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

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. :-)

Pictures: Annversary party with family and a new look for Joel.

Joel, Dana and family at Grandma's house for a cook-out celebrating both J&D's 3 year anniversary and Dana's other Grandma's birthday.

Before and After

Joel's new Amish style beard is really only temporary. Dana doesn't like it!!! :-D

Back!

Hey all,

It's been more than a month since we last wrote, and so much has happened. Already, it's the ninth of October, crazy how time flies.
One month ago, on September 9th we finally said goodbye to Mama and Tata ('mom' and 'dad') and boarded our flight to India.
We arrived in New Delhi at around 2:30am and caught a taxi to our hotel where we were told, they didn't have any record of a room being reserved for us - even though Joel called them (from Romania!) the week before.
They did get a room for us though a short time later when some other guests were leaving to catch an early flight. Everything sorted out, we enjoyed our few days in Delhi (in Air Contitioning) before getting seats on the train for the overnight trip back to our home in Varanasi.
When we got back to our house though, it was a mess. Not only was everything super dusty, but all the clean sheets and clothes we had stored over the summer had mildewed because of the damp monsoon weather. We spent the next three or four days just cleaning our house and settling back into our place. It was nice to get back home in spite of the work and the heat though.

Since comming back to Varanasi we've been steadily getting back into the routine of things. We've started back in our office to work on our various projects - School of Hindu Studies curriculum, material for the web page, as well as some other studies. Joel also plans to start back into his music lessons.

On Saturday we had a party at our house to celebrate Joel's Birthday. We invited our closer friends, had a nice meal and watched 'The Skeleton Key' together. Good movie. Joel got some sweet books about the strange rise of 'modern India' which will be great reading...

Anyway, we don't want to bore you to death so we'll just end it here.
Hopefully we'll be posting more often than we have been. It's just been a bit crazy trying to get back into the swing of things.
Take care of yourselves.

Shanti (Peace),

J&D



ps. By the way, Joel cut his Hair! After Three Years!!!!

Our anniversary dinner photos and other crazy news

Hi All,

Two weeks ago, we wrote to let you know about our sudden change of plans to stay longer here in Romania. This was to be only the start of a very crazy week.

just that following monday Joel came down with a fever which lasted all week and was finally diagnosed as a viral infection. On top of that, the following Saturday we had to take a day trip to Bulgaria (just for stamps on Joel's passport and a new visa to Romania) . On the way we got in an accident in our friend's car (she was driving) and so sorting that out took about 5 hours (four or so at the police station). No one was seriously hurt though (thank God) but both cars were damaged beyond drivability (is that a word?) . Anyway, Dana's father drove down from Bucharest to lend us his car to cross the border. Unfortunately when we got there, we were told that we couldn't use the car to cross on the Bulgarian side because the registration had to be in one of our names, which it wasn't and Tata (dad) didn't have a passport :( They said we couldn't cross by foot either! So we had to ask someone to drive us in their car, drop us off in the nearest town to the border. We spent about 40 minutes there and then hitched a ride back to Romania.

The trip ended up taking the whole day, when it could have taken only 3 hours!!!

We are happy to let you all know that everything has worked out now and we're also picking up our visas to India this afternoon!

Joel got over the fever some 4-5 days ago and we're ready to get back to India! :-) We'll get to Delhi the morning of September 10th.

Thank you all for keeping us in your 'thoughts' even in the absence of communication.
That's about it for now.

Shanti (peace) to all...

Good Afternoon,

Just here checking out the news and what not so I figured I'd write something.

Things are going fairly well here, though yesterday when Dana and I went up to the Indian Embassy to apply for our India visas we found out that my (Joel's) visa will have to be approved by the Indian Embassy in Washington which will take a minimum of five days.

(We've never run into anything like this before as I used to have a 10 year visa until it was stolen and Dana has been able to get visas without this particular hastle when she applied before at least 4 countries various times)

Of course with our tickets to fly on the 23rd and the fact that there are two holidays this week, chances are almost nil for us to get the visa before our flight. So we had to postpone it...

arrrrrrrrrrgggg!!!!!!

well, now that that's out of me, One nice thing is that we'll be able to spend the extra week with family :-) Can't complain about that.

Once we do get back to India we will be pretty busy with some projects there with the School of Hindu Studies. There we'll be working on some new projects such as: ideas for a website. We'll also be continuing our monthly 'Movie Night' with a group of college age people, where we pick a socially and spiritually concious film, watch it, and have discussion.

For now though, not much is happening here - But A LOT is happening in the world.

Of course the Israeli/Lebanese peace deal is dominating CNN international as well as the BBC. But in other news: This past month (July) in Darfur, Sudan (where incidentally - an ENORMOUS amount of suffering is going on - Warring factions, Refugees, Genocide, etc.) has been the worst month for aid worker killings, attacks, and threats.
This is a place where 'Three and a half million people... are dependent on humanitarian aid.' and where 'The UN estimates that at least 70,000 people have died since the start of the conflict'
The irony is that, although this conflict, no, GENOCIDE, has been going on for several years now, it's like it's not even happening - if you only watch the mainstream news.
It's like, NOBODY CARES nearly as much about this as they do about what is happening in Israel and Lebanon (which is also important, but...)
It's absolutely crazy!
And we think we don't have double standards...

Sorry for the political commentary but it's just insane and I feel we're all just so apathetic about it.

We'll keep you updated as we go.

PEACE,

Joel (and Dana)

Family

Joel, Dana, and Parents at the Park just after sundown

Castle Rishnov seen from the town

Beautiful View

From Joel and Gabe's 'Beach Work Out' video
Order Yours Today, and we'll send you the Calendar, for Free...

Time with Family

Hey All,

Just wanted to update you all on what's going on here.
We had a good month - Especially with our (Joel's) family coming.

We had a great time. My parents were able to take two weeks off this year and come to visit us here after two years apart. We spent a total of 10 days together with them as well as my youngest brother Gabe and Grandma (dad's mom).
We had a great time together and were pretty busy most of the time. We visited two castles in the Carpathian mountains (Transylvania) and spent some days at the Black Sea. :-)
We had some great discussions, went cool places, and ate a lot of really good food. (Romanian food is some of my favorite in the world - with such nice bread, soups, cheeses, etc). We were also blessed with a new camera so we took A LOT of pictures (which of course we will share and have already shared below).
But the best part was finally being able to talk and spend time together regardless of where we were and what we did. It was so nice to finally be together again.

Since they left last Friday we've also been able to spend some time with Dana's family as well - especially with her aunt Claudia and cousin Jennifer before they went back to Germany.
Over all it's been really great.

Gotta run now but we'll share more photos as we go so check out our blog again.

Peace,
Joel and Dana

Finally together after two years!

The Boyers and the Dinus - party for Grandma's birthday

We took a trip to Bran Castle (aka Dracula's Castle) but we didn't see much of Dracula himself :-[