Joy ride to Manali

Saturday was a holiday, no school! So we went up to go play with the girls. Raj was there kicking it with us. He was like “hey I need to go to Manali. I cant get a car, if you come we’ll have to take the bus, would you guys like to come?” Alex and I said “heck yeah” we would love to go on a bus adventure to Manali with you!” So Raj Alex and I walked up the street and waited for the bus to arrive. All you do is wave your hand and the bus just stops like a taxi then it picks you up. So we put up our hands and hop on the bus. This is not a city bus you’re thinking of. This bus was already JAMMED PACKED and old. Image Raj with to lanky white kids hoping on a jammed packed bus full with nothing but Indians. We didn’t stand out at all! The ceiling was just about 6 foot both Alex and I were in the middle of the bus standing up with are heads ducked down trying not to hit the ceiling. There was no personal space on the bus you were back to front, front to back. To make the bus ride better there was a guy on the bus that “walks” up and down the aisle collecting people’s money when they hopped on. That guy would stop by us every stop (and by stop I mean whenever someone was on the side of the road wanting to come aboard) and blow his whistle (to let the bus driver know when he could go again) right in our ears. That was our first leg of our adventure. After that we hopped on a smaller bus with more people. This time we were in a corner so I was fine. But Alex had his back towards the crowd and he was getting groped by this Indian lady that was behind him! Haha we both enjoyed the bus SO MUCH! (Alex not so much after his gropeage) We have been on cars, motorcycles, rickshaws and now a bus on the windy, small, sketchy, cliff roads of the Himalayas and nothing is like cruising 50 km on a bus looking over the edge thinking where pretty high up, hope this driver doesn’t crash! All in all we had a BLAST! Its something you have to experience for your self… What a joy ride we had!

Nick Clark Update

Alex basically told you everything going on here. The Internet as been broken, (Pain in the butt) We love the girls to death! We teach everyday in the schools. And we help out with projects for the community. Now let me tell you about the other side of our life’s here. We live about 300 yards away from the ashram. It’s a pretty sweet set up. We call it the “Home For The Dope show” Providing lanky kids with Possibilities to live & serve in India. The building is a training center with classrooms and a big kitchen. We have a big open room with two beds we push together to watch movies on. I wanted the bed near the wall but Alex took that one... Good thing because now he as SCABIES! Ha…Karma for taking my bed. We bought about 15 posters to hang all over our room. Best posters India could offer. It also as a bathroom area! There is a long straight hallway we call the lunge way. (It’s perfect to do your morning lunges in) that connects all the rooms. At night it’s a creepy place to be. We come home after playing with the girls and all the lights are off. We walk down the creepy lunge way to go to our room and turn on the light that just flickers for about 30 seconds before it decides to light up our room. Sometimes it just shuts off. We also have two heaters that we blast 24-7 to keep warm. The top of the building isn’t complete, one day Alex and I said hey lets go explore! That’s what real man do. Explore! We were stoked so we went up to the second floor and started opening rooms. And guess what we found... Three out of the five rooms had people’s stuff in it! We have had people living above us…some mornings & evenings we hear them walking Living in the home for the "Dope Show". I bet they’re not even lanky! I don’t care if they live above us as long as we don’t get murdered! Every morning we walk up and drink hot chocolate listing to a song by the sounds “We’re not living in a America” it gets us stoked for India. What beautiful place we are living in. its truly amazing work of god.
We have been very blessed with everything and we are safe as can been! Till next time
Xoxo Nick

Ps we eat MOMO’s everyday of our lives they are soooo good.

Blogtastic Blog of Awesomeness

Whoa! Sorry Nick and I haven’t been blogging. The Internet broke in India. But we finally got it fixed and now we’re good to go. There is so much to blog about. Good thing Nick and I love to blog. That’s all we’ve been talking about, “when are we going to get the Internet so we can blog!?!” The first night we got to the Home for Peace all the girls were very shy of the two tall lanky Americans, but they quickly warmed up to us. They are freaking adorable and so much fun to be with. Some of them are also very sassy and usually just make fun of us. They giggle in Hindi so we can’t understand what they are saying, but Nick and I talk with the little Spanish we know to counter their Hindi. But when we teach English it’s a “No Hindi Zone”. So if we hear a word of Hindi we make the girls do a lap around the house. We also have been teaching in the elementary school and The High School. The first couple of days of teaching were a little bit rough, but we have definitely gotten better and we can tell the kids love it when we come. In the elementary school all the kids sit on dirty cold cement floors and it was Reshma’s idea (The previous intern) to supply the school with desks. Yesterday a truck packed with desks came to the school and we unloaded it. I don’t think I have ever been excited to see a school desk before, but all the kids were stoked! They were all running outside of their classes screaming and jumping. A group of 5^th graders also came out and started to help us unload. We finally unloaded all the desks into the courtyard and all the kids were giving them a test run. Several of the teachers came up to me and thanked me for the desks. Sorry Reshma and Rob. I stole your thank you’s. But everyone at the school was very thankful and it’s a memory that I will remember for a long time.