Christmas Program

Last Saturday night, Danielle’s school held a Christmas program. What I didn’t know was that Danielle had a leading role! It was great! After that, the kids had their youth meetings…this time one at our home followed by a sleepover of Danielle’s friends (see picture).

We are finally completely out of the old apartment. It is cleaned and the keys are with the owner. We are glad we are out of there. Several of us have made comments that it smelled like Merrilea’s parents’ home which burned down in 2001. We are glad to be away from that smoky place. It was a good home for over 3 years, though.

On Friday we had a Christmas Open House for some of our local neighbors and had a time of sharing about the real significance of Christmas. We gave out plates of cookies to each of our new neighbors along with a Christmas card and letter of why Christmas is meaningful to us. It was a great time to introduce ourselves and to get to know those around us, including Hindus, Muslims, and Parsis.

Our Christmas Plans: We are having a simple Christmas Eve celebration at our home with our family and friends. We will be remembering you as we celebrate Jesus’ first coming in the warm climate here in Pune.

Our Trip to Thailand:
We’ll be heading out on a late-night flight on the 26^th from Mumbai to Bangkok, then catching a morning flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai where we’ll stay through Jan 6. We’ll be in meetings and then we’ll spend a few days r-n-r. We’ll join another family on the beach for a week!

It’s our 15 year anniversary so we thought we’d splurge and take our family on a short holiday before returning to our work. We hope to upload pics from this holiday for you!

This will probably be our last update for 2006!

Bill for the family

Coffee Jar!

Our friends have started their coffee shop called Coffee Jar, in the same area of town we are in and they surprised Bill with a birthday breakfast of waffles with strawberries & cream and their first coffee, and cake! It was the best cake we’ve had in India! (They have not officially opened as things are being delayed for one thing or another…mostly contractors not fulfilling their end of the agreements).

If you ever come to visit us, we will take you to there!

On another note, our washing machine broke down on Monday and we’ve waited 3 days for the correct parts to arrive. Then, the day they did arrive we had no electricity for 15 hours! We finally got it fixed by Friday evening….guess whose doing laundry!

Nafisa is growing curious these days and is taking things freely from table tops, desks and shelves and placing them back… virtually anywhere….we are still looking for our air conditioner control. Hope we find it before hot weather arrives! We can’t turn it on without it!

This is a picture of a sunrise outside our bedroom window. Notice the fog/smoke on this cool early morning.

The kids have been eagerly baking cookies to give to others for Christmas and Danielle just had her last day of school for this year. Her school Christmas program is Saturday night.

On a cool evening in Pune,
Bill for the family

Where’s CompUSA When I Need it?!

This afternoon the inverter (batter backup system) guy was here installing our old inverter from the old apartment. Since electricity goes off here frequently (sometimes 6-8 hours on Thursdays alone) we have a battery back up for the computers, lights and ceiling fans. BUT, when the electrician came, he found he had to rewire the breaker box and in so doing, the electrical issues appeared to mess up my wireless router. It wouldn’t work, so after a few hours I was on the phone and out the door to every computer store I could think of (where’s that CompUSA when I need it!!!) to look for one. After about 1 hour on the road and waiting for 3 hours, I was back at the house with the new router.

Then, after fiddling for another hour, I actually got the old one to work again! Go figure. So, now, after a few days work, our house is wired: my computer, the kid’s home school computer and Merrilea’s laptop…and, best of all, the printer is now on the network so I can simply press ‘click’ and my document prints in the other room! I used to save my documents on a thumb drive and walk back and forth between rooms to print out things (try 8 times yesterday alone). If all remains the same, we are wired and ready to go! Thanks Lord!

On anther note, here's Maria practicing.....whose eyes are closed? ;-)

Moved In!!!

I can’t say all is moved out of the old place, but we are in. There’s a bit more that we have to go through…and hopefully get rid of. Wednesday night was our first night at our new apartment.

I think next time we’ll pay the big bucks and have someone else move us! We are weary of moving…literally. Every day Merrilea went to the old house to pack and direct the helpers what to put on the truck. I was between the two making sure things were getting done/errands made, phone line hooked up, etc. Internet was up and running last Monday! Our washing machine still needs hooked up (we are looking for just one little piece in all the things that were brought over…just one little piece to hook it up!), but our fridge is here and we had our first home cooked meal here on Friday!

The kids love it. Joseph was a BIG help, traveling with the small truck back and forth with some local guys we hired to help. Maria helped unpack and arrange things. About 11:00 Thursday night as we were unpacking, Maria, Joseph and Nafisa and I put up our Christmas tree! There still remains lots of stuff in boxes, but we’re in.

Work continues:
On Thursday there was a multi-state-wide strike as some civil unrest over political and communal issues swept through the area. Danielle was let out of school at noon and most shops were closed the whole day. On Friday a popular commuter train was unloaded and burned in protest. Things have settled down to business as usual today but this is the context in which we live.

Currently it is in the upper 70’s and the sun is shining. Danielle has friends over playing. Nafisa is wearing someone else’s shoes. More from our family in the days ahead.