16 Candles

Dear Readers,

So Friday was my birthday. My big Sweet 16. It was nothing like i imagined, but definitely not in a bad way. When i was little i had always imagined my sweet 16 being a huge party with all of my friends with music and dancing and eating and all that classic fun stuff from the movies. I never thought i'd spend it on the other side of the world! And without my family at that. But i spent it with some pretty amazing people that i had gotten to know over the past few days. I made two best friends over the week, Veerle (who's from the Netherlands) and Nikita (who's from India), and they made it really nice. They wished me happy birthday that morning, and continued to wish me happy birthday throughout the day. When i got back home, i arrived to presents and a birthday "cake" (a peanut butter dessert). It was so fun and i didn't even mind that i wasn't at home in the US to celebrate it. Because how many people get to say that they celebrated their sweet 16 in India?

With all my heart, Kayla

The Best Field Trip Ever.

Dear Readers,

Last Monday was the first day of school, and on Tuesday my entire grade got to go on a retreat for the next five days. It was SO fun! The bus was scheduled to leave at 6:30am so i had to get up at 4:50am in order to be ready on time to leave by 5:50am. So i got up, bright eyed and bushy tailed and excitedly got ready to go on my trip. Sri, not as bright eyed and bushy tailed, graciously came to our house two hours early just to take me to the school. So i said my goodbyes to my mom and dad and got in the car with my duffle bag and we were off. We got to the school around 6:15/6:20am, and he wished be an early happy birthday and then he left. I waited with some kids from school for everyone to get there and when everyone was there we all piled on the bus (all 27 of us, haha). I sat by two girls that i had kind of already become friends with from the first day of school, Veerle and Nikita. The bus took us to a different bus (a tour bus, so bigger and nicer) and we all put our duffle bags in the back and climbed on. Once we headed out i wasn't feeling as bright eyed and bushy tailed anymore, and dozed off a couple times on our way to our first destination. Here's a picture of Veerle and i on the bus:

When we got to our first destination, we were all pretty awake and excited for the week. The first place was about an hour south of Bangalore, and it was a fun little campsite in the middle of nowhere. We literally stayed in tents, which was a bit of a surprise to me because i had been told we were going to be staying in a resort. And my conceptions of a resort was a little different...but then i was told that

positive speculations

Dear Readers,
So the last few of my posts have been a bit on the pessimistic side, mostly due to the fact that i hadn't had wifi for more than a week and i was stressed and frustrated with not being able to contact any of my friends. But i think it's about time you hear my positive views of India. Back in the US, my life was pretty predictable. I had my solid group of friends, school was relatively easy, i had a weekly routine that rarely ever changed. That was the main reason why i wanted to leave. I got exactly what i wanted; a place that's erratic, random, and very unpredictable. And i absolutely love it. I love the whole feel of being on an adventure..not exactly knowing what's going to happen all the time. I feel like back in the US i could practically predict what was going to happen over the next two years. But here, i don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, let alone next week or this next year. Having been born and raised in Minnesota, never living anywhere else, it's sometimes difficult to fully enjoy the unexpected moments when my deep American core is screaming at me that 'different' is wrong. It's taken a little while to start to fully appreciate differences. I can't be critical about the differences because that's exactly what they are; different. And different is exactly what i wanted. Some of the amazing things i love about India are the busyness, the weather, the people, the food, the shopping, the clothes, and just the overall feel of being in a whole different world. It really is quite amazing.

With all my heart, Kayla

blessed wifi...finally.

Dear Readers,

We FINALLY got internet connection in our house. I seriously was about to take someone out. It felt SO weird not being able to talk to people or see what's going on in their lives. Getting only snipits of wifi once in awhile just wasn't nearly enough. There's not much you can do with only an hour of wifi once or twice a week. There's just so much catching up to do that you can barely get any of it done! But now we finally have it and i feel much better being able to talk to people again. Thank heavens for modern technology. I don't know what i would do without it.

With all my heart, Kayla

Lights Out!

Dear Readers,

Today at church we had the power go out twice. In 10 minutes. Which means the air conditioners turned off, but didn’t go back on. The power went out in sacrament meeting, which means it was really hot for the next two hours. I feel bad for the men wearing suits, because at least I had a skirt on! And poor Baryll (the person giving the talk when the power went out both times), he couldn’t read the story because it was too dark, so he improvised until the lights came back on. And the mike wasn’t working because there was no power. Mom turned to me and said “next time you have to give a talk at church, bring a flashlight so you can read the talk…” haha! But Baryll did really well nonetheless. We didn’t have our normal third hour, we were ALL combined. The branch president talked about how important church records are, and apparently they haven’t updated them in 15 years, so that’s what we did today. Our family had already done them because it was required to have them updated before we moved. So we just sat and watched the chaos. In the heat. After church was over mom got her calling and we went home. It’s been pretty normal since then, except for the annoying fact that we STILL don’t have internet. We haven’t had it for over a week now. I have to go to a little coffee shop around the corner for an hour of wifi (you have to pay for it…) but besides that things have been good. I can’t wait until we get internet at the house though so I can skype people again. Fingers crossed that it comes soon!

With all my heart, Kayla

Ants in the Tub

Dear Readers,

As you may have read earlier, we had bugs in our Penne pasta. Well now we have ants in our tub. So on Saturday night, dad was sweeping the master bathroom because there were some ants on the floor. (There’s always ants. Somewhere. When we got into our house there were ants all over my bathroom floor coming out of the corner under my sink. Most of them were dead though, which is kind of weird. There were also ants flying out of Nathan and Ben’s air conditioner, and then there were ants in the kitchen because one of the boys left a cookie out overnight. So there’s ants everywhere but this is by far the worst…) So he decides to turn on the tub to clean it out because it was all dusty. He turns on the water and when it got high enough, he turned on the jets. As soon as he did, a whole clump of ants and eggs shot out and hit him on the leg. The water was still filling up, and shooting out of all the jets were tons of ants and their eggs. The water was full of them. He turned on the shower head connected to the tub and sprayed down the sides where some of the ants were crawling up. He opened the drain and it drained out all the ants and their eggs. But we decided to do it one more time in case there were any left over. There was. We filled up the tub again (and it’s already gross because the water’s all yellow) and he turned on the jets again, and more ants came out. It was by far the grossest thing I’ve seen here. We joked about how if mom had tried to take a bath and turned the jets on, she would have screamed that she was going home. But by how many ants were coming out of the jets, anyone in their right mind would have screamed that if they were in a tub full of ants and eggs. We got some insecticide at the store for the ants in my bathroom and kitchen, and it was almost gone so we used up the rest of it on the master bathroom. I guess we need to put that on our shopping list; more insecticide. I swear it’s like we live in a jungle.

With all my heart, Kayla

Common Sense

Dear Readers,

So there’s this thing called common sense. Most people have it, some people unfortunately don’t. Some people have more of it than others. Well most people in India seem to be in the unfortunate group that lacks this wonderful thing called common sense. For example, they make their showers really tall. (At least all of the showers I’ve seen are really tall). They’re like, 8-9 feet high. So you would think that they would make shower curtains to fit these tall showers, because that would be the common sense thing to do, right? Well they don’t. They only carry your average shower curtain length, which about 6 1/2 -7 feet long. Here's a few pictures;

it's just ridiculous...i laugh every time i go in my bathroom.

 it's quite unesessary how high they put the rod above the shower head...

the curtain is like a foot and a half higher than my floor...

So every morning when I take a shower, my floor gets soaked. No matter how far I push my shower head to angle it away from the gap; my floor still gets all wet. It’s ridiculous. And that’s not the only thing. J-walking apparently isn’t illegal here. No matter how much traffic, or how fast the cars and motorcycles are going, people just waltz right into the street at random spots to cross. I swear I’m going to witness someone getting run over while here. It’s scary! They don’t even cross at corners where the traffic is a little slower, which would be the common sense thing to do, but I guess if your destination is right across the street, you might as well? I don’t know. Another thing, it makes sense to have one switch per light, or even one switch for two light that are right next to each other. But no, that’s not how things work here. There are at least two switches per light. PER LIGHT. Each individual light has its own two switches. It drives me insane. Also, all of the outlets have a switch, which is kind of cool, but if you forget to turn the switch on then you think that the outlet doesn’t work. Until you remember that, oh yeah! You’re in India and they have switches on their outlets. Another thing about the switches that gets me every time is that up is off and down is on. That is not how it is in the US. Gets me every time. There’s much much more, but that’s all I can think of at the moment.

With all my heart, Kayla

Delays, delays, and more delays.

Dear Readers,

Sorry that it’s been awhile since I’ve written, we haven’t had wifi for more than a week. It’s incredible how disconnected one feels when one’s on the other side of the world without any ways of contacting anyone outside of the country. We’ve stopped into this little coffee shop to get wifi for a little bit to check facebook and such, which was nice. But it’s nice finally having wifi in the house. Also, it’s not just the wifi…everyone here in India is always late. And you would think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. It’s like Mormon time, but 10 times worse. We bought a ping pong (actually called Table Tennis) table and they told us they would deliver the next day. Well, they didn’t. They delivered it two days late. We’ve also had electricians and plumbers coming in and out of the house fixing all of the kinks that this house has. They have all been later than they said (by about 3-4 hours). But I guess that’s just India for you…takes some getting used to, especially coming from a place where “time is money”. Besides that though, everything has been great.

With all my heart, Kayla