So we got here last night after a long, and yet again, much delayed train ride. This time in 3rd class, which is 3 bunks high instead of two. However, aside from a single incident brought on largely by poor understanding, the people were really cool and we met a couple of locals.

One thing was interesting was that we met a small boy, 5-6 years old (though he claimed to be 300!), that lived in the train station. He hung out with us quietly, ate chips, drank sprite, and played with Allison's uno cards while we waited for the train. I wish I could remember his name, but Tia has his name written down. Hopefully, she will relate some of his story as she interviewed him and Mary got pictures. He was a good kid with an easy smile and seemed quite content with just being near us.

The hotel is a bit sketchy, but it looks like we may move to another one that's much nicer and only 5 minutes from the orphanage (instead of 45), so I'm happy. Even if we don't move, it's not too bad. Just very loud and without hot water, and quite below the standards of most americans...Veer also has recommended we not eat there, so we've walked down the road to a much nicer place for meals. haha We missed a really nice hotel by about 150ft...and the price differences are insane. A nice hotel here is about 1750 rupees a night. That equates out to about $40-$45 US. Often, the price difference between "nice"and "scary" is about $5.

We went over to Varghese' orphanage today. He has about 125 kids. We only got to introduce ourselves before they had to run off to school, but it was very cool. The kids gave us real flower lei's though I don't know what they call them here. Varghese says that about 70% of the children are true orphans, while the other 30% are from broken homes or abandoned. It's hard to imagine, really.

He also has a school for the younger orphans and accepts children from the surrounding area. He only charges 100 rupees as school fees for the local children and his teachers work for a lower than normal wage. It's very cool to see the "complete" product that was only a foundation and some walls last year...well, complete in the sense that he's designed it to be able to build up to 3 stories, but it only has one.

Down here, they don't speak Hindi (almost at all) so they brought in another pastor from over 125km away to translate for us. That pastor also has need. I don't know if there is anything we can do, but I hope so.

I'm on a 30 minute timer and I don't have a lot to say right now as most of our time since last was travel. Hopefully I will have more to say later, once we've had a chance to hang out with the kids a bit. Today was school for them and market day for us. I want to get the kids some backpacks as many were running around with broken zippers or bags almost too small to carry their books.

Finally, pray for our health. Cliff has been fighting something for a while and though he's getting better, he wasn't healthy enough to go out with us today and remained behind. Everyone else is doing pretty good, and we'd like to keep it that way!