Today was another day of firsts'. It was the first day we stayed in the apartment all day (because Raju didn't show up to take us anywhere. Believe me, after a couple of hours in the apartment with the kids I was more than ready to go anywhere!). And secondly, Dallan lost his FIRST tooth!

Yeah for Dallan. He is concerned that the tooth fairy will bring him rupees instead of dollars. Does the tooth fairy even come to India? I guess we'll have to see.

To finish yesterdays blog, here are feeding the monkey pictures...

This is the monkey that took the banana from Brayden and ran away...he got a whole banana. Greedy monkey!

Ryan dropped 1/2 a banana and the little guy jumped up to catch it...

The other monkey that got the other 1/2 of the banana

"yes, we have no bananas...we have no bananas for you!" -poor monkey, nobody would share!

Yesterday, Sunday we went to church, and again attended a baptism. This was a special baptism because it was an 8 yr old girl. She was baptized by her dad. What's so special is that there are not many dad's that come with their families. There are lots of part member families or youth that come without their parents, or even singles. There are families that come, but mostly with younger children. Regardless, it was another special baptism.

The little girl in front of Davis was the one baptized. This is the rest of the primary.

It's also fun to see my kids interaction with those that we have come to know. We officially have friends on the other side of the world where we live. Such special people. Even Conor sat down to chat with one of the elders and one of the members about some deep questions he had and Dallan loves one of the missionaries,, Elder Raja, he went up and hugged him.

Dallan and Elder Raja

Conor asking Elder Peterson questions

Because Raju didn't show up yesterday either, we had another wonderful opportunity to take an auto rickshaw to church. With that wonderful rickshaw ride, came a chance to take some sweet pictures of the city. It never amazes me how I can drive down the same road over and over and always find something new to look at. It's the same scene, but there is so much going on everywhere, I always find something new.

'Hot chips' are very popular around here

Street vendor selling fruit.

Sidewalk construction

People on the street

Construction site

Local women

**UPDATE** Not only were we in one of the local papers around here after visiting the local Hindu Temple, we were in two papers! I am assuming it's basically the same article, talking about the Americans visiting a temple to see the architecture, the carvings and to understand more about the Hindu religion, but I'm actually not sure what it says. Funny thing about understanding more about the religion was the people we were with (Mounika and her dad) have been raised Christian, so they were learning things when we were there as well! Mounika had no idea about most of what I asked her.

Second newspaper with our picture...

If you haven't heard me talk already about getting meat over here, well, let's just say it's pretty hard. Let me rephrase that...it's pretty hard to get meat that I feel comfortable eating. There are several options, I could buy a chicken on the street and the vendor give it to me alive, dead or cut up (or anything in between). I've watched people purchase chicken this way. They stand in this little room and watch it get butchered up and buy whatever they want. (I'm totally guessing about this process because I have never actually purchased [no will I purchase] a chicken this way.) Second option is to go to the local grocery store (not the yucky store, the one we drive to) and walk into an enclosed room with no air, no refrigeration (just meat in a display case) and you tell them what you want and they cut it up for you. This I have sort of witnessed. I tried walking into the room, then turned around and walked out because the smell was so pungent it hit your core. Ryan, however was brave enough to stand and wait because he knew exactly what he wanted and wanted to make sure that is what he got. As he stood and watched the butcher cut up the chicken into boneless breasts, on a communal chopping block, with a communal knife and then punched numbers on a calculator with his chicken gooey fingers, we debated if this was the way we wanted to purchase chicken. Another option, one we have gone with a few times, is calling a grocer that we have been put in contact with and ordering from. The nice thing about that is I don't have to see how sanitary (or unsanitary in most cases) it gets prepared for selling. We just receive it in a bag. For about the first 2 weeks we were here, we didn't eat chicken unless it was at a restaurant (and that can be sketchy in some places as well). Well, the other day, Ryan called the grocer to order 6 chicken breasts, just the breasts, boneless. "Do you want the upper half of the chicken?", he was asked..."No, just 6 boneless chicken breasts". Well, we ended up with the upper half of 3 chickens. You might think that was a lot, but these chickens are relatively small compared to the chicken breasts I purchase in the U.S. Anyway, Ryan went right to work, butchering his upper half of chickens and ended up with 6 breasts, some wings and some little tender pieces and whole bunch of bones! My husband is so good at making lemons out of lemonade, he decided to make some chicken stock so we could make chicken noodle soup. Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner! We had the soup tonight for dinner and it was awesome! (Did I leave out that I could totally become a vegetarian in these parts?) For me, cooking here is a nightmare. I don't know how to cook like the locals, still cooking my American dishes, without the best ingredients I can find. But for Ryan, cooking here is a culinary experience. I'm so glad my husband finds peace in cooking and being in the kitchen, because otherwise, we'd be eating a lot of cornflakes!

Davis looked over our balcony this afternoon to see four cows digging in the trash for some food and says, "Mom, look. There's 'Big Mac', 'Steak', 'Cheeseburger' and 'McDonald's'. Now the cows have names! I think we might all be craving some beef...