Our first 5 rules in India, Malachi-ism

We are here in dehli, the first stop in our new life here in India. And after we crashed for a few hours in our hotel room we woke, ate breakfast and took a walk to a local grocery store, that was closed. So we walked across the street to a park looking place. When I read the sign it said that it was actually a tomb of a famous Sufi saint (a religous leader in sufi Islam). The grass was nice and inviting, especiallly for a little 4 year boy that wants to run, jump and play. But we got the feeling that it was not to be treaded apon, especially since grass is sparce here, and no one else in the park was on the grass. As we walked I asked questions of two of the oldest travelers:

Me:"what here is different than the USA?"
Arwyn: "the busy streets and all the horn honking"
Mal: didn't know

Me:"what here is the same?"
Arwyn:"its a little bit hot here and sometimes hot in California"
Mal:"the dragonflies here are the same as the USA"

And there you have it, todays first discoveries as seen by our children. Later when we returned back to our room we drew in our journal something we saw on our walk. Malachi drew,as best he could, a picture of a boy that was taking a bucket bath right by the street in front of his one bedroom shack. Arwyn drew a picture of the tall buildings. Later she wrote a letter to her friend Reese about the little girl that lived in that shack that had no shoes and swept the trash off there "porch", an area in the dirt next to her house. When we stopped off to Cafe Coffee Day (the local Starbucks) for a treat, we talked about all the barefoot people here. Arwyn thinks we should give them all our shoes. I asked her if we had enough shoes for all the people? what if we don't a have any after that? what about when they grow out of them? how do we pick who to give them to? would giving our shoes away make them more happy? were they still happy even if they didn't have shoes? and so on...We ended with deciding to ask God if he wants us to give our shoes to people and which ones should we them give to. We will wait to hear what He says to us.

They have seemed to learn to drown out the constant noise of honking out our window, but some other lessons might take a little while to learn. Our first five rules are:

1 only drink bottled water (even when using water to brush teeth)
2 don't flush your used toilet paper ( put it in the trash can)
3 don't talk loudly when asking our questions or stating our opinions on life here
4 don't pick things up off the ground, or don't touch the walls every where we go
5 try every new food at least once, with a smile



stay tuned for our next adventure...