Fred wrote about Karim's restaurant in his E-mail and gave a great description of it. He took a few pictures. Notice the Gent's restroom. It was a basic telephone booth shape with a glass door. There was a glazed piece of glass which gave some privacy to the patrons using the facility but that was the only thing left to the imagination. Fred tried it out. You can see his reflection while he was taking a picture of it.

Monkeys were running on the wires over our heads while we were riding in a bicycle rickshaw on our way to eat at a renowned restaurant in old Delhi. Finally one stopped to eat a potato chip and I got a picture. They say that sometimes it makes the monkeys mad when you take pictures of them and they will jump on you and try to eat your face off. I forgot about that but got really scared after I took the picture and made eye contact with the little demon. He was more worried about his potato chip than my face so didn't try to jump on me.
The next picture is of a shrine to the monkey God.

If a tree is very old it becomes a sacred thing and people decorate it and leaves flowers and various and sundry other items around the base of it and in the branches. This tree is the most highly decorated one that I've see so far.

Last Week we went on a fun primary outing. Sister Mony insisted that Fred and I go. Although he wasn't feeling well, he toughed it out and ended up having a great time. We went to a place called deer park. We later learned that this is the favorite place for courting couples to go walking. Anyway we had to go in several different taxi vans. Fred and I road in the back seat of our taxi with two little girls and two older ten year old girls shared the passenger seat in the front. They don't use seat belts here and people just pile in as many as possible into vehicles. It was no different for a church primary outing. The first thing we saw was a huge beehive up in a tree overhead. Next there were many tiny deer with huge horns and we also saw a mongoose. The branch president told Fred afterwards that where there are mongooses, there are also snakes. There was an ancient castle, and the graveyard of the family who had lived there, and other beautiful ruins unprotected and out in the open. There was sign that said that it was built in the early 1400's. We had a picnic that reminded us of home with McDonald french fries and chicken burgers. The burgers were really spicey and we couldn't eat ours, but the little children downed theirs slicker that anything. There wasn't much left for the hungry wild dogs who were licking their chops and waiting to move in on all of the leftovers. The crows were hungrily looking on also. After we finished our hike out of the park we all were treated to icecream cones. We road home in auto rickshaws. Parents in the U.S. would scream to think their children were out in that kind of danger. Riding with a couple of old strangers in a rickety rickshaw in the middle of the worst traffic in the world. It was crazy but so fun. We whistled and sang all the way home.

Remember this poor dog? Well, we just realized this is Dave our guard at the gates pet. He's just a street dog but Dave loves him so much and always makes a bed for him inside the church yard. Sometimes he would be laying right on the step to the entry way on a pile of mats with some nice rags for a bed. Dave would always shoo him away and act sort of embarrassed but you could tell he was taking care of the dog. Now that the poor dog is covered with boils, Dave doesn't dare let him in anymore. Anyway, we haven't seen him inside. We didn't realize that we knew the dog when we took the picture the other day but realized who he was tonight on our way out of the church yard and he was laying there. We feel so bad. I told Fred maybe we should get him to a vet.

We've met up with this twelve year old boy twice now at the red fort gate. He's so cordial and friendly to us. We really like this little kid. Fred asked him why he wasn't in school. He said he didn't have enough money. That he has to work to help his family. We've been trying to figure out how we could give him English lessons but it's about an hour's drive from where we live to get to him and then we don't know a place to meet. I guess we could just teach him on the sidewalk. The two older guys are just vendors and friends of his. They are real characters. The one with his arm around Fred sells hats and black beards and mustaches. Fred wanted a black beard really bad but when he tried it on it was too itchy. I don't think the mission would approve of him with a black beard anyway.

The next three pictures were all taken at our market. The first one is of a fast food restaurant, the second is of men peeling potatoes, and the third is a stitching shop (note the old time treddle sewing machines). Usually it's always men doing the work. Once in a while you will see women working if the business belongs to her husband or father. Just across the road from these pictures is where we saw the mother rat popping her head up out of a sewer drain, and just a little ways off were her babies popping their heads up. A beggar looking woman came walking by just as we were watching the rats. She laughed and put her baby down to play with them.Earlier, we saw a man feeding about twenty rats milk out of a big flat bowl. They revere all animals here.
I had to think really fast the other day at the Women's Poly-Technic. I was teaching my music class and I always have some fun finger plays or primary songs to break the monotony. Anyway, I was teaching them "This Little Piggy". When I got to , "this little piggy had roast beef," I quickly changed it to, "this little piggy had toast and tea". Phew, that was close.

This is a charcoal producing business right by our market. You can always smell fire burning when you go outside. We've seen beggars and other street workers building a fire in our park or on the sidewalks or streets so I thought that was where the smoke was coming from but I was so surprised to find this operation so close. The little man that owns it was so proud to get his picture taken. I took about a million pictures, I was so fascinated. I remember Zeb telling about people in the D.R. making charcoal by slowly burning hard wood in a pit and making their charcoal. I probably wouldn't have figured out what he was doing if it hadn't have been for remembering Zeb's story.

I thought this was such a nice little home someone had made with a little garden of trees and a walkway to their bamboo house. They have even built a bamboo wall behind the house. This is very unusual to see something like this. The people that live here must be refugees from China or somewhere. It's right on the edge of some road construction that is going on. I hope it doesn't get torn down.

This is what the crows look like here. They aren't black like our crows and they have a gray band around their necks.

Our neighborhood cat and dog having a face off at the garbage cart. As I looked closer at the dog he was covered with huge golf ball sized bumps all over his body. Poor dog. He probably has cancer or something.

Some beautiful architecture inside the red fort. It's called the red fort because the fortress walls are made of red clay. The same ruler that built the Taj Mahal built this fabulous place. The guide we had said that it is not true that the Emperor had all the hands cut off of the builders of the Taj.
It makes for a good story though.