Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is the American holiday of 'Thanksgiving', a tradition in the States which is among my favourites. Today families join together for good home-cooked food, to spend time together, watch football, and to celebrate all that we have to give thanks for.

Unfortunately for the past 6 years I have been too far away and without enough money to return to celebrate with my family at my grandmother's house, as I did every year until moving to India, getting married and all. It's been good though. Every year since leaving home 6 years ago, there have always been friends (regardless of nationality) around to celebrate the day with - best of all my lovely wife. :-)

Today we wanted to share with you some of the things that are happening here which we are thankful for.

For a long time now, Dana and I have been planning to return to the States to continue studying and finish up the paperwork required to be free to live inside or outside the US as we choose. Many of you know that the process of applying for Dana's visa to come to the States has been a long and complicated one. So we're very happy to let you all know that we are finally very near the end, and that we're now just waiting for an appointment date for our interview at the US embassy here in Romania. This is the very last step in the process where the final approval is given. We are hoping and praying that this will take place by the begining of January! :-)

We also would like to announce that in mid January, I will be starting school at Bloomsburg University in the philosophy department. This is a step that I've been waiting a long time to take and we are both excited for me to finally get back to school!

Because of this, Dana is able to quit her job at the British School. Her last day is just a little more than a week away. This last month or before moving to the States, we wanted to spend with family and friends while we can. Also, the job has been a hard for her and the travel to the other side of the city every day has been quite time consuming. I have to say that I'm very much looking forward to spending our days together this coming month. :-)

Other good news is that this past month I finally got my residence card for Romania (which would allow me to work here if we were staying longer). This is a good thing because it will make it much easier to spend longer amounts of time here without having to leave the country every 90 days and is a step toward potential dual citizanship.

There are a lot of unknowns in our future right now, and although the unknown is scary, and we feel torn between 3 continents and our friends and family scattered across the globe - wishing we could be in 3 or so places at once - we feel that this is the right direction for us and we are so thankful that these opportunities are finally coming to being.

We hope you've had a great Thanksgiving (even if you didn't celebrate it) and that you have a great day.

Peace and Shanti

A Day in the Mountains

Two Saturdays ago we spent the day with a group of friends driving up into the Carpathian mountains to a huge dam and lake and then a little further up the road for a picnic. It was great. ;-) Although they were calling for rain, the day actually ended up becoming a little sunny. But it's now clearly autumn/winter weather here with a sudden bout of cold weather. The leaves are falling now though maybe only a third of them have fallen by now.
The day out was great. Dana had a very good time playing with our friends' 4 month old girl Alma, a beautiful baby. :-) And I had a good time building the fire, helping the guys on the grill, and taking all these pictures (below).
Over all we're doing well. Dana's job is demanding and she has to travel to the opposite side of the city and out to get there too. It's quite a stressful job for her, so we usually end up not going out with friends much, but it's been nice to do that too. I'm keeping busy with a bit of paperwork that we're working on now as well as helping out with the construction of our church's new building.
We hope you're all doing well too.

Peace




Carpathian Mountains



Dana and Joel

The Dam Lake

The Guys working the Grill

Our Picnic

Dana and our friends's baby, Alma

The Girls

At the Dam

Looking out over the edge

The view from the top of the Dam

166 meter bungee jumping platform

It's a long way down

The Bungee Jumping Platform

The Dam Lake

Birthdays!

It's been a while since our last personal update on how we are and what's happening with us. We wanted to write because today is Joel's birthday. :-)

This week has been a good week for us - full of celebration with family with special meals for both Joel and Dana's father whose birthday is a day before Joel's. This past Sunday we had a cookout at Dana's Grandmother's house in the garden with Dana's family. Joel and Tata ('Dad' in Romanian) worked the grill. We had cake and stayed for the afternoon and evening. Then, both yesterday and today on our actual birthdays Mama made special meals and a cake and we exchanged a few gifts.

It's been nice to stay here in Romania though it's been hard too. Time with family after such a long time away is priceless. It's true that you don't know what you have until you don't have it anymore, as we've learned from our years away from family while we lived in India.
But this is also a bit of a hard time for us. Dana's job is demanding and so she feels drained a lot of the time, which means that we don't have as much time to spend with friends here. We're also still in transition, not adjusted yet from moving from India. Even though Joel can't get a job here in Romania and is waiting until January to start school, he is trying to use the time each day wisely. This time here in Romania is perfect for him to work on learning the language.

Over all, things are a bit difficult, but good. We are blessed more than even we realize. We hope you are doing well (whoever is reading this) and may peace be upon you.


Below are some recent pictures of Dana with old friends, and from our cookout on Sunday. :-)

Our New Slide Show on MySpace

Just to let you all know, we've added a new feature to our MySpace site. This slide show of all the pictures that we've previously posted to our blog here. :-) The older pictures are first but to see the newer pictures first just reverse the slide. To fast-forward just control the speed of the slide show. :-)

Peace (शांति),
J&D

Greece

This is a photo of the two of us while we were in Thessaloniki for a day. The ruins of the old city's wall are at our left and the harbor behind us.



Dana had a week's worth of holiday last week so we were very blessed to be able to take a pretty inexpensive trip to Greece, where we stayed in a small village along the Aegean coast in the north of Greece in Macedonia (where Alexander the Great was from).

Most of the time there we spent at the beach relaxing, but one day we took a trip to Thessaloniki (an ancient and important city named after Alexander the Great's sister, also well known because of the two books of the Bible, (I & II Thessalonians) written to the followers of Jesus who lived there). We walked up the hill to the old city, saw ruins from the Roman times and visited the archaeological museum which was quite cool. Another day we took the afternoon to walk to the next town along the beach. Although we started out thinking it would only take 40 minutes, we found out later after walking for 2 and a half hours (and cooling off in the sea for an hour) that we had actually walked somewhere around 17 km (a little over 10 miles). It was a lot of fun though. The water was a beautiful green-blue and quite clear.
Although the particular town we stayed at did not have such nice beaches (there were a lot of rocks) there were also far fewer tourists and we were able to find a few beautiful and secluded places where we could walk into the water without wearing our water shoes.
Not knowing if we'll ever get the chance to visit Greece again, it's especially nice to be able to have those memories on film. We were able to take quite a few beautiful pictures, and will be posting some of the better ones here later.

Peace, शांति
J&D

Independence Day!

Happy fourth of July to all our American friends and family! :-)

Not much of a celebration going on here except for at the US Embassy in Bucharest where they had a party for all the Americans who wanted to go complete with potato
salad and hot dogs (according to the local news).

We didn't go but we didn't know about it until after getting home in the evening after picking Dana up from work. Anyway, today I (Joel) was busy helping my brother in law move furniture to put in new windows for the apartment.

We hope everyone is enjoying the picnics (especially at the family reunion today :-) and all the good food. (I like food a lot, can you tell?)

Right now I'm just sitting here, listening to the old Clash song 'I'm So Bored With The USA', reading Sojourners Magazine's July 4th email update, and really missing you all back in the States.
In fact, I just realized that as of today I haven't been back to the States for exactly 3 years and 2 days. Hopefully we'll soon be able to get Dana's visa but still no word on that yet.

As today is the fourth and given that freedom is such a big theme for this day in American history and in American values, I thought it would be fitting to share this bit of scripture which really impacted me when I read it a couple of days ago:

For you have been called to freedom...only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
- Galatians 5:13-14

Hope everyone has a great day.

Peace शांति

Although we've been having some trouble uploading pictures here, we've managed to post these two from a few weeks ago.
Joel and Dana together with friends.

Hi all,

Sorry we've been silent for a month now, but we've been keeping busy. Dana has got a job this past month at the British School of Bucharest as a secretary. It's very good for us as the cost of living here is significantly higher than in India. Joel is now also helping out with the construction of our church's new building here in Bucharest in addition to getting ready to take some classes through the Internet this coming September.

Of course, our friends in the States will want to know how things are going with Dana's visa situation. These things take time though and so we really have no good idea of how long the process will run. We will update you as we know.

Mostly our lives are pretty uncomplicated beyond that. Just tired. Dana's job is pretty demanding and the travel there and back each day takes somewhere around 3 to 4 hours total. This weekend is therefore all the more of a much needed break.

In addition to her new job, Dana has also been working the past weekends and evenings translating and subtitling a film made by some friends who are associated with the School of Hindu Studies. We were finally able to show the film in Romanian last Sunday evening to all our friends at the River of Life fellowship. Pictures, as they say, speak a thousand words. Everyone seemed to enjoy the film and were able to understand more clearly what life in India looks like than by us simply relating our experiences. It's been well worth it as the hard work is now finished. The next translation into English (subtitles) will be much easier as everything is already set up and timed.

Tomorrow we will hopefully be able to see Pirates of the Caribbean. These cliffhanger endings so popular since Lord of the Rings are a bit annoying, but as they say in India, 'What to do Yaar?!'
Ok, that's it on this side. Peace out.

shanti, shanti, shanti...
J&D

Joel and Dana with friends at an Indian restaurant in Bucharest

At the park

Dana

much of our time spent here is dominated by the computer, looking into visa issues, studying in preparation for school, and researching various issues of interest online.

Happy Easter Everyone!!!

hey all,

just wanted to let you know that all our blogger pictures will be available in one place at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/joel.dana

For now it's just the pictures we've posted since January but more will be coming.

Peace,
Joel & Dana

More Pictures

Sun through the palms

Sundown on the Arabian Sea

Arjun and his cousin looking out a window built into a ancient step well (a well which has steps going down into it - providing cool in the heat of Ahmedabad)

Elephants

Joel and Dana at the step well

Cows relaxing in the shade of an alley way

Driving by the spice market

At the Mosque in Ahmedabad, India
read #3 :-)

Muslim men doing their evening prayers

Dana and I visiting the Friday Mosque which has some amazing architecture

Beautifully carved stone lattice at the Mosque from the 1400s

3 big boys - Joel with our friends' kids Arjun and Benjamin

Dana holding Benjamin and his sister Charis

Men in skirts (Lungis are common wear for men in Varanasi - especially inside the house)

Our last evening in Varanasi - we had a few good friends over for a nice meal, some prayer for our journey, and to hang out one last time.

Arasi, Dana, Lijo, and Swami ji