Sunday, November 07, 2004

Sunday night at the Hildreds

Today Lokesh came at 8:30. Ben also left at 8:30 to go play soccer. We went to Delhi International Christian Fellowship (http://www.dicfindia.org/). I played "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" on Frank Harrison's guitar there. On the way home we went for a walk at Leisure Valley, a project of the Haryana Urban Development Authority. It is an oasis of clean and green not so far from our apartment. Lokesh walked with us. I even drove home. (I would like to be able to get there on our own). On the way to the parking garage we passed Ben on a rickshaw coming back from his soccer game, which was fun and they won handily. Having had our after church walk, we settled in for our after church nap. After the nap we walked to the plaza, and got some money and meat. Dianne made supper of chicken, rice fresh beans and some prepared Agra peas and Greens. After supper, we listened to Knox's rememberence day service. How blessed I am to have known a Father and 2 Grandfather's that were the wrong age in the right country to fight in a war. The picture is in our apartment living room. The view out the window, were it day light would be of a school, a health club and houses and office buildings. We are on the nice side of the building.

Friday, November 05, 2004

Another country heard from (Australia)


sorry its been so long, i've been hiking in the bush for the past couple weeks. ... starting teusday i'll be payed ... to hike with kids for 6 days, which'll be sweet. hopefully i can keep working for these guys, its sort of like contract, a program at a time.

not much else is new, i've just been volenteering with these hike fellas for 2 weeks or so to sort of get to know them and so they can get to know me. ...

tim

Monday, November 01, 2004

Happy Halloween


monkey
Originally uploaded by waterlooHildreds.
We had 5 trick or treaters last night. So surprised, that the boys went out post haste and bought some candy. Today I have the right combination of time, and photos that I took, so I am making an entry of photos that we took with our digital camera since we have been here. This fellow is outside Akbar's Mausoleum on the way to Agra from Delhi. There was a guy selling monkey food. There were also deer and antelope playing on this large expanse of lawn surrounding the Mausoleum.

Akbar's Mausoleum had an inner chamber, that the guide could make resonate with his voice. It was especially nice for our first experience outside of Delhi to see the clean expanse of lawn, and all of the wildlife.

The Taj Mahal, was of course the main event. It took several trys to get the white building to show up against the bright sky. This was my first succesful attempt.
I took this picture partly for the hawk circling above and partly to show the scale of the inlay. The patterns on the wall are water lillys and such inlayed in semi-precious stones. One particular type of stone came all the way from Chile. 300 years ago!

This is a picture of one of the corner towers of the Taj Mahal. The red building in the background is a residence of the Khan. Notice the brightly colored clothes! Dianne wore an Indian suit that day, and a little girl came up and complemented her on it.


This is another view of a tower looking out towards the river. Notice the inlay again and how shiny the floors are. I took these while our guide and the rest of the group was waiting in line to go inside.


Exiting the Taj Mahal we saw this river view. The boat seems to be human powered (maybe poled). The river doesn't look very deep.


On the way home I bought this elephant shirt, which I am modeling with Dianne and Lianne in the courtyard of HCL. On the other side of the fence is some Government land. Dianne and Lianne are standing in front of it for our thanksgiving picture. Down the road a bit there is a smouldering pile of garbage that pigs and cows feed on.


Now we move on to Goa. This sunset is on the second night. It was taken from a beach hut restaurant, where Dianne and I had a beverage. I won this privilege on one of the rare bets with my wife that I won. She says that she likes to let me have the odd one!


Inside the church of St. Francis there were many large oil paintings, that the Ben and Joel photographed. This one of Jesus and the money-changers appealed.


This is the courtyard at St. Francis church. It was an oasis of calm from the hawkers outside. Here are Dianne and Joel in the same courtyard.




Ben and Joel are wearing some clothes that they bought in Margao for this beach sunset. They had a walk on the beach with us at dusk.


Goodbye beach! This is our last morning. The fruit lady took this picture after we bought some bananas from her