i overflow with thankfulness.

I’m not even joking with you – being in India makes me smile.

I had my first Indian man sing to me yesterday, and it happened again today. What a happy culture! They sing to their women in the streets! Naturally, he just wants to get me to smile at him so we can make eye contact and he can woo me and get his Hollywood impression of an American girl and to marry me and get a green card out of me, but just the sound someone bursting into song with no regard for tune or pitch correction at their first sight of me makes me feel like I’m the heroine of a musical! I can hardly contain my ridiculous grinning until I’m out of his sight, and after that point there’s just no stopping me from beaming and giggling for probably a good five minutes.

Oh, and speaking of streets, I just can’t seem to kick the habit of walking on the right side of the road! I keep moving myself consciously over to the left (with the purpose, of course, of not being run into like a highway bug on your windshield,) but I seem to always end up again on the right, carefully alternating between watching the road in front of me and behind me for cars, motorcycles, mopeds, rickshaws, autos, ice cream vendors, paper collectors, trash trucks (…………………..) and watching each step so I don’t fall into a pothole and make a stupid blonde pale American of myself. Then, to make matters worse, I keep getting distracted because I have new freckles on my nose! I don’t know if you’ve ever had a new freckle on your nose, but if you happen to find yourself looking down the bridge of your shnozz all day (again, so as not to trip and fry like curry and eggs on the pavement – er – gravel – er – dust) like me, you may notice more things about your nose. Anyway, my new freckle of the day is really quite large, or maybe it’s just a strategically placed average-sized freckle that fused like four others together. In any case, it’s quite distracting, and while I’m noticing it and thinking up clever ways to blog about it, I somehow drift to the right side of the road again and again and again. I also have a new freckle on my right hand. Strange…

BUT speaking of noses – gross alert – I forgot about the classic ‘overseas trip’ black boogers! yaaaaayokay, that’s all about that.

If I can take a moment be quite honest, though, (not that I’ve been deceiving you before; I guess I’ll take a moment to be more sober) this Ephesians thing is getting really hard. I come home to pinkhouse happy to be exhausted after a day full of children and Jesus and laughter and labor in legit 113 degree weather, and at 10pm I journal/blog, I upload pictures, I write papers, I work on my two summer classes, I sum up my hours for my internship, I reflect on the day, I read my books, and THEN, I memorize four verses per day …not forgetting any previous day’s verses. Since there are timelines on almost everything except memorization it’s easy to get distracted. I don’t want to fail because memorizing Ephesians 1-5 was one of my specific goals for this trip, and I really want to challenge myself to do it, but shoot! I have to get up at like 6 or 7 these days… and this could get real ugly real fast! The memorization may turn into an all-summer deal, and I just might be okay with that. Even so, I’m going to keep on trying. I am still reading through the book of Psalms this month, though, and I’m loving finding a couple of concepts to kind of marinade my brain in all through the day. mmm. This morning i got to Psalm 23. it sums up my time in India well, i think. my cup overflows... oh yes it does. last night waiting for the food, i felt for the first time i think what it is to overflow with thankfulness. though i am grateful FOR it, america does not make me thankful. material things do not make me thankful. but this place, these people, these attitudes, this work, it makes my heart too full to describe. it literally feels like it's overflowing.

Beautiful stuff. Beautiful life.