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

the Lamp of Hope School - आशा दीप विद्याश्रम

This non-profit school for underprivileged children in Varanasi (run in the same building that we used have our Hindi language classes in) is run by some good friends from our years in Varanasi. The excellent work that the school does is quite encouraging. If you want to know more about their work and perhaps support them, they now have a very good website which you can find by clicking here.


To read page one of this brochure click on the image below

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

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.

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

Back in Romania - Pictures from the last 2 months

Hi All,

Sorry for the long delay in our postings. We've been super busy both since we've been here in Romania for the past week and a half, as well as in our last few months in India finishing up work with the School of Hindu Studies Office.

In December, we really began our transition out of Varanasi. The Christmas season was busy for us and we ended up spending Christmas together with friends in Delhi for a week. It was cool. After Christmas when we returned to Varanasi we had a few days - before new years eve, to pack up and move out of our house.
Our plan was to move in with some friends and their kids for the remaining two months we would be in India.
So that's what we did. It was so nice to be able to take time with them (Chuck and Stacie), play with their two children - Benjamin 2yrs old, and Charis - 4 months old. Dana especially enjoyed that. :-)

The beginning of January saw us finish up with our work in the School of Hindu Studies Office and hand over our responsibilities to our friends in the office. Dana's project of compiling the curriculum for the School of Hindu Studies almost completely finished after a year of work on it was a big accomplishment.

From the end of January, we left on a month long trip through India with our good friends, an American/Indian couple, Jeremy, his wife Arasi and their 2 and a half year old son Arjun.

We began with a trip to a conference in South India for rethinking Christian/Hindu interaction This conference was initiated by Christians concerned with culturally sensitive communication between the two faiths.
The conference was good for us and we left feeling refreshed and connected to people of like mind even as we were preparing to leave India indefinately.

Next, we spent about 3 weeks of down time with our friends at the beach and then at Arasi's family's place in Gujarat (where Gandi was from) for an extended farewell - a good way to end our 5 years in India.

Upon our return to Varanasi we finally said our goodbyes to friends, packed up - (not an easy task to sort our things we had acumulated these past two and a half years and figure out what to leave and what we to take) So after a week back at Chuck and Stacie's house we said goodbye to them and took the train to Delhi where we caught our flight to Romania.

The story of our flight - which was late and forced us to almost miss our connecting flight from Istanbul (even with an eight hour layover planned) was crazy, but we made it alright and so did our luggage. :-)

Now we've been here for a week and a half and are very busy trying to figure out how to deal with the papers to apply for Dana's visa to the States, our taxes, School, and all. But I won' t bore you with details.
At any rate, we are here in Romania for what looks like 5-6 months before we can finally travel to the states for those of Joel's family and friends who haven't met dana even yet after 3 years to finally do so. :-)

Well, here are some pictures from the past few months. Hope you enjoy them.

Shanti,
Joel and Dana