first ever…

  taking the fortress. Sunday, January 9, 2011   On Saturday two friends took me (David) three hours outside the city to a tiny town in our state that boasts a rock fortress built by a Muslim king into the second largest monolith in Asia.  It was a grand adventure, traveling through the countryside, getting glimpses of everyday rural life, and culminating in one grueling hike. You’ll notice in the pictures below that the means of ascending the fortress is hundreds upon hundreds of little steps carved into rock.  Fortunately, the government has installed a rickety guardrail because at the top you must cross a sheer rock face horizontally.  …

  day trip. Wednesday, January 5, 2011   Last week, during Judah’s Christmas break from preschool, we took a day trip to a city about three hours’ drive away.  This involved hiring a driver and a car from a travel agency nearby.  He picked us up at 7:00 am, chauffeured us around for the day, then dropped us back home at 8:30 that night. Something that is difficult about living here – that I’d never thought about much – is that being out and about, and especially travel, is so much more exhausting with young children.  There are no car seats here, and you never understand just what a break…

the palace. Wednesday, January 5, 2011 The city of M. and it’s surrounding area was actually a kingdom when the British ruled other parts of the country.  The king lived in this extravagant palace, which was completed in 1900.  We arrived late morning and met up with friends (including Jonathan’s brother, wife, and nephew who were visiting from Atlanta).  The palace is breathtaking, and the group of us hired a tour-guide.  Even though the grounds were packed with tourists, there was something soothing about being surrounded by old, beautiful things, away from the smell of exhaust fumes and auto rickshaw horns for a few hours.

the elephant. Wednesday, January 5, 2011 We got to ride this elephant twice.  Once with all four of us.  Then when our friends arrived we just had to do it again for pictures.  Since Amie wasn’t too keen on it, she stayed behind with Aunt Maggie.  Judah loved it! Everything we did at the palace we had to pay triple the price for, since we are foreigners (the people who took our money were not amused when David asked for tickets for four South Asians).  But it’s hard to complain since it is still extremely inexpensive ($5 for all four of us to take an elephant ride).  The other good…

  pizza and movie night. Monday, January 3, 2011     With three of Judah and Amie’s favorite people!  

One morning last week, David and I and Judah and Amelie took a bumpy, hour-long auto rickshaw ride across the city to a very busy road that boasts both a railway station and a bus station.  The auto driver dropped us off at the cracked sliver of sidewalk, and we waited, backs to an empty lot of rotting garbage and who knows what else, trying not to breathe too deeply or look too closely. The fifteen or so minutes until our friends Milton and Jebba came to meet us seemed like an eternity with huge buses jostling by and crowds of people staring openly at us.  No matter where we…