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

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

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!!!!

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)