A little update!

I feel like I haven't written in forever!! We've been really busy with work and some other things we have going on here, but everything is going so well! Kolkata is actually starting to feel like home! It's so funny... sometimes I just feel like I'm right where I'm supposed to be and I don't notice strange little Indian things.. and then other times I'm like, oh wow... this is definitely a STRANGE place!! So much has happened this past week, so I figured I would try to share a little bit with you....

**Sealdah and Dum Dum are by far my favorite things about living in Kolkata. We've gotten so close to the families at Dun Dum and the children at Sealdah. This past Sunday was a little rough at Sealdah... when we were waiting to buy the bread, we met a group of street kids and a couple of moms, who were definitely no older than 16 or so. One of the moms was holding the skinniest child I've ever seen. He was a little over a year old, and his arms and legs were like little toothpicks. His cheeks were sunken in and his eyes were just miserable. I picked him up and I'm pretty sure he didn't weigh more than about 7 pounds. A one year that weighs seven pounds... how does that happen? We couldn't give them food there, so we asked them to wait at the platform for us but when we got there they were gone. We really want to set up a time to meet this lady everyday to give the little boy some good milk so that he can grow. I'm afraid if we don't he really will die soon. We also have a good friend there that we call Bread. She's a beautiful girl that's probably around 13 or 14 and she's so, so sweet. We thought for a while that maybe she was a prostitute becuase of the way she wears makeup and jewelry, but we just really hoped we were wrong. She ran up to us when we were leaving and she was so dressed up and in huge high heels. She is definitely a prostitute and she's no older than 14. That's not at all uncommon for India.
** Friday evening I was walking to our Platform at Sealdah and Shelly stopped me and told me she'd seen Rupa, but her head was shaved. I had walked past her, smiled at her, and didn't even notice it was her. I felt terrible. I went back and I just hugged her and said, "Rupa! you look beautiful!" She was with her dad, who was again obviously extrememly stoned. Rupa was really shy and would hardly even look at me. Her dad never let her come down and get food. I saw her the next morning waking up, and she just smiled at me and ran into the crowd. On Sunday, I happened to look up and see her little yellow dress... she was holding onto her dad's shirt and walking away with her head covered. I know she saw us and didn't want us to see her... she just kept her eyes on the ground and walked right past us. I can't imagine what kind of life she lives... but it seems more awful each time I see her and most of the time I can't even talk to her. Please keep her in your prayers!
** Shelly and I finally ate at Pizza Hut and it was a-mazing! My deep dish pepperoni pizza was probably the best pizza I've had in my entire life. Seriously. And to make the night even better... the workers at Pizza Hut here perform choreographed dances. Yes... choreographed dances. Really, really strange!
** Our friend Bina got married Monday night so I went to my first Bengali wedding! Our friend Bobby let us borrow sarees, so we got all dressed up and went to see our beautiful friend! It was a lttle strange... she's only met him once and they found him in the newspaper. She seems to actually like him alot, though! The food was delicious and it was so interesting to watch a Bengali wedding... really different from an American one!
**Shelly and I have somehow managed to become good friends with the son of one of the wealthiest men in Kolkata. Yesterday was her birthday, and so we went with all of our friends to Shaid's farmhouse in a small village outside the city. We had lunch and a cake for Shelly for her birthday... it was SO fun! We drove in the fields all afternoon and played cricket and took a long boat ride... it was so nice to be outside of the city for a few hours! It was a little strange to see how the upper class live in India... it was really strange actually. Shaid has tons of servants, tons of houses... basically everything in abundance. We were sitting on the rooftop of his apartment complex, looking out over the city, and I was just a little overwhelmed... it's so strange and seems so unfair that while so many people are literally dying on the streets of this city there are families who have so much money that they can have servants and cars and multiple houses. It was definitely interesting to see what life on the other side of India is like... but at the end of the day I knew that the India I've grown to love is the one that lives outside, on these dirty, dirty streets.

One of my favorite songs by Caedmon's Call says,
"You know I've heard good people say,
There's nothing I can do,
It's half a world away,
Maybe you've got money... maybe you've got time,
Maybe you've got the living well, that ain't ever runnin dry...."

Sometimes it seems like everyone I know at home thinks that there's nothing they can do because it is on the other side of the world... so they just don't. They stay in America and live in a bubble... a false sense of reality where all in the world is ok becuase everything is ok at home. Nothing about that picture is reality. The world is full of beggars.... people who are dying becuase they have nothing to eat, no one to clean their wounds, and no one to simply love them. I don't know about you... but I can't have things like that on my conscious. Yes... I came to Kolkata in faith... but most of the time I feel like there's nothing I can do to make this place any better. But still I am confident... with a lot of love, a lot of work, and a lot of tears... Kolkata can be changed. I know there will come a day, if people stop sitting around doing nothing, when people don't have to sleep on the hard concrete and eat from the garbage cans. Please pray for the beautiful, heart breaking people of this city. I just know that all of you would fall in love with their beautiful smiles and hearts.