A Perfect Evening

At first I was upset coming home and having no power. I wanted to get on the computer, surf the web. Or at least read a book and not have to wear a headlamp and sacrifice my eyes to all the flying bugs attracted to the light.

Then my brilliant roommate, had a great idea.

She said, " lets see if it is cooler outside, plus everyone sits on the porch at night."

So we promptly grabbed our chairs and headed for the outdoors.

It was a perfect temperature with a slight breeze. The night sky was perfect!

Hillary and I argued over the big dipper and then finally agreed that we had no idea where it was.

The calm night then moved us to practice for special music, that we have next weekend. We started to sing.... and we kept singing.

We sang Be Still, The Blood, Give me Jesus and even our neighbor joined in.

After finishing our porch concert, we were discussing, mainly about India.

Hillary and I have had so many questions about the culture and language. So we began to ask our neighbors.

Now to understand our neighbors, they are so of the most loving people we have EVER met. Raju and Vani have opened up their home to us multiple times for food or tea time.

They are expecting their 3rd child this month.

They say Hillary and I are their first 2 children.

We call them nana( Dad) and amma (mom).

Our Amma will give you anything. She would give you the clothes off her back if she could.

Hillary and I hope to inherit this quality from our amma, while we are in India.

They sat on the porch with us and taught us Telugu words and answered any questions we had about the culture.

We laughed!!

We laughed alot... and hard.

Raju seems to get mine and Hillary's humor.

As other neighbors would leave their house or sit on their porch, Raju would quickly whisper a phrase in Telugu. He would then tell us to shout it out at them. Of course as we would yell it across the yard it was being slaughtered and then we would all bust up laughing.

During all of this our power had come on but Hillary and I were completely content with where we were in that moment.

We laughed and talked into the night.

"Never overlook the power of simplicity" -the monk who sold his Ferrari.

A porch+ 4 chairs + India's starry sky + Power off = A simple night with loving neighbors, and lots of laughs!

Our amma and nana