Back in India

Greetings once again from India! After a very long trip, the kids and I made it back to Pune on March 12th. It took about a week to get back on schedule and things have returned to what we call normal here. Easter weekend was busy with various holiday celebrations. The Muslims celebrated Prophet Mohammed’s birthday on Friday and the Hindus celebrated Holi on Saturday. Holi is a celebration of spring in which Hindu people spray each with colored powders and water. It was a lot of fun seeing people covered from head to toe in bright colors. We played Holi with our friends Jeff, Jena, and Kai. Of course Anna loves any opportunity to cover her brother in something messy. Our Easter celebration was great fun. The Easter bunny hid eggs on our balcony and Anna helped Max during the hunt. We attended a service at St. Xavier’s Church. It was in English, but still a bit difficult to follow. Later we had friends over for dinner. Chris made a fantastic beef stew with some of our canned beef. The following Wednesday Chris left for a ten day stay in Germany. Such long trips are difficult, especially over the weekends. The kids and I spent Saturday swimming with friends, which was nice. Anna is in her last week of school before summer vacation. She gets her first report card this Friday! She will attend a week of summer camp and then we are on our own for the rest of April and May. I am searching for activities that can be done in extreme temperatures. It has been near 100° most every day since our return. Max continues to amaze us with his good disposition and intelligence. He can say quite a few words, his newest are bye-bye and uh-oh. He is also adventurous and loves to climb. There is never a dull moment here! Chris had twenty new people start in his department on March 10th, so he’s been quite busy with that. I am planning to help our friends at Servant’s Heart during the summer vacation. The kids there crave the English language, so I’m hoping to incorporate that into our activities. I have attached a few pictures that Chris took of the area around our flat. This is truly what we see around us every day. Well, we hope you enjoy hearing from us as much as we enjoy hearing from you. Please call or write when you can. Take care!