Our India Story

Map of India

Madhya Pradesh

Gwalior is located about four hours (by train) south of the Indian capital of Dehli. We will arrive in Dehli on August 15th and be there for meetings with the Indian Fulbright group through the 18th. On the morning of the 18th we leave for Gwalior by train and will be met by someone from the school who will take us to our house on campus.

"Campus" is likely the most exciting part of thinking about this adventure for the kids since campus is located inside an actual fort built in the 8th century. If you do the math, that makes it over 1,000 years old! Amazing to be sure but even more important it's a FORT! And we get to live in it!

The pictures below are the best we can do for now to share our excitement. We'll get our own pictures up here as soon as we have them.

Gwalior Fort

FortOldEntrance_small

JauharKund_small

I'll add more soon with additional updates but the real fun will start in about 2 1/2 weeks.

Twenty-three days until we board the plane for Amsterdam connection Delhi, and we daily ask ourselves, "Are we really doing this?" It has been nearly a year since that first conversation about applying for the Fulbright scholarship and even then we were asking ourselves the question. When the papers arrived stating that a placement had been found I had flashbacks to being 17 and looking through the papers that told me I would be going to live with the Fetis family in Temuco, Chile. That mixture of excitement and fear have been with all of us since we received the paperwork from Fulbright. Since them so many things have tumbled upon us, from Visa applications to purchasing new suitcases to finding an apartment for my exchange teacher. As all of these pieces fall into place, some simply, others after a good deal of stress, we look up from the paperwork, the vaccinations, and the planning to realize, "Wow, we are going to India."

The kids share these feelings of fear and excitement and at times are much better and saying what is on all our minds. On the days that they put it very simply and say that they do not want to go we have long conversations about what it takes to have a great adventure. We have talked about we usually only hear the cool stories that come out of an adventure, but that behind all those stories are the scary, hard parts of the adventure. The feelings of loneliness, and fear of the unknown are parts the we will deal with together and grow from but the idea of stories of their own are what make the kids return to the excitement of this adventure. Siena is especially tuned in to this, she wants some stories of her own and as she looks through the many India picture books on our coffee table I can see her imagining what those might be. Her questions and shared hopes about this adventure make me certain this is a good thing to do and that yes "we are really doing this."

We look forward to sharing our stories with you as we live this adventure and invite you to check out these pages as well as those of Marcela at her blog, "Naturally Fun Days". We will continue to update prior to our departure and will update as often as time allows once we are in India. For those who know me well you may be chuckling a bit at the idea of me keeping a blog but I am really going to give it a shot as this seems like a worthy reason and if nothing else a good way to keep a record of these next six months of our lives.