lately.

funny story:

a couple of weeks ago, the girls and phil (can't leave him out) were asked to attend a women's church service while we were in khopoli. whitney was thrilled to be able to speak, so we were all excited for her big moment.
the women there were so sweet to us and happy to see us. for some reason, they felt the need to seat all four of us awkwardly in the front in chairs...facing the congregation. all right, whatever floats their boat. anyways, whitney gets up to speak and as she is greeting the women, i felt a sting on my cheek. i thought it could have been the wind blowing my hair but then there was no way that could be. so i flicked my cheek and onto my lap is a SPIDER of some kind i've never seen.it was big, trasnparent, and had a weird black design on its back. sick. if you know me, you know i hate spiders. when i was younger (okay, like 15...maybe even yesterday) if i saw a spider in a room i was in, i would need to see it killed. and when i say killed, someone else has to kill it for me. SOOO..we are still sitting on front of the congregation when i tap allie on the shoulder and whispered to her to get the it off of me. allie has the same prediciment about spiders as me, and when she saw it she freaked out. THEN the spider JUMPED from my lap onto my shirt so i start freaking out, too and we caused a great scene. all the while whitney is so confused and phil is covering his face in disgust and shame. allie and i could not stop laughing throughout the whole service.
but wait...it gets better. for some reason, people like to hear us sing english songs. none of us are singers but we can somewhat carry a tune so we just do it. well, we start singing when we hear phil's voice crack. allie made one of those laughing noises that you would hear if you were to have water in your mouth and spit it out (leslie- think of the laugh you did during my cousin's wedding. hahaha) and then i started laughing. so allie and i are up there trying so hard not to laugh and we are trying to make it look like we are being blessed by the song with our smiles. hahahha. it was so funny. surprisingly, they asked us to sing another song.



picture time!


on our way hiking up to a village.





the girls home we visited. their mothers are prostitutes working in the red light districts.

they were amazing. we played cricket with them!

this is the day we took all the kids from the orphanage up to the waterfalls for a picnic one day.

khopoli!




this is the school for the mentally handicapped. the government only gave them three classrooms. mentally handicapped children are seen as an embarassment and as the woman's fault for having them, so usually the fathers will be really harsh to them and won't even bother to send them to school.

she runs the school. sweet lady.


the karla caves! they were built by the bhuddists over 2000 years ago. it was amazing. my grandpa would have loved it.

the view.


the team at the caves!

a family we met at another village

it's nice to take pictures next to indian women because their average height is about 4'11"...so i tower over them at 5'3". BUT they also weigh about 100 pounds. you win some, you lose some.

happy happy birthday to me


indians always have to shove their face in the cake. i acted super annoyed when phil pushed me in it, but i have actually always wanted to do that. ha.


this is propauli and i think she is my favorite at the orphanage. she's really sassy and i taught her the lyrics to a backstreet boys song and how "peace out". they've learned more bible verses in a week than i have in a lifetime, so i thought i'd teah them something new.

we went to this weird arcade. i really have nothing more to say about it, i just wanted to put this picture on here to embarass my family.