Baby, It's Cold Outside.

I heard on the news last night that in the last 40 days it has snowed on 30 of them! I always pick the best time to come back home to Minnesota. I really will make a point not to come here during January and February ever again.

Here's how my day looked today:

Woke up at 9:00 in the morning and ate some cereal. You have no idea how wonderful it is to have 5 different kinds of cereal to choose from IN YOUR OWN HOUSE! It is amazing. Plus cold milk, ready to drink!
Today I had to take Peaches, the fattest Toy Poodle you will ever meet, to Petsmart to get groomed. This is what my life has become upon arrival at home. I clean the house, make dinner for the family, and take the dog to her appointments. I grab her and put her in my car and the entire 15 minute drive to the store she is crying and shaking! This was no small shaking either, it was chihuahua style almost seizure-like shaking. When we arrive at the store I have to carry her the whole way through the store and now she is trying to jump out of my arms kamikaze style. Last time I did this I made the mistake of using a leash and she was able to somehow squeeze her fat little head out of the collar and started running towards the front of the store and they have automatic motion-sensored doors so as soon as she got up to the first door it opened automatically for her! Fortunately I caught up with her and before the second door could automatically open to the outside world I grabbed her. So, I decided to carry her in the store from then on. We get back to the grooming place, I drop her off and go to Starbucks.
A couple hours are spent in Starbucks reading through the book of Ruth and writing in my neglected journal. Then I get the phone call, Peaches is ready to go!
When I get to Petsmart again I have to buy a toy for her and have them remove the tags then as soon as we get in the car she has something to play with instead of going ballistic and trying to jump into my lap for the 15 minute drive home. I don't know if you know this, but it is nearly impossible to drive with at Toy Poodle in your lap.
Well, we made it home without a problem and the rest of my day was spent doing dishes and trying on old dresses I forgot I had in a box in the basement.
For lunch I attempted scrambled eggs with some Indian spices in them. However, when I put the shaker over the eggs a mound of masala came out instead of the dusting I was trying to attempt. I could only eat half of them
Doesn't that sound like such an exciting day?

While reading Ruth today I really related to Ruth. She was a foreigner in a strange new land. She moved from her place of origin, her culture, her people, to go to a land far, far away with a people she did not know. She told Naomi, her mother-in-law, that basically she is choosing to leave everything behind to become a part of a strange culture. I was immediately reminded of myself, leaving America, my family, and this culture behind and moving to India and making it my new home and my new culture and my new family. I will say it has not been easy to remain obedient to God's calling and God's purpose there. In Ruth you don't hear of any complaining or regret in her leaving everything behind and living in a new, uncomfortable place. I am trying my hardest to live in India without letting the culture and language and climate get to me. I am also trying my hardest in coming back here to not let the culture, language, or climate get to me either! It is strange to feel like a foreigner in the country where you have citizenship. Some of the things it is hard to get used to:

The cold! In India it is 70 degrees at least every day.
Going to the bathroom. I won't go into detail, but it is hard to get used to.
Going to church. As an American living in India I no longer can relate to most of the things pastors here talk about. But also as an American in India, It is equally hard to relate to pastors in India. This is a new thing I realized this past week.
Scandalously dressed women. Which basically means anyone wearing a short skirt, dress, or showing their shoulders! Yikes.
Prices! Everything here is at least 8 times more expensive than in India. I can buy 12 bananas for 20 cents in India. I can buy a medium pizza for $4.00!
Independence! In India it was hard to get used to always having people around and I just wanted my privacy!!! Now all I get is privacy and I just want people around!!! I feel so lonely here.

More shocking things:
Electricity 24/7!??!
Hot water anytime I want it!??!
30 different varieties of sour cream!??!
Jeggings?? I did not even know what those were!
So many white people. Everywhere.
Cleanliness!! Everything here is so clean!

Now I'm about to eat GOULASH! Thank God for goulash. I think I even spelled that correctly! Wow.

I've got a secret, I can't tell you!

I have decided to start sending postcards to celebrities. Just to see what happens. I also have decided if I was bold enough to go on Wheel of Fortune, I just might win a few thousand dollars. That might be fun, right?

It is really fun to read my last post so far after I wrote it all. Here I am now sitting at my parents with an engagement ring in the next room. It's funny that I have my engagement ring already in my posession, and I have to bring it back to India with me and give it to my Boy so that he can use it to propose in the near future. I guess it all did work out very nicely!

It's resolution time! I always make long lists of resolutions and then never stick with them, so instead of a resolution for this whole next year, I am just making short-term goals for a month or two at a time. Like for the next two months I have a gym membership for the first time in my life and I plan on going there every day these next two months. I want to look hot for my Boy when I see him again on March 31st. It will have been 9 months since I last saw him! I am going crazy. Seriously. I have never felt this way about another man in my life ever.

Tomorrow begins my new lifestyle of working out like crazy and eating right! I'm going to work out like Michael Phelps, minus the swimming. All my suits are in India and I have nothing to swim in here now except clothes. Although for some proposterous reason, Target is selling swim suits already. What the heck is going on?

Right now my Dad is coughing up a lung in the bathroom and it's 1:00 in the morning. I am so thankful that I have never smoked a day in my life and never will. You know it is quite disheartening to come home to parents that still smoke and quite honestly I am surprised they don't have more breathing complications than they have. They really have been going at it for 40 years. I wonder what their lungs look like sometimes, but if I knew I'd probably weep, so it's best not to think about it. They get really upset if I talk about all this, but what am I supposed to do, pretend it doesn't eat away at my insides every moment of every day that I am home? At least when I'm in India I don't think or worry about it. I'm thankful I will be marrying a man who does not smoke and never has and never will. I think there are two paths to take as a child of chain-smokers. 1. you become one yourself, after all it was unavoidable, right? or 2. you never touch the stuff and you literally would rather do any other horrible thing in the world instead of even trying to smoke a cigarette. But then I worry that if I don't do it then my kids won't know how aweful it is and they'll do it cause it's "cool." Oh I do hope smoking isn't "cool" anymore when my children become teenagers.

In other news: I bought a book today called, "Your Intercultural Marriage: A Guide to a Healthy, Happy Relationship" and I hope that it is insightful and funny and offers me wisdom and advice to keep me going down this path because I really like where this path is heading and I'd hate to be scared away from it.