The Midwest

18 May 2012

I can’t even call the post “Ohio” because we actually went to eight different states (including states in the Northeast, Southwest and Southeast ) during our six weeks in the area. It was pretty amazing. All of our travels took place during the last two weeks, but we put the first part of our visit to good use too!

Hung out with this guy All.The.Time.

Met my cousin's new baby!

Visited with my grandma frequently & celebrated her 91st birthday!

Continued to deny having allergies while Burke visibly suffered...

Now, don’t judge me for the next photo; I’m looking particularly rough. Dad and I took the dogs for a bike ride or a run just about every day. One day I thought it would be extra fun to put both the dogs on the bike. Marley (the black one) really liked it because about every time after that he got strangely close to the bike, as if he wanted on again.

This is a recumbent bicycle, definitely not made for a person and two dogs.

We also made good use of our time helping out with Corner Shack, the amped up version of the youth group I went to in high school. It was fun to see some of the kids that I remembered from when I volunteered at Kidmunity (sunday school) and kids that I coached on the swimming team.

The week we spoke was a record high for number of kids, but there are 50-60 weekly.

Then we routed through Indiana to go to Chicago. It was the best weekend ever.

So, so, so good to see these friends!

Then we went to Missouri to hang out with a lot of Burke’s family. My parents came along, and it was the first time they had seen each other since the wedding.

It’s about an eleven hour drive from where we live in Ohio to Joplin, MO. On the way, we stopped at the St. Louis Zoo and on the way back we stopped and had dinner with Burke’s cousin Rick and his family!

It was the first time I met Rick, but I'd been hearing about him for years.

Shortly after returning from Missouri, we went to Harrisburg for one of my college friend’s wedding. Julie looked so beautiful, and we had a great time catching up with other friends at the wedding!

Our last stop on the tour lead us to Philidelphia, where we flew out to San Francisco. Fortunately I know a lot of people who live there including my friend Marilyn! She hosted us so well during our couple of short hours there and even prepared a lovely picnic lunch.

Picnic basket packer extraordinaire

It was so great seeing friends and family while we were in the Midwest (and Southwest, Southeast and Northeast!). We loved visiting with you all and are already looking forward to next time!

Bye bye Europe

06 Apr 2012

We had a mangled array of activities during the last few weeks of our program. It was pretty fun, I love organized variety. We went to Austria for a couple days.

We really liked it.

When we came back it was just a couple days until we had our graduation!

Our lovely group

Maybe you know, but our last few days in Slovakia were actually spent in England. When we came back, our friend Janko picked us up from the airport.

Despite having made at least four or five trips through Bratislava before, Burke felt like we’ve never really seen the city. So he asked Janko if he’d give us a tour before we went back to his apartment with him. Since Janko is such a super nice friend (and single, fyi ladies), he agreed to give us a midnight tour of the capital city of the country we’ve called home.

Janko was a great tour guide. For some buildings and streets he knew the details and history, but other times he met my questions with colorful answers.

Me: Hey, Janko, what’s that a statue of?
Janko: A soldier.

Me: Janko, what is this building known for?
Janko: People work there.

A bridge.

While we were finishing our program, I spent most of my free time working on two videos and going to the gym. If you haven’t watched the videos yet, you can find them here. The gym was small, primitive, and inexpensive, so it worked out just fine. I really got a kick out of the power button on this machine.

Here’s my last funny thing from Slovakia. When we came back, there was a sign out at the bar across the street from our home. They were having a happy hour-type promotion where you could pay only 45 euro cents (60 US cents or so) for a shot of hard alcohol between the hours of 8 and 9 am.

For those of you who like to get an early start on the day, I guess...

Maybe you haven’t heard this story yet, but on our way home we were asked if we would like to be bumped to a later flight meaning we would get accommodation in London for a night AND 500 USD each. Boom, sign us up. In the end, they didn’t need to bump us, but they gave us first class seats for being willing. It was amazing, especially since it was the longest leg of our journey.

I decided riding coach is for chumps and I’m never going to do it again…. yeah, I wish.

In the next post, I’ll tell you about what we’re up to in Ohio; but for now, this concludes this portion of our amazing overseas adventures.

Our next step…

14 Mar 2012

Alright, I admit it.

I’ve fallen off the blogging boat. Obviously, we knew this would happen. Going from India back to Slovakia, it is easy to just live life thinking that there isn’t much to share. In doing so, I have completely neglected to tell you all what we are doing next!

Right now, what is going on is that we are finishing up our program (If you are thinking what program? then you should read about it here.) We only have about a week before our graduation, but we are filling every moment of our free time between now and when we leave with our respective creative projects- maybe our next post will even direct you to a new video or website to check out!

So what’s really next? Well, we have a lot of big dreams that we aren’t really ready to share. I think that’s why I haven’t yet. But I can tell you the logistics that we know. On March 28th, we will be returning to the U.S, indefinitely. To our surprise, we feel like this is God’s next step for us. Like last summer, we will start out in Ohio making our rounds and catching up so please email us if you want to get together! We want to see you and we will be there for much longer than the short 2 weeks of last summer.

How much longer? We can’t say exactly, but we will probably be heading to CA mid-May. From there we will begin the most normal life we will have had, and I am thrilled. We’re not promising any permanent settling down, but you are guaranteed to be seeing a lot more of us in at least the next year than you have in the last three. So, get excited, we are.

This guy is excited too!

Risheehat

03 Mar 2012

Visiting Risheehat, a village about an hour outside of Darjeeling, was one of our last big projects in India. I could write about all we did there in an entire series of posts, but I’ll keep it to just this one and one in our members’ only section.

I was most definitely sick before going, but decided to go anyway knowing that if I didn’t get better, the option of leaving with half of the team after only 1.5 days would be available, although Burke and I were planning on staying for the 5 day duration. The majority of the first day was spent preparing for a program that we were putting on for the people of the village and the neighboring villages. First we cleaned the room, then moved in speakers, and then went door to door inviting people to the program. We quickly learned about village time. We were instructed to tell people to come at 5, meaning they might arrive/we could start by 8. There is an amazing story about how the program almost didn’t happen on the other blog, so you should seriously read it!

This lady is making concrete from scratch.

The next morning half of the group went home, I stayed in the village with the understanding that we would be “off” for the day and I would have plenty of relaxing/healing time. Wrong.

We hiked down the mountain to a waterfall. It was so beautiful that despite feeling pretty awful, I kept saying that deciding to stay was one of the best decisions of my time in India. For lunch we had homemade momos, a Tibetan cabbage stuffed pasta. This is one thing I am looking forward to trying to recreate at home!

Momo dough

We had to hurry back from the waterfall for lunch at 1 so we could be to the soccer game which was supposed to start at 1:30. The other team didn’t even show up until 3:30. Village time. We loved watching the football game. Our home team wasn’t doing so hot for the first half, and there seemed to be a huge number of fans for the away team. After the game we asked our host why that was and he said all the fans for the other side were from Risheehat, they just cheer for the other team because their own team cheats. And we saw that firsthand too.

Hands on.

The next day we hiked through the tea fields to the neighboring village. The hike was amazing. Every turn exposed a beautiful view, and there was even a baby enjoying the ride. We visited many houses and invited people to our open-air program, similar to the one two evenings before.

The funniest part of the program was that we were just playing it by ear. After we performed a skit, we looked to our leader and asked what was up next. He said, “Oh don’t worry. Vivek (our host) will tell us.” And not ten seconds later Vivek came down from the stage and looked at us all and asked, “So what’s next?”

Before leaving that evening, we asked about church the next day. We were told that one of us (me) could prepare a very short message but it would not be the sermon because there was a guest pastor speaking. No problem. “What time does church start?” we asked. “9…9:30…Okay maybe 10.”

In church they wear scarves over their hair... one lady couldn't find her scarf.

The next morning we ate breakfast at 9:30 and walked to the church at 10:45 and were the first ones there! It started sometime shortly after 11 (Love that village time!). The real highlight of the morning though was that they wanted a whole sermon! I wasn’t prepared so instead we filled the extra time with short testimonies and songs.

We really learned to go with the flow and adapt to the village lifestyle in Risheehat. I’ll even say it again, deciding to stay in the village was one of the best decisions I made in India.

The village was only one street and this was the heart of it all.

The Darjeeling Conundrum

15 Feb 2012

Perhaps you’ve heard of Darjeeling. Maybe you know it for its tea. Maybe you know it for the movie. Or if you’re really up on your B+L trivia, you might know it as the final and current destination of our India tour.

Kanchenjunga- the 3rd tallest mountain in the WORLD

Well, let me tell you something interesting about this city: it’s FREEZING. Literally, it freezes at night. All those of you who imagined us in the tropics sipping mango lassies, wrong-o. So what? There’s a foot of snow outside my house right now…. you may be thinking. Well I’ll tell you what. Because it’s India we’re in and it is hot for most of the year, they don’t have any of the following things:

Heat.
Insulation.
Hot water.
Running water. Half the time anyway.

When I lay in bed at night, complaining about my frozen toe-cicles despite the four pairs of socks, sleeping bag and two thick blankets they’re under, I can see my breath. This normally wouldn’t be a problem, as I generally can fall asleep within a few minutes of trying (Burke will grumpily attest to this fact), but let’s remember the first thing that Darjeeling is known for. The tea. The amazing, caffeinated tea that is offered around every corner at every hour of the day. When the Nepali’s (because that’s who actually lives in Darjeeling) find out that I prefer tea without milk they smile and say with a wink in their eye, “Oh, I’ll make you pure Darjeeling tea then.” So instead of struggling for a few minutes in the freezing cold before falling asleep, I lie in bed breathing the moist recycled air trapped under my sleeping bag, half-cursing the many cups of glorious tea I inhaled during the day.

Samosas in the making...

To find out what this kid is doing, go to www.burkeandlizzie.com/ywam

A Near Engagement

02 Feb 2012

The other day I had a couple hours to kill before we met for dinner, so I took my camera and went for a walk. I was actually headed to one place in particular, but the ladies I wanted to photograph weren’t there, so instead of immediately turning around I decided to continue on down a road where I hadn’t been.

As I meandered, I stopped to take many photos along the way. Inevitably kids along the road ask me to take their photos as well and I’m usually always pretty happy to do it. Sometimes, adults ask me to take their photos as well, so I wasn’t all that surprised by one 20-something guy slowly walking along nearby me. I also noticed that the straps on his sandals dragged on the group with every step and served no visible purpose. Eventually this man rallied the courage to approach me. Instead of immediately asking me for a photo, he proceeded to have a conversation with me entirely in Hindi, despite my insistence that I didn’t understand anything.

I welcomed a bicycle delivery man’s interruption and saw it as a chance to get on with my photo walk. The young man caught back up and eventually understood that I was just walking around taking photos. So he motioned for me to follow him to a good photo location.

So I did follow him. And he did take me to a beautiful place. I’m not so good photographing landscape, but the field and the houses beyond were definitely a beautiful sight. I looked at him to show my appreciate for the scene, but he gestured to the kid pooing in the outdoor toilet behind him. Yuck! He wasn’t taking me to the field, but to the Indian portapotty.

By this point the guy was my friend. I used my two Hindi sentences on him and impressed him thoroughly. The only problem was he couldn’t get my name right for the life of him. My name is Lizzie. Raji? Li-zi. Liji? Li-Zi. Lisi? As we walked further I would sometimes hear him say something quietly like Raju or Ruji, then I’d correct him again and we’d repeat the conversation. (Truth is, I can’t remember his name either. It was something with an A, so lets just call him Ameer for the rest of this post.)

You can see the toilet gutter behind him.

Mostly I was just walking along and he and a few kids were following me. That’s really quite normal in India, so when he suggested a second place to go, I didn’t mind acquiescing.

The next place Ameer took me was to a house and he immediately ran inside and motioned for me to wait outside for a moment. Before I could even look at my surroundings at least five new kids ran up to me and wanted me to take their photos. The older girls knew a few English words and told me they were his sister. They pulled me over to the adjoining house and dragged a woman, who was sewing, outside to have her photo taken as well. I supposed that it was the woman’s husband who came home in that minute and told me No, thank you. The girls pleaded and he conceded, so I took a few photos of their entire family.

After the photo session, I said goodbye and started to walk away. As I walked by the house where Ameer was, I saw him next to the water pump very intently grooming himself. He was still clothed, but he was most definitely washing his entire body, completely sudsy, and washing as fast as he could.

The girls insisted I take their grandmother’s photo, and that I sit down to do so. They pulled up a red plastic chair and I sat down, snapped a couple photos and immediately Ameer came over sporting a new shirt and shoes. He gave me a How do you like me now? look and then the entire family encircled me with expectant eyes.

They want me to marry this man!!! The thought screamed through my head as I quickly stood up and made my escape. To my dismay, Ameer followed me and continued walking with me. My pace was brisker this time, but that didn’t deter him any because now he was wearing polished white sneakers!

Even as we walked away from his home, he continued offering me chai and coffee because he realized they were two words we had in common.

Then, all of the sudden out of NOWHERE, Ameer knew a phrase in English. “Kiss me,” he said. Ick, no way. I sternly told him no and even glared at him, but he continued to walk with me, even singing as we walked. You wouldn’t believe it, but he had another phrase tucked away. “This is my girlfriend,” he said to me, about me. This time I stopped and looked directly at him and said no. I stepped up my game and I said “I am…” and then I pointed to the center of my forehead (the dot) and indicated a line just above that where my hairline meets my forehead. (The combo of the two indicates that a woman is married.)

Victory! He understood! We continued walking, my destination in sight. He asked if I had a baby and when I said no baby and not pregnant I think I lost all credibility and he didn’t believe me anymore. No matter because we reached my destination.

Had I been interested, I am certain I could have had a second husband.