And so I arrived at Rajahmundry station

an hour early and had to call Tony to come pick me up....thinking that he would be a while I sat down outside and waited. I would've thought it was less than 10 minutes. And on bike.
Oh, so he balances my bag between the steering wheel and I had my backpack on my back and he commenced negotiating with traffic coming the other way and I held onto the bar of the bike tightly as we took at least 25 mintues to get back. Not sure how quickly he drove to the station:-)

It was lovely to see a 6 six month pregnant Shubha. Spent that evening catching up and then she went to teach the next day, and I hung around and did my washing, until Tony was free to drive me to find Praveen and Sirisha's new house. It's so hard to keep track of them!

We arrived and gave them the shock of their lives. As I was down to do sister's class in Kadium it was going to be easier if I didn't stay in rajahmundry that night, but Praveen and Sirisha who already had his sister and brother-in-law and their two children staying, begged for me to stay the night. So Tony, who had left and was coming back in an hour, came back to go home again without me.

It was such a nice evening. Sirisha cooked coconut rice and we all sat around and ate it.

But I can't neglect to mention that I spent many hours looking after the 20day old, unnamed male new heir of Praveen & Sirisha's. It was my priviledge to name him Titus. Such a cute thing. All he does is drink and sleep...and dirty the floor, as they don't use nappies much as they are quite expensive. He also dirtied me!! Not pleasant, but forced me into my comfortable Indian nightie for the evening!!

Wow, 4 children under 5 require a lot of attention, and I realised how much time and effort Indian mothers put into their households. Most of them get up at 5:30 to start the day and generally don't get an afternoon nap. I was in awe of Sirisha, but I guess if you've got to do it, you do it cause you love your kids.

Anyways, I had a lovely evening with the whole family minus Jothyi who is now living at a hostel for young girls.

The next morning Sirisha and I got the children ready and went to Kadiam sisters' class which I gave on Rahab, focussing on the Grace of God who will forgive us if we turn to Him and obey Him.

We had lunch at Shubha's house and then travelled back to Sirisha's. It was so nice to spend the afternoon with her, and I did manage to force her to get some sleep because there was no way that she wasn't going to come to say goodbye at the station at 12am the next morning. The train came over an hour late, and we were almost sleeping at the station before it was time to climb up to the upper berth to start the 18hour journey.