Pumpkin Painting

We still don't exactly trust the kids with long sharp knives, so tonight instead of a pumpkin carving festival, we had a pumpkin painting festival (I still carved mine!). The kids all did a great job with theirs!

Wisconsin

Last weekend we took a trip to Wisconsin to visit Tammy's brother Todd and his family. We had a great time - played some fun games, took a long hike through an amazing corn maze, ate Wisconsin brats, and had an all around great time. The drive home along the river was nice too with the fall leaves falling.
Cousin Alia with the kids.
Here's Adam enjoying a view from a high bluff overlooking LaCrosse.
No blog entry is complete without a picture of Benny. He had fallen a few days earlier and still had a nice scratch on his head.
We tried for a family picture, but this is the best we got. Doesn't Tammy look great?!! 

Don't turn your back

I wanted to post a little bit about our little 2 year old Ben. He has only been two for a few weeks but he is doing his best to show us he is two. I don't know if it is because I am busy and often distracted with helping the other kids, but he is always managing to get himself into trouble. I can hardly turn my back on him for a moment without something happening. One of his favorite things to do is to turn on the water in the bathroom and have some fun playing in it. He can climb on the toilet and reach it, so I never know what I am going to find when I go in there. In the kitchen I have started putting the stool out in the garage because he was always getting himself, and the floor soaking wet "doing the dishes". It is not uncommon for us to find writing all over him or the wall. In fact there is one wall I think I am going to have to paint to get rid of the writing, and I can't tell you how many times I have scrubbed off his face and arms after he has been coloring with his sisters. The tabletop is also a favorite drawing spot of his. He has also succeeded in putting about a ton, maybe half a roll, of toilet paper in the toilet at one time. It would have been more, had Anna not tipped me off to what was going on. He also has figured out how to open the fridge and will often pull things out of there without me knowing. Yesterday it was steak sauce that was being toted around the house, with no lid, of course. He has also dumped liquid smoke in my spice cupboard so it always smells like outdoor cooking now. He is tall enough to get his own water from the fridge door now, and I already mentioned how much he loves water. I am now using the lock on the door that stops the water from coming out, a button which I thought I would never use. I wasn't even sure why it was such a great feature, but now I know. Thank heavens he can't reach the buttons yet. Sometimes I will give him something to eat. He will immediately put his hands in it grab a big handful, then rub it all over the table, then all over his face, then all over his hair. The other day, I gave him some milk, let me rephrase that, he got some milk out the fridge, it was one of the girls cups that already had milk in it, I guess he was feeling water deprived since I locked the water on the fridge door, so he decided to dump the milk in his hair. I didn't notice 'til I heard the giggling. Tonight beats all though. I was reading to the older three and then went into the bathroom to get their toothbrushes ready. Ben had turned on the water and gotten his toothbrush and was brushing his teeth... with the hand soap. The soap was all over the counter and he kept wiping his mouth and making this face. I could smell it on his breath. It must not have been too bad though, because he didn't cry. I guess I won't ever be able to threaten him with washing his mouth out with soap, eh?

The funniest thing is, despite all of his trouble, he is the cutest thing ever! Adam will often ask me, "Is he the funniest of all the kids?" He just makes us laugh so often. Lizzy's common response to me about Ben is, "Two year olds sure are hard to take care of." Anna has learned just to let him have his way. We all can't help but smile when he is around. He is funny. He is sweet. He is a little troublemaker, but I think that is part of his charm. All of you grandparents out there are just sitting out there laughing, while all of you parents of young children are thinking, many I'm glad that's not my kid! When Ben is a parent raising a two year old, I will just chuckle to myself and remember days and weeks like these!

India - wrapping it up

Well, after a grueling 36 hour journey, I made it back home earlier this morning. I'm exhausted! We left Pune on Friday morning and flew to Delhi. We had some time to kill before our flight left Delhi, so we toured the city a little. We saw a very tall old Minnaret and a ruined Mosque and a newer Bahá'í temple called the Lotus temple. They were all kind of neat to see, but I think we were a little tired of sightseeing and ready to head home so they weren't as impressive as they could have been. We caught our flight out of Delhi just after midnight this morning (India time) and flew for nearly 16 hours to Chicago. After a couple of hours getting through customs, we made our connecting flight to Moline and arrived here about 9:00 this morning.

Tammy and the kids were waiting in the airport and it was GREAT to see them again! I had a great time in India and will carry fond memories of my time there, but am SO glad to be home again. Now I'm just trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to stay awake until bedtime so I can start adjusting back to American time.

Thanks for all of your interest in my experiences in India. It's a great place to visit if you ever have the opportunity!

India - the team

One of the best parts of my India trip was getting to know the team I work with here on a more personal basis. We've been working together for several months, but it's really hard to get to really know someone with only a few meetings a week over the phone. This experience has been great for that.

From left: Pallavi, Yashveer, me, Brij, Anil, and Sridhar


The team really treated me well during my stay. I mentioned earlier about the lunches they took me to last week. This week, on Tuesday, they treated me to a night on the town. We took off from work on board several "two-wheelers" (motorcycles). I've not ridden motorcycles much in my life (my brother had a dirt bike when we were younger, but that's about it) and I've certainly never ridden motorcycles in the kind of traffic or roads that you find around Pune. It was a little scary for me at first, but I eventually settled in and enjoyed it.

First stop for the evening was my very first Bollywood movie. Bollywood is India's version of Holleywood that cranks out lots of high quality movies every year. In fact, I've heard it reported the Bolleywood movies now bring in more total each year than Holleywood movies (quantity of movies produced and quantity of people viewing them play into that). The movie we saw was called "Ghosla Ka Khosla". The movie was great - it was all spoken in Hinglish (Hindi with a little English mixed in) so I didn't follow the dialog too well. Even without the dialog, I followed the plot easily and knew the context of most of the conversations. The movie was very enjoyable - you can read more about it (in English) at http://www.khoslakaghosla.com/

After the movie the team took me to a little hidden restaurant in the middle of a small villiage in Pune. We had to take some pretty crazy little dirt roads back into the village to get to find the restaurant (no signs). The restaurant was outdoors under a bamboo leaf roof. Marble walkways led to private secluded tables. The tables were set low to the ground and we all sat on the ground on pillows and padding (no chairs). This is traditional style Indian seating. The food as usual was great - and the ambiance and setting were perfect.

After the fun evening at the restaurant, one of the team drove me back to the hotel on their two wheeler and we called it an evening. Thursday evening I treated them to a fancy meal at the hotel I was staying at and again had a great time together. [Side note: By the way, I mentioned that the hotel was really nice. Well, Thursday Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt arrived in Pune to start shooting a movie there and were staying in the same hotel we were in. I never saw them - I think they snuck them in and out of the hotel pretty quickly, but it was still kind of fun to have some famous people staying where you are.]

Too many new posts!

Hi all. Following are several posts I've written the last few days but haven't been able to publish due to problems getting on the Internet. Sorry to hit you with all of them at once! IMPORTANT: Tammy posted a really nice article last night. Don't get sick of reading all of my posts and miss hers!

India - The culture

I want to write a little about my observations of the culture here in comparison to U.S. culture. I mentioned before that the Indian people seem very happy generally. I think that much of that happiness comes from the way the people live their lives For one thing, they are very relationship oriented - it seems most things in life revolve around other people and relationships with those people. Because of that, there seems to be much less selfishness than in America - everything is done with a mind on the family or those in the community around the individual. A few examples of this:

* The people here are all very service oriented. They serve one another and strive to see to the comfort of those around them. This is particulary true of foreign visitors - I've been treated almost like royalty since arriving.

* The young people I spent Saturday with (see blog entry about day 9) were very supportive of one another. In the U.S. a lot of times young friends spend their time together teasing and tearing down and poking fun at each other. There is tremendous sarcasm among U.S. youth. Indian youth also have fun together, but I didn't notice a single instance where one put down another (even as a joke). They were always encouraging of one another and very friendly to one another. Even when one was a terrible dancer or a terrible singer - there were no jokes or laughter - only encouragement.

* People spend their evenings and weekends with their families and neighbors. It seems there is much less of individual media consumption (rather than playing video games or surfing the web or watching T.V. the people are relaxing with their families and visiting neighbors).

* The people live much more simply than Americans. Life is much less about acquiring things and much more about sharing what you have to make those around you happy.

Not all is well here - there are still very pronounced social divides (castes) within society here. This can be a little uncomfortable at times for a foreigner. I don't really understand how the caste system works, but there is definite division between classes of people here. For example, we were going to lunch the other day and approached the elevator to ride to the cafeteria. There were two custodians that had just gotten on the elevator as we approached. The man I was with just made some gesture and the two custodians got off of the elevator and allowed us on. There was plenty of room for them, but they were not allowed to share an elevator car with us. I've had similar experiences time and time again here.

I've talked some with the young people on my team about marriage customs here. Marriages are generally arranged by parents of the youth. People don't usually choose their spouse. One young lady told me that it's okay because with her parents are more mature and much more understanding of what marriage takes than she is. They know her well enough that they will find a young man that will be a good fit for her. Divorce is not well accepted here and marriages arranged this way generally work out.

One young man on my team is experiencing the down side of this though. He has a girlfriend that he likes very much and wants to marry, but she is from a different caste. It will be impossible for him to marry her without being abandoned by his family.

India continues to become more and more westernized all the time and some of the traditional customs are weakening a little. The changes are coming in both positive and negative ways. I've been reading in the newspaper here about a debate going on in the national government to legalize pornography. It's currently illegal to distribute pornography in any way in India. Mainstream media (television, movies) is very clean compared to American media largely because of these laws. Every article I read is supportive of easing that ban on pornography and allowing some distribution of it. I was filled with great saddness reading that - if they only knew the consequences that are coming from that movement!

Economically India is growing tremendously. I saw in the paper this morning that the gross domestic product here grew 9% in this recent quarter and seems to be growing as fast every quarter. That is bringing new prosperity to the country though there is some debate because it seems that prosperity is leaving the poor behind. I think the money will eventually trickle down to benefit everyone here though.

That highlights some of the major characteristics of Indian society I've noticed in my short time here.

India - Pune

The city of Pune is located on the western side of India about midway between the north and the south of India. It's about two hours drive east of Mumbai (Bombay). There are three seasons here - winter (October-March), summer (April-June), and the rainy season (July-September). We're here during the transition from the rainy season to winter. The weather is nice right now - highs in the 80's with occasional showers. Winter gets a little cooler - highs in the 60's or 70's. Summer is very hot - highs around 110-115. The rainy season brings a lot of rain off the Indian ocean so this area is very green and wet. It has rained at least a little every day that we've been here.

Pune seems to be a more modern city than the areas we visited last weekend between Delhi and Agra. In those areas we saw a lot of primitive housing, primitive transportation, and poverty. Here there is definitly still a lot of poverty, but it's not everywhere like we saw up north. It's not as common to see animals roaming the streets - modern vehicles, motorized rickshaws and motor bikes are more common. Pune is a big city with lots and lots of people everywhere and plenty of big business.

I wanted to talk a little about construction of these modern office buildings here - it's very different than in the U.S. There is not much heavy equipment used here - most everything is done with manual labor. For example, you've all seen the pictures of women carrying big jugs of water on their head. It's a very common sight in India. So the construction companies, rather than use concrete trucks and concrete pumps, hire these women to carry concrete up into the buildings. There is a never-ending stream of women going up into the buildings with a jug on their head. At the bottom someone is mixing concrete and filling their jugs. Then the women walk up into the building and the men dump the concrete into the forms to make the building. Most women here dress in beautifully colored sarees and the construction site is no different. Somehow they manage to keep their dress clean and beautiful even in the filth of the construction site. Also, all of the scaffolding and ladders are made from bamboo poles lashed together with twine. When the buildings are finished, they look as good and as sturdy as any American high rise built with modern tools and heavy equipment. I'll try to get some construction pictures to post later.

India - The food

Most people visiting India either love the Indian food or hate it - not much in between. I came fully expecting to not like the food at all, but have really enjoyed it. I'm given the option of American food nearly every meal but have chosen Indian most of the time and have nearly always really enjoyed it.

Food here is served in two ways - veg or non-veg. About half the people here are strict vegetarians and the other half will eat some meat like chicken, fish, lamb, and goat. There is no beef served here (holy cows) and pork is considered unclean and also not served. So, at any restaurant, you order either from the Veg menu or the Non-veg menu. The food looks and tastes essentially the same regardless of the menu. It's normally a spicy gravy (curry) served with flat bread (roti). Traditional meals are served without silverware - you use the roti to sop up the soup and gravy. Restaurants always have silverware available though.

Most Indians think Americans don't like spicy. They always want to order things less spicy for you. I always ask for more spicy - in fact Indian spicy pales in comparison to Mexican spicy so even ordering extra spicy is easy to handle.

Meals are usually served with desert - something small and sweet. One common desert (I can't remember the name) has a little cake doughnut ball soaked and served in syrup (that's as close as I can describe it). Ice cream is also served a lot for dessert.

India - Day 9

Saturday was a nice break from the rigourous work routine we've held during the week. We got up early and went to the office to meet with all of our extended teams for a team excursion. Only one from my team was able to come, but there were about 25 in all that made it.

John Deere owns company buses in India. These busses drive around Pune every morning and pick up workers to take to the office or to the factory. We borrowed one of the busses for our Saturday excursion.

We drove about an hour from Pune to where the air is a little fresher and the spaces a little more open. We had made reservations to spend the day on a "farm" (where else would a bunch of John Deere employees want to go?). We arrived and the "farm" and were vastly disappointed initially. It was really just some family's house with a moderately big yard (by Indian standards - it was still smaller than our yard in Bettendorf).

Our plans were to play cricket in the morning, but the lack of space for a cricket field quickly dashed that idea. We still got our the cricket bat and knocked the ball around a little, but couldn't really play a lot. Cricket is by far the biggest sport in India. I had never played, but it's similar enough to baseball that I didn't have any trouble.



After the cricket play and some breakfast, we played another game called kibida (I think). It's a game where all the players are in a box (about 10 yards x 10 yards). There are two teams which each stay in one end of the box. One player from one side crosses the mid line and tries to tag players from the other team then make it back across the line. Players from the other team try to detain the player that crossed and keep him from crossing the line back to his side. If the player makes it back across every player he touched is out. If the player doesn't make it back across he is out. First team to run out of players loses. I enjoyed that game - it was pretty physical though.




After the kibida game we went on a "trek" (a.k.a hike) up a mountain behind the farm. It was a pretty good hike to the top but offered some really nice views from the top. It's the hazy time of year in India (just after the rainy season) so the views weren't as nice as they could have been. We saw a wild four foot long cobra on the way up and some other wildlife I'd never before seen (like a scarab - a big bug). As always there were plenty of cows around.


The peak in the distance is our treking destination.


Here's the whole group about half way up the hike.


This was our guide on the hike and view from the top.

After the hike we were all pretty tired, so we lounged a bit on the porch of the farmhouse. They let me use one of the traditional cots and take a short nap. After lunch someone asked - what are we going to do now? The leader of the group said, "Now we drink beer and dance!" So we all went into the farmhouse in the living area (also the kids bedroom) and drank beer and danced. Only about half of the group drank beer - the other half were observing a period of abstinence from alcohol and other things during a religious festival that's going on now. I'll let you speculate which half of the group I was in!

I was expecting the dancing to be some traditional dancing that they were going to teach us Americans. Turned out they just wanted to dance. So the music and dance styles were very much like Americans dance - some disco, some techno, some of everything. The music was Indian pop music - similar to American pop. The strange thing was that there were no women in the group. Just a bunch of guys dancing. It's very normal here for guys to get together and dance and girls to get together and dance separately. You'll also often see guys holding hands with each other walking down the street. It doesn't mean they're homosexual - it's just part of the culture and accepted and normal here. They persuaded me to dance a little - though I never was much for dancing so did as little as possible!

After the dancing we piled into the bus and returned to Pune. Because of the festival the roads in Pune were very crowded and it took a long time to get back to the hotel. Indians love to sing, so all the way they sang Indian songs - some traditional, some modern. Everybody took a turn so of course I had to have my turn. I sang "Old MacDonald had a farm". It was a big hit.

It was a really fun day altogether. I was fun to see the kinds of things the people here enjoy doing. It's altogether very similar to what young people in the U.S enjoy doing.

India - Days 3-8

After the very busy and long day on Saturday, we took a relaxing Sunday morning and just stayed around the hotel. Late Sunday afternoon we flew from Delhi to Pune arriving in Pune late evening. We are staying at the Le Meridien hotel in Pune. It's a very nice, 5-star hotel offering every kind of service imaginable. They even stop by every night to pull back your bedcovers for you. I'm not used to being waited on to that degree.

Monday morning we headed to the office for the first time. John Deere's technology center is located in Magarpatta Cyber City on the edge of Pune. A few years ago a bunch of farmers got together and came up with this idea of developing their farmland into a Information Technology park and so started Magarpatta City. The city is circular and built around a big central park. The first ring around the park are large modern office towers (I think there are 12 in all - about 6 have been built. Outside of that ring is a second ring of office buildings. John Deere owns one of those second ring buildings. There is also a residential area, restaurants, and schools all within the walls of the city. The entire city is walled and gated to set it apart from the rest of Pune.



Arriving at the office, we met up with our teams for the first time. My India team consists of a project manager, two senior developers, and two "freshers". Freshers is their term for kids newly out of college still learning the ropes. The purpose of my visit is to develop a better working relationship with this team and to train them more on what we are trying to accomplish in our project. So, we meet every day for a few hours for training sessions, then work together the rest of the day on project tasks. Working hours are different than we're accustomed to. The workday generally begins around 10 am and ends around 6 or 7. We've actually been staying until 8 pm most nights so that we can be in some meetings with our teams in the U.S. (8 pm here is 9:30 am in Illinois).

On Tuesday my team took me out to a nice restaurant in Pune (I don't remember the name - I really don't remeber too many names of things here). It's a restaurant featuring food from the Bangalore region of India. We were there for nearly three hours and went through something like 6 courses of food. It was great, but certainly not the most productive workday I've ever had!

The rest of the week was pretty much the same. Get up early and work, eat breakfast, go to the office, meet with the team, have lunch, work with the team, work with the U.S team after they arrive, go to the hotel, have dinner, then work some more until late.

Where have I been you ask?

Well, I have been holding back on the blogging the last week and a half or so. Greg has been gone and I kept thinking that he would be posting more, but he has had trouble connecting to the internet in his hotel. He also has the camera so I can't post any fun pictures. I have not wanted to detract from his India trip because it seems so cool, but I couldn't stand it any longer so you get to hear some mundane things from me.

First I have read some excellent books lately. They are church type books, which some of you may not like, and to tell the truth, I don't read them that often myself, but we bought a few while we were out west this summer. The first I think if you are a woman you should read. It is called "Mary, Martha and Me". It was written by Camille Fronk Olsen, who was one of my professors at BYU. She taught one of my favorite classes, Women in the Scriptures. This talks about the different ways we serve and learning to serve without being cumbered in service. It is really good. I just wanted to mention it.

The second one, I highly recommend to anyone. It is called "The Peacegiver" by James Ferrell. It is a fiction book, which the author calls an extended parable, that is about the atonement. It is about a guy name Ricky who is having major trouble in his marriage and he feels like he has been really patient through all of it and kind of places the blame for everything on his wife. As he is sleeping one night, his deceased grandfather comes to him and they are allowed to be placed where they can actually view true scripture stories. These give the grandfather teaching opportunities which in time help Ricky see that the way out of his problems, of anyones problems is the atonement. It is a pretty powerful book which makes you take a deeper look at where you stand with the Lord and if you are unknowingly, or knowingly, sinful or hurtful towards others and the Lord. It has really given me a stronger desire to take a look at myself and find where I can change. It has also made me realize that I should study the scriptures more deeply. There are so many things in them that can bring us clarity, that I have missed so often. I gave this book to my friend who does not like to read at all. She rarely reads and does not enjoy it, but I convinced her. She finished it in 2 or 3 days and ordered 4 copies for her and for her family members. I also enjoyed sharing it with her because it opened our discussion up to more meaningful and deeper things. So read it and then share it. It really is one you have to read.

Lastly, I am thankful for General Conference. I think that probably like many of you it is something you anticipate and look forward to. I can't say that I was able to give my full attention all the time (I think you understand), but there were things in there just for me. So many of the things I have been pondering and searching for, were there. It is just a reminder that the Lord loves us all and wants ALL of us to return to him. There is hope for all of us. Why would we not make that effort when the promises are so great. I want to be better. I can feel him calling to me. It is a good feeling to feel loved.