a word from hilge

Hey everyone, this may be super late, but I thought I would add a little piece to this, for closing. The trip was a great expierience for me,and I am glad that we took the time to do it.At times it was pretty full on, spending so much time with my sibling, but I believe that it has proven to be well worth the while, especially now that it's all over. I think we all know each other alot better, almost too well, haha. Well I guess I will add to the "thanks" and "no thanks" lists; Thanks: God, for his protection,dad and mom for thier prayers and support, the Ellis family, James and Joel, Bruces, Luke, Volks Wagon,Frank, Mekelas, Ravi, Julies cousin for the board,Simon for the wetsuit, and not to mention, Nate Crouch, for all his help with the computer,and website. No thanks: speed cameras, bad moods, Sri Lanka airlines,Indian Train outlets, and thai tuk tuk drivers. that's all, over and out

A Look Ahead

A question we have been asked a lot is, "What comes next?" I think a lot of people are wondering what we will do to top what we have just done. I can't speak for the others but my plans for the future are a little more domestic. I'm currently staying with some friends from college at their place in Cambridge. I will be here for another two weeks and then travel up to Summit College to work as an intructor for them. They will be doing am extended river trip to Arkansas that will include classes in rock climbing and kayaking and I have been invited to join them and help with the teaching and anywhere else I can make myself useful.

Following two months with Summit I will spend the summer in Tuftonboro, New Hampshire as am employee of Camp Merrowvista. I have been hired as a trip leader for their Four Trails Wilderness Program. My days will be spent in a canoe or a kayak, on a bike, or with a backpack on my back, leading trips for high school-aged students from New England.

After Merrowvista comes the fall and there are no plans in place yet for then. I have a few ideas but nothing concrete. I would very much like to finish my degree via distance education and to continue working in the outdoor industry as an instructor or a guide. But these are just ideas, and reality may look completely different come September.

As for the immediate present, I told you about my living situation but not about how I am spending my days. The trip did a number on my level of fitness and the first order of business when I got back was to join a gym and get back in shape. Thankfully, because of the Olympics the YMCA was giving away free month-long memberships so I took them up on it and have been spending my afternoons at their Cambridge branch, on a treadmill or a weight machine. Besides my exercising I have been arranging paperwork for the summer. Working as a Canadian in the States and actually getting paid to do it is quite an undertaking and requires and appropriate amount of paperwork wrapped in red tape. But I am making headway.

I think this is the last time I will put an entry into this blog. Thanks to everyone for reading and being so supportive. Thanks for all of the letters and cards and e-mails and care packages. An adventure isn't really an adventure unless you have someone to share your journey with. Thanks for being that someone. Cheers, E

Thanks and No Thanks

Thanks to:
God; without You, this trip would not have a happy ending. Dad and Mom; this was your idea and you made it happen and supported it all the way through. Your sacrifice will not return void. Everyone who showed us kindness and mercy on our trip: Nathan, George at STA Glasgow, Toni in Stratford, Emirates (the best airline in the world), the Ellis Family, the Bruce Family (and Granny), Simon and Jodie, James and Joel, Warrnambool Baptist Church, Henna Street Video,Tim Tams,Bendigo Bank, the Pressers, Flight Centre for all the deals,Sarah Anderton, Volkswagen, Holden, caravan parks, Woolworths (and TJ Stewart for the card), Coledale Camping Reserve, Mitsubishi, Hillsong Church, the people of Thailand, Noel at AAAccommodations, our Sri Lankan driver, the Alpine Hotel, Ravi Tej, Sunil(the Godfather), the Mekala Family,the Connelly Family, Christ King of Kings Ministries, EuroHostel, CIBC, Bank One, whoever invented the credit card, Starbuck's, Mac Computers, Tom and Christin, Mark and Bianka, ATIA, and all the people without names who helped us with directions, advice, phone numbers, and any type of help big or small and anyone else that we may have forgotten. You rock.

No Thanks to:
Sri Lankan Airlines, Joe from Europcar, tuk-tuk drivers, train food vendors, inconsiderate snorers, body odour, Big Bill in Bangkok, and anyone who ripped us off. We hope your mom will teach you to be kind to strangers.

Thoughts From Erick

Now March is here and we four have returned to our respective homes and lives. We are really glad that we have been able to keep this blog and that people actually read it. The most common thing that I have heard from people that I have seen since coming home is that they read the blog and were able to stay up to speed with what we did. Some went as far as to say that they felt like they were right there with us. Special thanks (and props) to Nate Crouch, loyal friend and brilliant computer genius, for his help in getting the site up and maintaining it while we were out. Nate kept an eye out for spam and other harmful cyber-enemies that may have been the undoing of our website. Here's to you.

It's hard to properly absorb what I have just been through. A six-month, 11-country world trip isn't the sort of thing that you can process in one sit-down by the fire. It doesn't help that modern life moves along at a furious pace and that while I've only been home for two weeks plus a day, I am already in the midst of plans and preparations for my next adventures(more on that later). In the time that I have had to sit alone and mull over our trip, it comes to me that it was less than three years ago that I was in Africa, on a six-month trip there and that my Africa trip hasn't even been properly filed away in my mind. Having said that, what hope is there that I will be able to understand the depth and scope of what I have just been through? Probably not very much. But maybe that's OK, because I don't feel that the experience has been lost on me at all. Sure, maybe there are parts that I will forget or that will slip through the cracks of my mind. But what I do have is a far greater appreciation for the world and my place in it. And what does that mean? It means that I realize that the world does indeed extend far beyond Canada and the DR and even the other places that I have seen in my life so far. I have been fortunate to have parents and family that support my adventures and my travels, that actually want me to get out and do these trips in spite of the dangers that come with them. This being the case I have seen a great deal of the world for someone who is only 25. But even with all the places I have seen and people I have met, my understanding of the world is very limited. It boggles my mind, but there are people being born and living and dying without any real concept of the world around them. Sometimes you see those posters of a globe with people of every race and people group standing hand in hand in a ring around it. If only that were the case. In reality, the world is really only what I perceive it to be. The globe, the earth, is the blue and green thing I see in the atlas or on the wall at school. On its surface is not one world, but many worlds vastly different from each other and entirely self-existent. As a person from North America, I start with the same mentality that most Westerners do: that our society is better and more organized and therefore desirable to the rest of the world. After all, we are the ones sending missionaries to them and we are the ones that help when they have disasters, right? When was there ever an Ethiopian Red Cross team in Louisiana for the floods there? Or an Estonian relief team to help search for survivors of an avalanche in British Columbia? There never has been. We are the ones controlling the majority of money and resources in the world, and with that goes the assumption that we have the corner on culture and sophistication too. We couldn't be more wrong. This trip made me realize that pain and confusion and hardship is universal, and that so are things like kindness and hope and satisfaction in life. I can't tell you how many people from the West I have had coversations with you seem to think that the solution to the world's problems is financial. That if everyone had enough food and good clothing and a comfortable house that everything would be great. If that were the case, places like Canada and America would be the happiest places in the world. But of course they are not. I'm beginning to realize that money has very little to do with it. I know plenty if people with more money than they know what to do with and are perfectly miserable. I also know poor people in the same boat. But then I know rich people who are happy and carefree and people that are penniless who are cheerful and have a bright outlook on the future. Now, more than ever, I am resistant to the idea that putting money in someone's pocket is going to solve their problems. I'm beginning to see that Solomon was right when he said that the best thing a man can do is to work hard and enjoy the fruits of his labour. We met thousands of people on this trip and observed thousands more in all walks of life. Soldiers, policemen, sailors, salesmen, students, politicians, office workers, managers, on and on. The happiest people I met were the people that loved their work and the living it gave to them. Some of them made a lot of money, most of them made very little. What they had in common is that they did what they loved to do and they were content with their situation. And that gave me hope for the future, because that prospect is possible for many of the people in world, even a large majority, including me.

This understanding is only the tip of the iceberg in relation to what I have come away from this trip with. We said often that it really seemed like we spent a lifetime away from home. It reminds me a bit of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, two brothers and two sisters leaving the world they knew to spend years and years in a land far away and have adventures and experiences that they will never be able to fully relate to the people they know, and then to return to where they came from only to realize that they've been gone only a very little while. If you've seen the movie or read the book, no doubt the question enters your mind, 'How can they just go back to what they knew? Surely whatever went on in Narnia has to affect the way they deal with normal life.' I can assure you, as I'm sure the other three will, that following our life and adventures away from home, being gone a lifetime only to return and realize it's been a little while, normal life and the way we view it will never be the same.

E

A Tribute

During our trip and now following it, we have been sobered many times over by the types of danger that we co-existed with while out and are humbled and grateful that none of these things came upon us. I suppose that it would be easy for us to remember the trip as 'everything turned out fine in the end' and quickly sweeping over what an unusual thing that is. There was, in fact, danger at every turn, and our returning to where we came from unscathed is nothing short of an act of God. I'll explain what I mean so that you can appreciate our safety in the way that we do.

While on the trip we were able to keep up with news in the countries that we were in or about to visit, or just had visited. This was a great thing to do as it kept us in the know, but it led us to realize some very alarming things unfolding around us. While we living at our beach campground in Coledale, in Australia, there were riots going on at the beaches just down the road from us. Racial tension had come to a head and people had seen fit to resolve their issues by brawls and gang fights. Thankfully, none of this violence reached our area. A week later we were in Brisbane and the beach that Hilko had just recently surfed at was closed because of a shark attack that resulted in the death of a girl about our age who was swimming there. Two weeks later we were in Thailand, staying at a hotel on a beach that had seen a British girl raped and murdered only a week before we arrived. From Thailand it was off to Sri Lanka where tension between the Tamil Tigers and the existing government had begun to boil. Though we felt the unease, that was the height of things for us. While we were in the country, though, several bombs were detonated all over the country to send the powers there a message. Again, we were out of harm's way. From Sri Lanka on to India, where an American girl had been raped and murdered on the same train system that we had spent 60 hours travelling on the same week that we arrived. While we were staying in Visag we read in the paper about an abduction attempt on another American tourist in Bombay, the city we had just recently come from. Also while in Visag, we spent a day in mountains crawling with naxilite terrorists who made it a practice to kidnap foreigners to then use in negotiations with the government. Again, we walked away unharmed.

The list could go on and on. I haven't even gone into all the terrifying driving we were subject to, the strange foods we ate from even stranger sources, the diseases we were exposed to, the flights and boat rides and motorcycles,and the danger from theives and other criminals we no doubt crossed paths with. And what about the fact that we were able to keep all of our personal belongings? Never once were we without enough cash, or the right documentation, or directions, or at the very least, a friendly person to help us when we needed it the most. At the beginning of the trip there were far more jitters. By the end of the trip we began to feel far more confident that things would turn out right, and that we would be protected and provided for.

Now we sit at our homes, safe again, and we are eternally grateful. Grateful to God the most, for His protection and intervention despite all the odds. People told us that we were crazy and doubted that we would make it. They had every reason to feel that way. This trip probably shouldn't have ended the way that it did. By all indications, it could have very well ended in tragedy. But it didn't. And we attribute that not to our prowess, because we had very little, or to our ability to rise above danger (as it seems we were hot on its heels all the way around the globe), but to the kindness and mercy of the Lord. And how could we forget all the people we met along the way who extended kindness to us? Some of these people we knew well. Many of them we had only just met and others still we didn't even know. But what they had in common is that they understood that we had needs and that they had the means to meet those needs and they stepped out to make that happen. We often had nothing to give back but thanks. Sometimes we offered them money, and they refused it. Sometimes we promised to get them back, to reciprocate for their kindness, but even there we have no idea if we will ever see them again. The people that helped us out did it because they wanted to, not because they had to. They did it because it was the right thing to do and didn't ask for anything in return. Often it came up between the four of us, and I will mention it here, that one of the things that we will take away from this trip is that in the future we will do all we can to show kindness to travellers and strangers, because for the last six months, our survival depended on other people doing exactly that. Without them, it is entirely possible that we would still be out there, stranded and a long way from home. If you are reading this and you are one of those people, if you gave us food or shelter or a ride or directions, or you prayed for us or you let us use your house or your car or even your phone, thank you for what you did. It was critical and it did not go unnoticed. You've turned us into lifelong believers in the power of kindness. We hope very much to be able to make it up to you. God Bless you all.
E

The Motherland

We have arrived again in the true north, strong and free complete with snow drifts, howling winds, and closed roads. I feel like a figurine in one of those shake n' snow glass jars stranded in the midst of a winter wonderland. If this sounds like complaining, I would hasten to add that we are absolutely loving it!
Reuniting with friends and family has been the best part about coming home. We have not had much time to simply "be" since we have many people to see and little time to do it. The infamous four is no more with Erick's move to Cambridge. He is living in a bachelor pad with friends from Summit for the next month. He will be sure to update soon and let you all know what his plans are for the next year.
Hilko, Annette and I head to the Dominican Republic, Lord willing, tomorrow. If this Candian weather keeps up we may be forced to extend our stay. (Could this be an answer to your prayer yesterday, Matt?)

It is very hard to sum up what the past 6 months have been like for us. I have a feeling that our memories will come as snapshots spreading over years to come. Encountering a smell, song, or accent will, inevitably, transport us back to a time in our trip. Right now it still feels like a dream.

Someone asked me what the most significant lesson was that I learned on this trip and I told her that it was the kindness we encountered in every place we went. Often we are fed information that the world is all evil but what I learned is that there are still many good people: Angels of mercy. We have all agreed that we want to be kind to travelers wherever and whenever we come in contact with them. We realize that our trip would have been impossible without their kindness and we are more than ready to return the favor.

We love you all and cannot wait to see you face to face.
Your prayers, e-mails, comments, letters, and interest in our lives and trip have literally overwhelmed us. Thank you sincerely~*

~Grace-Emma

Homeward

I'm writing this from a small Internet cafe in Bombay Airport. It's Tuesday and we were supposed to be leaving two days ago. Then things got a bit sporty. The nice man at the counter told us that our flights had been cancelled and that there was nothing he could do for us. I called the airline in Dubai and the nice lady there told me that the next three flights leaving the country from their airline were full. The best she could do was get us on a flight on Tuesday night. Then I called the hotel we had booked in Dubai and the nice man their politely told me that because we were cancelling so late they would retain the rate of our first night's stay which was $140, and that there was nothing he could do for me. This all in the space of a few hours. But something cool happened. Nobody freaked out. Nobody even flinched. We had something similar happen to us while we were in Scotland at the beginning of the trip and it was a different story. Nerves were raw and things were tense. This time around there was a sort of air that said that since option A was no longer an option, option B would need to made up on the spot. We gave our friend Ravi a ring and in two hours he was back with a taxi. We went back to the hotel we had just checked out of and re-checked in. And we had two fun days in the city. Ravi was the guy who helped us out when we first got here and he has been good as gold all the way through. Today during lunch he introduced us to a friend of his who is a big-time politician. He told us that if there were any problems with getting our flight today that we could call him and he would fix the problem. Thankfully it didn't come to that and we have our boarding passes in hand and we are set to go.

Right now it is 5:30 in Bombay. We will fly to Dubai tonight spend a few hours there and then catch a flight to Glasgow, Scotland in the morning. We'll spend 24 hours in Glasgow and then hop the 11AM flight to Toronto and land(thanks to flying with time changes) at 1 in the afternoon on Thursday. So the next time that you will hear from us will be from Canada. It probably goes without saying, but we are all really tired and ready for a chance to unwind at home. More on that from our beautiful homeland.

Pictures from India

More India

Up to Speed

Tonight I write from the city of Vishakapatnam, India, otherwise known as and from here on refered to as Visag. Here in Visag is an orphanage. In that orphanage live two hundred little Indian boys and girls. On the third floor lives the Mekala family and, at present, a little band of displaced Canadian freeloaders. We have been boarding with the Mekalas for the past week or so. We know them because Grace Emma and I know Donna Mekala (formerly Connelly) from our Indianapolis days. Grace and Donna were in the same EQUIP class. It has been some years since that time, but this is one of those friendships that you pick up where you left off. I say this from my observation of Grace and Donna and the relatively short amount of time it took for them to get down to business and start giggling and telling eachother their life stories and so on. You know how it goes. So we are all one big happy family. Donna has a brother and two sisters here from Arizona and the whole bunch of us have been having adventures this week.

The Kids
So before I get too far I will say a little about the kids here at the orphanage. There are, as I mentioned, two hundred of them running around and they are quite happy and well taken care of here. The youngest are 5 or 6 and the oldest 14 or 15. The language here is Telagu which sounds like nothing you've ever heard not counting Klingon, and so it has been a bit of a trick to communicate. But putting the trusty arm and leg number in use has made it possible for us to let them know we are from far away, that we love them, and that we mean them no harm. All they want to do is play games and for us to tell them what their names are. It's 200 vs. 4 so we're doing poorly with the names. There is one little guy who looks at bit like ET and so we can remember his name but apart from that we are stuck. The kids are fond of playing their version of pattycake with us. It's not wimpy or uncool to play pattycake in India, even if you are a teenager. Plus it doesn't involve a lot of talking. There is a lot of pattycake going on at the orphanage these days. The staff are able to speak English and Telagu, but they are not always around. Maybe they are tired of translating. But the kids are great and spending time with them is not a drag at all.

The Mountains
My favorite. Yesterday we took a trip to the mountains. Not the Himalaya as it is in the north of India, but the smaller ones here in the south. The orphanage has a church/orphanage it supports in the foothills of said mountains and a small congregation up in the higher parts of the mountain. We drove in a school bus to the church in the foothills and then hiked to the mountain village for a service with the people there. The village is very remote and the people there had not seen very many white people. Which made it even cooler to be there. The area and the view on the way up and then down were amazing. It was like time hadn't touched the place at all. There was no garbage and no noise, only quaint little villages here and there and terraced rice patties as far as you could see. Every field was a different shade of green. Really the only noises you heard were the water buffalo grazing on the dormant patties and the people working on their piece of land. I told the others that if I had a hut and a lifetime supply of books, the next time they would see me would be in ten years. The church service was very small but special. It was a big deal that the white people were there so the village people had taken their sarees (brightly colored wraps) and hung them up in the street as a canopy for us to sit under. When the service was over they asked us to pray for their sick children and also to pray for their houses, which was an honor. It was getting late so we had to make our way back down to the bus. It would have been nice to stay longer but the mountains are quite unsafe for foreigners(due to terrorists that hide up there) so we returned to the foothills and then back to Visag. We hope to make another trip before we leave here later this week.

The Wedding
Sunil (Donna's husband) had a friend who happened to be getting married on Friday night last week. Weddings in India are a very big deal with lots of food and noise and bright lights. Even though we didn't know the bride or the groom, we crashed the pre-ceremony party and took in a bit of the culture. We were accepted and treated like celebrities. It wasn't long before we were on the platform beside the happy couple being photographed by everyone there with a camera. Imagine a movie star showed up uninvited at your wedding. That was our reception. This was fine with us. The actual wedding ceremony started at 1:30AM. Only family members were invited. Even the movie stars had to leave. No worries, though. It was worth it for the time that we were there.

A Word on Begging
Time is short and we need to be off, but first an observation about begging in the places we have visited thus far. In Australia there were bums who sat on the sidewalks with a sign asking for help. There was no pressure to give money or even to say anything to the guy sitting there. Helping was suggested.
Then we were in Thailand and the beggars were nowhere to be seen. I imagine the government had done something to get rid of them. Or maybe they are just too polite to beg in Thailand.
In Sri Lanka, they were all about making their needs known. There was no conversation or anything. One lady walked up to me and said very forcefully, "Money!" Ah, yes, my sweet lady, it is a great thing, isn't it? I wish I had a bit more myself. "Money!" No, no money for you. If I hook you up, all those other guys over there will want some flow too. Sorry, but not today. She realized she wasn't getting anywhere and at the same time I pointed out some other rich-looking tourists to her in hopes that they would have what I didn't have to spare. That was that.
Now we're in India and here the theme is strength in numbers. Once you step out of your car and positively identified as a white person, the mob heads your way and demands money. No asking here, folks. In fact, they are so professional here that if you give them one rupee, they will be insulted and demand more. I didn't see that coming. I didn't know there was a going rate for beggars. The trouble is there are so many beggars that you could never keep them all happy. To say no to them means that they need to try harder or to physically convince you that they really need you to give them some rupees. This can cause some discomfort. The only way to get away from the beggars is if a local shoos them off or if you duck inside a store or a museum or something. Beggars are a fact of life.

We don't anticipate beggars in the UAE or Scotland but should we come across any we'll be sure to see how they compare to their counterparts here.

Now we're definately out of time. More to come.

E

Ahoy India

We have just recently arrived in India. As we were leaving Sri Lanka the airline gave us the option to stay an extra night on them in exchange for free tickets or duty free vouchers. The flight was overbooked and they needed some folks to sit out. Being the kindhearted and selfless people that we are, we took them up on their offer and spent the night at a five-star and left this morning for Bombay. We got handed a twisty route that took us through the Indian domestic flight alley, but it was alright in the end and a few hours ago we landed here in Bombay, aka Mumbai. Take the confusion of Colombo, multiply by a few, and swap the Sri Lankans for Indians and you have Bombay. Oh yeah, and throw in a few elephants and holy cows. We haven't seen much of the city so far, but what we have seen is pretty crazy. We checked in to our hotel and while it looked spiffy on the Internet, it is many things but not spiffy. We are there for two nights before catching the train out east, so it will have to do.

That's the latest for now. More to come soon.

E

Sri Lanka Update

Hello hello

I'm writing from a gloomy little internet cafe in Kandy, a city 110km west of Colombo. Since I last posted we've been on a 600km loop around the southeast of the country. As you could tell by the last post, we weren't quite sure what to expect. We definately couldn't forsee the events of the last few days. First, and most importantly, we were all quite safe and even enjoyed ourselves. And continue to be safe. There were quite a few roadblocks with mean-looking soldiers with even meaner looking weapons, but they were there to protect people like us, not harm us. We did get stopped once by the police, but they were just doing their job and checking on the registration of the van we were in. It was all good. Here's a quick reel of the last few days.

Saturday: We pack up and drive out of Colombo and down the east coast. Toward the end of the day it's time to find a place to stay. Our driver takes us to a place called the Lighthouse. It was perfect; we loved it. It was available for the low low price of $400(US) for the night. We left a patch of rubber on the parking lot and made our way to the beach. There we found some bungalows for a fraction of the aforementioned price. It was perfect. We had a quiet dinner sitting at a table in the sand. It was picture perfect(picture to come...)

Sunday: We regretfully leave the beach bungalows and make our way further down the coast. As we are driving we can see signs in front of new buildings and building projects noting that these are reconstruction projects in response to the tsunami disaster. When I thought tsunami I thought Indonesia, but this coastline was damaged quite seriously as well. Throughout the day we see evidence. Toward the end of the day it's hotel time again. Driver takes us to a safari camp. It's really posh so we start to get nervous. The nice man at the counter says that this place is only $300 for a night and I smile and we burn out of there too and I think scare some of the leopards and water buffalo in the bushes. There is this guy who has been following us in his Range Rover telling us that there is a place he knows that is affordable. He is persistent and so we follow him through the park and along the fenceline of another reserve. It was hot and long and all, but we did get to see some elephants 'in the wild' and more of the water buffalos. (We sang the VeggieTales song about Zebus as we went on our way.)Dude in the Rover was right. He did know a place and we did stay there. It wasn't the Taj Mahal, but hey, we're not in India yet.

Monday: We start driving inland. For some reason this makes me nervous. It may have something to do with the fact that everything looks a bit like Vietnam with rice paddies palm trees and my imagination starts to get the better of me. But it is actually OK. At noon we arrive at a reserve for orphaned elephants. 'So cute!'(not my words, mind you) Feeding time was just over so we saw them from a distance, dodged a few more guys trying to get us to join overpriced safaris and headed for the hills. On the way we stopped at a beautiful waterfall whose name escapes me, but it was a really cool place to check out. There was an ice cream man there, too. It was perfect. Now it is almost dark and we are driving and driving and go higher and higher and quite suddenly we are in Bavaria. Three hours ago it was monkeys and huts and now there are gabled houses and hotels and cliffs and the air is clean and cold and I am really confused. We are in the town of Nuwara Eliya in the heart of tea country. The elevation is almost 7000 feet and the whole place looks like a ski town out of the Alps. We checked into the Alpine Hotel and had dinner at the Collingwood. I'm still confused but not complaining. The exchange rate is very much in our favour so we are staying at a four star for $25 a room and a steak meal is $4. Yes. After the Collingwood, we sit on our huge beds and watch American TV piped in via dish and it's not really feeling like Sri Lanka at all. It feels like Colorado.

Tuesday(today): We stay at the hotel as long as we possibly can. We check out just in time to dodge the late fee and load up in the van for a twisty ride back to the foothills. I was still in awe as we were driving. It was terraced hills as far as you could see and waterfalls and blue lakes and huge forests. If you had told me I was in Alberta, I would have bought it. But that wore off. Now we are back in the city and it is loud and crowded and there is lots of fresh exhaust to breathe in. We are catching up with e-mail and I am doing the update, then we will get some dinner at the Pizza Hut across the road and then back to our guest house for the night. Tomorrow we have a plane to India to catch. It leaves at 4 in the afternoon. We have a bit of a drive to get there from here, but the roads are good from here on out. Most likely the next time you will hear from us will be from India. Before I sign out, I wanted to say thanks for all the e-mails that have been filling up our inboxes from people letting us know they are thinking of us and holding us in their prayers. This trip is by no means safe and we appreciate your support very much.

Over and out,
E