Shillong

The last 48 hours have been pretty intense. Saturday morning we packed up and left st. Stephens. Ot was tome to say goodbye to all the nuns and the caretaker who became kind of a grandma figure to us. She blessed me and told me to visit here next time I came to india then gave me a kiss on both cheeks. It was also time to say goodbye to bobby Anu and Aaradana. Everyone was kissing huging and crying. it reminded me of the last episode of "Bugjuice" in the least corny way.

Me Alisha and mayang stayed the night at abels, ate pork, then went to julies, ate fish, got up siunday morning met andy sudha and yuvraj at the train station and then borded our train that would be our home for the next 33 hours. it wa a really plesent trip. It was nothing but good food, good conversation, and good views of farm land for the whole trip. We where on our way to Gohati and from there we would hire a taxi to Shillong. 3 days before was arived in gohati, 3 bombs went of and killed 80 people. We got there late and we knew it would be safer t drive during the day thather than night because it was montain driving on naroow roads. But we didn't want to stay the night in hogati because of the terror threats. So we found the taxi lot where there where 8 passenger jeeps, and they where loading our stuff into this nice new car while mayang wa nagotiating the price, but he didn't want to pay more than Rs.1800 and they where asking Rs.2000 ($4 differance) so they directed us to this older looking, beat up jeep that was in our price rance. The wole time Andi was fighting to stay in a hotel and leave in the morning, but mayany piled us ito the car and we left.

It was really hard for me to relax when we were driving really fast in the dark tru windy steep roads with no divider lines in the road and I just exepted that I couldn't make myself any safer by worrying about every set of headlights coming in our direction, so I turned on my ipod and listened to isreal... ki.. kimo....sa ... the hawian guy that sings "somehwere over the rainbow". I decided to look up at the sky rather than the down at the raod. I looked up and for the first time in 3 months saw stars, bright and brilliant and numerous. I came to the realization that, the longer you live in a place man has made, the more you are forced to keep your head dwon. All you can see is shit and cement. And during the day you see gray from the smog mans cars, and at night you look up and see orange from mans lights and smog. But the farther you get from mans creation the more you look up at the blue sky and brilliant white clouds, and at night you look up and see stars, and there you can see the great size of our universe the beauty of nature and the face of God.

When we were half way there we decided to stop and eat. We had a great meal and headed back to the car... but the driver wasn't in the car ....he was in the bar. He came out and said he only went in to buy some chew and so we got back in the car. As we were driving me and yuvraj starting thinking that maybe this guy did have somthing to drink. I didn't know what to do. We could't stop him.. we where in the middle of nowhere and there was no place to stop but on blind curves. I was praying that we would arive in shillong alive, or that we could stop somwhere safe long enough for this guy to sober up. 5 minutes later he polled over to a gas station and said that the brakes wern't working. So here we are in the middle of nowhere and our car is up on jacks as he was tring to repair the leaking brake fluid.

the stop took 2 hours and our driver seemed pretty level headed and we decided to drive the rest of the way without brakes. I was thinking "what are the 2 worst things to have when driving thru the mountains?" I think it's drunk drivers and no brakes.

we arrived safe and sound.