July is almost finished!!!

I can hardly believe that July is almost over - time just flies much too fast!   We have had almost 2 weeks with no rain - amazing in the middle of monsoon for this to happen  - the locals say this has not happened before.  Yesterday it started raining - and I must say it felt good (of course yesterday was the first day I didn't bring my umbrella to work :):)).  The rains isn't so severe yet but pretty constant.  With no rains there are no waterfalls - usually there are hundreds of waterfalls on the hills surrounding Lonavala.  Can see the scarring from the waterfalls but no water - and the Lonavala Lake which only fills during the monsoon became almost dry - hard to imagine where the water goes.  I am looking forward to finally seeing them - they are quite amazing - at least that is what I hear.
During July I drove down to Pune only once - have basically stayed here in Lonavala.  I have been going in the base 5 days a week - providing taxi for 5 gals so that they don't get wet - of course there hasn't been that problem these days but it will be again.
The hall being built on campus is coming along nicely - the dry weather has been a real blessing - the guys can work more easily with the dryer weather.  They need to turn the hall over to us by Aug 15th when we will start our preparation for the workshop.  Of course it won't be completed by then but enough so that we can use it.  So far we have about 300 people registered for the workshop - things will get pretty crazy here - with all the preparation and then the workshop itself.  We will all have to really pull together to accomplish this huge task.  It will be exciting.
My work is still a little up in the air - I have now started working with Pamela doing some of the accounting projects - I take minutes at pretty much all of the different meetings, in spare time I will be typing up Lis's lecture notes for her, and working on a book with Lis - she will speak into a Dictaphone and I will transcribe it into my computer - that should be quite exciting - since it is the history of YWAM India to a large extent that Lis has been involved in for the past 25 years.  My official title is Executive Secretary which is basically a 'catch all' phrase for the various areas that I will be involved with.  Basically it will involve keeping the bigger picture in view in the many different areas of the campus activities.  I am happy to be here and look forward to the great variety of stuff I will be able to participate in.
In my free time I have been busy knitting - something I really enjoy doing - finally got a bunch of yarn and have been keeping my knitting needles clicking.  I have almost finished a baby sweater and a poncho for myself.  Then I will be working on an afghan for my living room - this will come in very handy once the cooler weather starts - and i understand it can get quite cold - and with no central heat the afghan will be very nice to have.
That is it for now -

Powered by ScribeFire.

Happy Birthday

Today is Sunday - the day before my birthday - Pamela (friend) came over for lunch, after lunch we played a few games of Skipo and then we went over to Coffee Day just off the Expressway for Capaccino (sp) sat there so long that we finally walked over to the US Pizza place and had a pizza for dinner - what a lovely day we had. The weather today was dry and then rainy on and off all day. Even got to see the sun from time to time. The wind is so lovely - I was saying to Pamela it is too bad there isn't some place to sit and enjoy the wind and at the same time she was saying it is a shame there isn't a place to go for a jog in the wind - different prespectives -!?!?
I guess we have had a pretty mild monsoon so far - at least everyone says that it is usually much worse - have had quite a few sunny (at least dry)breaks every day. I am so grateful that it isn't as bad as they all warned me it would be.
I keep having to remind myself that this is July and not November - the temp is quite cool besides the rain. Certainly more tolerable than the hot humid weather we were having when I first got here.
I am feeling quite settled in my place - have been able to have different people over for meals - and gone to different peoples places as well.
Currently we only have one school running on campus - but there are about 30 students in the class - it is going very well. We are in process of preparing for the UofN workshop that will be taking place beginning of Sept. The building is coming along really well - they were even able to get most of the roof slab poured already - thankfully the rain has held off quite a bit to make this possible.
This past week we saw Sandra off - she has returned to Switzerland after being here since doing her IPHC school in 2000. It was sad to see her go - but she certianly was happy to be going home again.
I haven't had a chance to go see the waterfalls yet - there are hundreds of them during the monsoon - hopefully I will get to do that soon. The people come here from Bombay every weekend to enjoy the rains and the waterfalls - so there is really no point going out on the weekends - the roads are completely plugged with cars and people. So I will have to go during the week sometime.