Update 12

hello all,

today is sunday, of which we have 4 left...no...3. i hope that i live to see them out, as at present i am suffering from an illness that is doing all the things malaria is supposed to do to one...though luckily nausea is not a malaria thing (says tom the creator/legend of sparky's restaurant). since my last blog, work has continued as normal, except my seconf visit to help run the kk pettai kids club/football club was cancelled due to vijay being too ill to go (source of my illness i believe). in classic india style, i wasnt informed of this until i politely asked why we hadnt left for kk petai yet (we need to leave at 3 to get there at 4/4 30, and it was approaching 4), and was told without any realisation i had been waiting for an hour to leave, it was off that day. ahh india......

today went to powerhouse as usual. and as usual, i though the guy jake gave an intelligent sermon, and as usual luke disagreed with most of it! the last few sundays the church has been meeting in sparkys itslf, as the cinema which it normally meets in had been reclaimed for extra "sivaji" showings. i mentioned this in another update. apparently it has got into the top 10 uk fims?! dont understand how this is! could someone please look about on thier travels to see if they come across any posters of cinema showings of it. if you do, go see it!

our holiday is nearly booked up now. we take a train to a place called cochin in kerala (ill describe this basically but with the place names so you geographers and map lovers like me can look it all up). then we get a houseboat for 3 days and cruise the backwaters south east of cochin. then we travel up to munnar and stay for a few days, then down to a place called Periyar widlife santuary...have i told you this before? im sure i have....oh well. then one night at this national park/sanctuary, then down to kollam, one night their or in kottayam (dont think we can make periyar-kollam in an afternoon) then from kollam down the road to varkala where i have booked us 2 bamboo huts on a cliff over looking a beach for 4 days. then from there we fly to delhi, via chennai, visit the taj mahal, then up to a place called manali waaay up north, and stay for 4 days and explore the himalayas a bit, then back to delhi and onto mumbai by plane to visit the oasis projects, including PB, and buy myself a few cricket bats. then back to the uk.

as for a few weeks back, there was probabaly a few good interesting bits of information, but now id not so, or at least i have forgotten it! it was rox's birthday so we bought loads of fancy fruits and stuff for breakfast, and in the evening took them to the park hotel for a meal (another place steves dad took us to. a most incredible hotel) the food there was incredible aswell, and they had some of the best puddings i have ever seen and taasted. just wait till you see the photos.

the july 4th celebrations were entertaining. sparky's was full of big americans strutting around feeling proud to be american (they were strutting!). there were fireworks outside later at night, launched from the roof of sparky's, some of which ended up exploding in the road, which we considered to be quite dangerous.

tried for the 6th time to get tickets to see pirates of the carribbean. only 2 tickets left this time! went to see mel gibson's apocolypto instead. good film. bit gory, but well directed and so on.

also, after falling behind 3-8 to luke in chess, i have come back to 8-6 after 3 wins on the trot, which is very nice for me!

this is very short but im going to leave it there. hopfully much interesting stuff will happen in the next few days which i can recount to you....

hope you are all well, thanks for reading again

josh