Update 13...

Hey all,

the keyboard im using is broken and therefore i cant use exclamation marks and brackets and so on....so just imagien theyre there [exclamation mark]

the coming week is my last full week working in chennai![ha copy and paste works instead] had a long debreif session with becky, and came to realise that despite times of frustration with the workload, this has been a really productive and significant time, and i wouldnt change a moment of it. i have learnt so much here, about india, God and myself. i really hoped that i would get some of the inconsistencies of myself sorted out here, and i believe that God has really challenged me and changed me to be more sure of who i am and strong in that. anyway...i am actually quite sad to be leaving, it has begun to feel like home here, and i feel i could stay here indefinatly. i am tired however, and am really looking forward to getting back to english food, my family and to my friends. university is also an exciting challenge and becoming a very real prospect.

there are loads of random things that havehappened to me that i forgot to mention in my logs when they came about, so here are a fw which ive remembered over the past few days! on the day the girls came ages ago, it was also a bad day because someone from my middle class street nicked a bag from our doorstep containing a few books, my swimming trunks, a towel and a small football. this was just as we were leaving for the beach, and was pretty frustrating! we made some noise about it, and later when we returned.....the bag had returned to our door! thats not the end of the story though.....i havent been going on my runs a week since then, because a few days leter, someone nicked my trainers! yes my manky falling to bits trainers filled with sand from playinf footy on the beach and stained red from the mud where we run. nicked from outside my door where they were drying from the rain run we went on. honestly, i cant believe some indians! and these guys are our neighbours aswell. honestly. i plan today to buy a cheapy pair from a new reebok store up the road, where there are some very tempting cheap reebok cricket bats....i have decided to wait till mumbai to go buy myself one though, as i am slightly concerned about how much mobey i have left in my account.

other unusual incidents include a time when we went with the girls and the visiting tearfund boys to see pirates of the carribean. i was standing with rox lydia and jo, when a short and smart young indian chap came up to us. he very nervously and in perfect english -the best ive heard in india- asked me and the girls if we would be interested in doing dome modelling for him! he was deadly serious nd gave us a very smart and expensive styled card, and we all tried hard to keep staight faces. the advert in question was for some sort of lighting, and if we agreed, would simply have to be looking up at the lights made by the company. sadly, steve and luke werent very keen so we didnt give the guy a call. but it was, at the time, quite an amusing incident, to be asked to model for an indian advert!

since our slight bump with a car ages ago in an auto, we havent had any really dangerous moments, but a few days ago luke and i experienced another incident, much bigger than the previous one. we were heading to the cinema from SM Nagar to buy cinema tickets, and our aut driver jumped a red light, just as the otherside of the road was just moving [we were crossing the otherside of the road to get to the road on which the cinema is]. a singlew motorbike moved away quickly, and the auto driver dodged to the right to avoid him. this however, took us in line with a chap riding his bike acros the road where we were headed, and we smashed right into him, sending him flying and by the sound of the crash, decimated his bicycle. thiswas a bit of a shock to us all, but the auto driver just kept driving, looking very nervous. we saw the guy getting up, and then saw a police man on his motorbike pull up next to us. by now the the auto driver was really anicing, and dropped us off a little way from the cinema,andhad the audacity to ask "80 rupees", a lot more than we had agreed to. we still get so many auto drivers askign for ridiculous amounts of money because we a re white, and despite us wearing indian clothing and knowing exactly where ew are and where we are going. its either that or arriving back at the flat and having them demand more money because of "long distance long distance". its surprisingly frustrating!

anyway, thats a few funny/not funny incidents i can recall. since my last blog work has continued as normal, and luke has started making a grass garden out of a patch or dirt at the back of the office. today is saturday andi have lots of jobs to get donw, like buying Jacobs well new books and board game for the kids of sm nagar. therefore i think i need ot be going, as ive been here for almost 2 hours messing about on facebook! last night went with vijay to a evening service with all of the csf guys, and met a guy called paul moses who played international cricket for india, before quiting to do ministry. not sure how much of that vijay exaggerated, but he did play state against sunil gavaskar and other greats. that was mostly in tamil, and quite an experience!

thanks for keeping on reading, despite the increasing dullness of this blog! as i near the time coming home i feel less compelled to write as when i first arrived, though i will try and write again soon with a more interesting account of my last week and other things i have been up to.

bye bye
josh