2 months in India

The first 5 months of my life post-high school have been spent in New Haven, Connecticut doing a Discipleship Training School with YWAM (Youth With A Misson) Axiom. The first 3 months of the school were dedicated to lectures and spiritual seeking while living in community, and during that time we took a week trip to Lancaster, PA (to stay with the illustrious Jim Ehrman), as well as a week working at an apple orchard in Centreville, Nova Scotia. The other two months were "outreach phase", with one month spent doing volunteer work in New Haven and New York, and the final month spent working at a children's home in Pune, India, southeast of Mumbai (Bombay).

The place we worked at in Pune was Hope of Glory, a Christian project taking in orphans and street kids from the city and giving them a home, education, and love, and we were able to help out by playing with the kids and taking some of the large workload off of the staff by taking care of the kids and doing cooking and cleaning around the home. There were 16 kids in the home, and they were all beautiful, sweet-spirited and loving people wh I will remember forever.

We flew into Mumbai on the night of December 31, just as they were celebrating New Year's Eve, then arrived early in the morning in Pune on the 1st of January, 2008. The outreach ended and our team left again from Mumbai on January 24, leaving us a measly 3 1/2 weeks in India. I really didn't like the idea of blowing the $3,000 cost of outreach (which was supported by incredibly generous friends and family) for such a pathetically brief period in such an amazing country, so I booked the ticket for my return flight out of Delhi on the 28th of February, which leaves me with almost 5 weeks to explore India with a backpack, a couple clothes, 4 disposable cameras, 32,000 rupees ($800 USD), 2 journals, 1 Lonely Planet "India" book, and no concrete itinerary. For the first 2 weeks until February 5 I am blessed to be travelling with Michael Cotton, who was one of the leaders of our outreach in Pune.

Anyway, on January 24 Michael and I said goodbye to the team and saw them off at the airport, a bittersweet parting and time to say farewell-for-now to some great friends that have made over the past 5 months. I'm very glad I did the DTS - I don't think I got as many theological answers or learned as much in the classroom as I thought I would, but I feel like I learned lots about family, community, and the importance of intimacy. After we left them at the airport at 20:00 PM we took a taxi to the Mumbai Central Train Station and found out which platform our train to Goa left from the next morning. It was late already and our train left early, at 6:55, so we slept in the train station, if "slept" is what you call it. It was pretty uncomfortable, but very memorable sleeping in the waiting room of the train station, but we boarded our train on time and got good seats. The train ride from Mumbai to Goa was great - extremely scenic, and certainly a must-do experience while in India. It was only marred by the fact that I ate some dosa which was a bit off, and my stomach revolted, resulting in numerous trips to the latrine and vomits off of the side of the train (to the immense enjoyment and laughter of the Indians in our train car). We arrived at the Old Goa train station of Karmali around 9:00 PM and quickly took a taxi into the hub city of Panaji. In Panaji we wandered around for a while searching for an available hotel since our planned lodging was full up for the night, until a strange man pulled up in a jeep and asked if we would like to stay at his place for the night since he had only 1 free room. We agreed out of desperation and were sped off to his place, where we collapsed in exhaustion.

This morning we woke up and rented a scooter from the proprietor of our hotel, a businessman overly interested in furthering his own assets, and spent the rest of the day exploring Panaji, a delightful city with a distinctive Portugese flavor, and zoomed north along the coast to check out Goa's trademark beaches.

EDIT: I'm sorry about the shoddy writing and the formatting and paragraph errors in this post- these internet cafe computers are as crappy as they are expensive to use.