learning.

I think it's great, all the things I get to learn in India.  My life could be boring; I could learn things that don't excite or interest me, and I could do it in the same place I'd been all my life. But instead I have the opportunity to be broken and changed in a safe intellectual and theological environment that allows me all manner of exhortation and studying right at my fingertips. All I have to do, basically, is play the sponge. 

The first thing i'm learning, as you know, is Hindi. I'm proud to say i've started to put sentences together, so that's the progress there. haha. I also understood probably 40-60% of what was being said in the staff B-study this morning, and that really encouraged me. 

I saw this advertisement-building when I went to Burari, and I thought it was a fun example of something i've learned. So, the top two words above the door say "Mother Dairy" in the English language. It doesn't look like English, but it's actually a phonetic spelling of the words in the Hindi script. The first word, with the three letters, is literally MDR (muhdar) and the second one is DehYRI. This is how an Indian would pronounce these words. You can recognize the same two words to the right of the door, with another word added. This is a Hindi word in Hindi script: Duudh, which means milk. It's so funny how to me words in different languages feel so disjointed next to each other, but when I have such a small amount of understanding, it's like cleaning a dirty window to shed light on the situation. I smile every time I realize I'm able to understand more spoken or written Hindi. I couldn't tell you why it's so exciting to me, but it's seriously a personal victory every time. 

Along with these feelings of triumph comes a strange realization: Not knowing Hindi allowed me to depersonalize a lot of what goes on around me in India. The signs were exotic gibberish, the people were yammering, the children were merely exclaiming with joy, and every conversation was easy to tune out. Now, even in my limited understanding, signs look like American real estate ads, rickshawallas are people who can understand my conversations and who have lives going on, children are counting and fighting and talking to dogs, and I'm surrounded by swirling contextless words - chair, moon, girl, God, not, which, why, of course, good - that i pick up from every conversation. It's humbling, it's exhausting, and it feels different than it did. 

 I'm also learning which foods (konsa khaana) I should eat! I've limited myself to one truly Indian meal per day, so I picked up some tuna fish for my lunches. One day that I was feeling fairly unwell, I went home to make some tuna salad to keep for sandwiches, and Joy was in my home when I got there! She wanted some attention, so i thought, why not let her help?

 She did a great job of dumping, scooping, and mixing the new recipe I found - i've never used lemons  in tuna before, but it's good :)

So, newborn babies are not necessarily a learning process for me, but they are a great excuse for pictures :)

 This is Zebby, daughter of Suman and Anil. She is exactly one week old in these pictures (to the hour.)

 She already reaches out to hold her bottles, keeps her eyes open, and weighs over ten pounds.

After visiting with Anil, Suman, and Zebby, we took an auto-rickshaw home. These were some of the things I saw on the way.

I'm in what seems like a strange continual learning cycle. I've been here for a month and a half now, almost as long as my entire first trip. The time has flown. It feels right to be here, it feels hard to be here, it feels like the best time of my life. I'm learning things about God that I never knew before. I'm learning things about relationships that I never knew before. I have a boldness I have never had before, along with a meekness I have never possessed. I can realize humanity here in a way I've never been able to do, and walking in that realism sets me free to accept and offer grace, love others in their brokenness, and to like them for who they actually are instead of what I think they can give to me. I've made more progress in these last 47 days toward knowing about myself, my purpose, my desires and my beliefs than I have often made in spans of years. I'm more open, more hopeful, more receptive, and less selfish than I have ever been. I still have plenty of work to do, but the growth is really encouraging.

My soul is singing like never before.

I know everyone must have a niche like this where they are able to follow God's leading wholeheartedly and completely, finding fulfillment and overcoming challenges, trusting grace, releasing worries, and using their talents in constructive and beautiful ways.
  I hope that everyone can find it.
 If my experience is any indicator, it's simply the best thing that can happen.

Love from Delhi,
Julie the learner.