Mussorie

The weekend was lovely. The brothers and sister in North India are very outgoing and friendly, as were the contacts. I think the difference was also that there were so few people there that we could get around and at least get to know everyone in the same age bracket.

Friday morning before everyone arrived, Sarah Aunty, Esther, Cathy, Justin, Sarah and I headed out for a quick walk. Thankfully Sarah dragged me cause I still didn't have much strength at that point to be doing serious walking. We didn't get far before it started raining, so headed into a local hotel and had hot drinks. It continued to rain, so Sarah with my help chose an Enid Blighton book by the title 'Binkle and Flip' and both Sarah and Justin chose chapters to read from it. It was a quaint experience. The only thing missing was a fire in the cut off grate.

Brother Anil ran the weekend, and I've come to the conclusion that the prerequisite for a Dr's training is that the candidate must be jovial. Or maybe they develop their jovialness along the way? Anyways, he was a laugh and a half as was his wife Sonia.
Lucky led the games afternoon, and him and Arvand were nearly unbeatable with their games of Koko. I managed to play my first game and it was just wild. I can't explain the rules, but I've watched it so many times and just felt completely bewildered by it, and decided with a smaller group it was time to learn. You just have to be on your toes and watching for the runner/catcher. When your team is catching, you bob down until someone pushes you forward and then you have to chase the other team around the line of people facing alternately in and out which is your team. Anyways, it poured down with rain half way through, so we took the group inside and tried to teach them how to play naughts and crosses on chairs. The teams were divided into male and female and the males just couldn't get it!! They'd never played naughts and crosses, but they still couldn't pick it up. Sarah and I spent the entire session in stitches of laughter. In Indian style, some of the their team left, but they didn't tell anyone, so when a number was called, the men couldn't remember who was filling in for what number, or what number they were themselves, so 3 men would come at the same time and sit on a chair. COMPLETELY AMUSING!!!

In the breaks we had fun playing table tennis. I hadn't been able to play since the Shunem table got packed up after Andy Galbraith left in January, so it was very cool to exercise my skills against Justin and Tim Uncle.

Saturday afternoon after the afternoon study there was an hour free so a group of us headed down and up the mountain to where a Tibetan Temple was. I'd never seen one and it was quite interesting, but what I want to know is why we don't build ecclesial halls on the tops of mountain with terrific mountain views on every side.

There was an extra little climb to the very top and we managed it and had a 360 view of the mountains surrounding Mussorie. Incredible. Our God is an amazing creator.
Thankfully I made it.