India: Mumbai, a great city in December

The last time I was in Mumbai, it was in June of 2009. The rains were late, as I stepped off the plane it was like walking into a brick of humidity and hot, unbearably hot. This time I was pleasantly surprised; it was a hot day but not anything worse than those hot spring days in Oklahoma. We stayed right on the beach to the Arabian Sea with our friend, Nishant’s dad (his mom is in the States with Nishant).  Uncle took us on a long tour of Mumbai seeing the beautiful peninsula/island. Here are a few pics of our tour and stay at our friend’s place.

The view from our room

The view from the living room at Uncle and Auntie’s

Row and I hanging out in our room for the night.

Mosque, Haji Ali Dargah, is on a peninsula jutting out into the water. Beautiful!

Marine Drive Area from a viewpoint on Malbar Hil… when its dark the lights make an arch that they call “the Queen’s necklace”, referring to the Queen of England. The main downtown area has a lot of the buildings from when the Brits ruled and they look very European.

our selfie at the Malbar Hil Park

Marine Drive

Uncle!

We sure enjoyed our stay and tour! It was fun to see how much Nishant was like his dad .

-jen

India: A Dear Friend’s Wedding

We absolutely love that we got to see our friend, Aditya’s wedding. Aditya lived next to me for about 3 years in college and now lives in Lincoln. We met his beautiful bride, Madhur! So this last weekend, we trekked to Mumbai and enjoyed a less traditional Maharashtran wedding.

giving their kids away

The ring ceremony…In India, the woman gets a gold necklace instead of a ring.

The guy gets a ring, only on the right hand.

Row made friends…a lot of them.

The puja part. The priest leads this and the bride and groom offer different things into the fire as they pray for blessings on their marriage. The crowd participates in praying as well.  They show it by throwing rice after each prayer.

We met our friends from college, Vishal and Abhishek and had the pleasure of meeting Vishal’s wife, Vidya

A flattering picture with the groom

We pray that God would bless your marriage! That He would bring all the happiness and babies! and that when things get rough that you would look at each other and feel that ole magic spell (“We Already Got it”, Song by our favorite group, Waterdeep)

-garett and jen

Fire and old friends

So if you read this post, you remember that I am absolutely, positively a pyro.  Fire, I just feel, brings out the best in people. hahaha

Memorial Day weekend Babes and I cut down one of our massive bushes in the back by our carport but we decided it would take us 4 hours to rope up all the branches and junk for the city to haul it away plus we want to not fill the landfill with branches that could be used for a good ole time around the fire. SO, we went to home depot and picked out a fire pit :). 

This last weekend, some of our good friends came to visit; Ashley was my roommate in college for a year.  Her and her fiancé! have been dating for about 5 years and are now engaged and getting married at the end of September! We are soooo excited for them.  These people are special to us, because they have the same heart for people as we do, and they want to go overseas someday!  We told them that we are asking our Dad to send them with us, but I don’t think they know how serious we are.  We would love love love to live life with them.

Anyway, we enjoyed a nice fire even though most of our wood was still wet and Garett smoked his first pipe with peaches and cream tobacco. Can you believe they make that stuff? mmm. And we roasted marshmallows, really just to watch them be on fire.    We went to the beloved World Market where I followed Ash around to see what stuff she wants for her wedding…shhhh don’t tell her but I got something for her. 😀 We went thrift storing.  Seriously, these people are awesome.

Ashley and Derek…aren’t they cute

Garett looking like an old man :)                            I think he might be about to cough…

🙂 Enough said.