A month at Bethesda

We woke up this morning to puddles on the ground. It's the first time it's rained while we've been here and we've been here for a month. Apart from feeling very lucky to have had such wonderful weather to enjoy through January, the cloudy weather has also reminded me of home and how we're probably overdue an update.

Our first month has been really good fun, a good mixture of being busy and useful and having big chunks of down time in which to read and spend time together. The pace of life was the first thing to adjust to. Everything is very laid back, and everything happens late! For example if we have planned to leave the house at 10am we're lucky if we're on the way before 11. That said when we do eventually go we go NOW! Em and I will have a bag packed and be ready to go on time, but when the allotted time comes and goes we start to chill out, the books come out, the cards come out, we start getting on with other things...but when everybody else is ready to go we have thirty seconds in which to repack our bag and get moving. We also eat at irregular times, breakfast is normal but it's not unusual to be eating lunch at 3:30 and dinner at 10pm (I dread to think what the late dinner is doing to our digestion!)

Emily wearing Subathra's favoured hairstyle...hmm

About every other day we go down and play with the children. Most of them have got used to the idea of us being around. The younger ones still get their knickers in a twist with excitement when we show up and we share double high fives all round. The older kids have taken longer to relax around us. I think over the years they have seen English visitors come and go and so don't make much effort to connect, but when they realised we're here for a longer time (and when I realised that the older buys primary language is headlocks and wrestling) they began to thaw. Emily has a little group of older girls who she calls her tangachi's (younger sisters) and I've developed a little chess club where the sole aim is to beat the “UK champion” (anyone who's ever played chess against me will know that's a joke!)

The boys dorm as of a week and a half ago

The building project down the hill is progressing well. Basically the home will be three large buildings that form three sides of a square. The central building is a dining hall and staff accommodation and the two on the sides will be boys and girls dorms. In the middle of the trio will a kind of courtyard area which faces the two acres of land given over to playing fields and gardens. As I write this work is being finished on the girls dorm foundations, the dining hall is almost ready to start work on the walls and the boys dorm is not far behind. Overall the work is progressing slowly but surely as is always the way with establishing foundations, but we hope the foundations will be complete within the next week and the walls can start going up in earnest. To see a picture of what the home will look like when it's done visit www.bethesdamissionindia.com and have a little hunt around.

For the most part Emily and I have managed to avoid the dreaded Delhi belly, though as time goes by we're getting riskier and riskier with what we'll eat! However immune systems have being spoilt for choice by the veritable smorgasbord of Indian cough and cold strains offered by the children downstairs that they haven't been able to resist trying a few samples. As a result Emily and I have been sneezing, sniffing, aching and in Emily's case, coughing her guts up. I think we're mostly out of the woods now but Em has kept onto a chest infection as a souvenir, which hopefully will be dealt with by a trip to the doctors later on (she was meant to go at 9:30, it is now almost 10:30...case and point)

Some of the lads (I had to make fart noises to get them to smile like this)

Overall we have loved our first month here. Trying lots of new food, mostly delicious, occasionally revolting. Emily has established her dominion in the kitchen as a master baker (despite using rice flour to make a very dry cake, terrible pastry and awful crumble before realising our mistake) and I'm loving the little adventures that crop up here and there be it as simple as finding the post office or taking a day trip up the hill on the toy train to Ooty (more on this soon I feel) We both love it here in India, do we have to come back?