House and home

What is their home like?  The Streets live quite comfortably.

Here is their living room and a piece of their dining room.  They have 3 bedrooms, one which is used for a study.....and sometimes a place to dry clothes.  They have a washing machine, but no dryer.  There is no central heat or air conditioning.  Space heaters are used this time of year when it can get into the 50's at night. 

Here is the kitchen sink....full of dishes that I should have done, but Andrew talked me out of it saying the house help could do it tomorrow!  They do have a dear lady who comes once a day and does dishes and cleans the white tile floors!  What a blessing!  The other day I was doing dishes at this sink (cold water only) and the water went to a dribble then stopped!  Did I do something wrong?  When I called Andrew, he said that whichever of the neighbors who was the most impatient needed to go upstairs in the building and turn on the pump again.  I assured him that would be him...and he sweetly took off to take care of it!  :-)  The devices on the wall are water filters.

This is the wonderful shower with water heater that I wrote about earlier.  Yesterday, I heard some water running in this bathroom so I peeked in and here there was water drizzling heavily out of the heater.  Andrew had to shut it off and report it to the repairman to be repaired soon we hope.  There are two bathrooms, but this is the only one with a shower head.  So, until the heater is repaired, we will do the dip and pour method using the water heater out of the other bath.  There is no tub.

This is part of the kitchen.  The microwave you see there is also convection and is the only oven Morgan has.  It seems to be working fine for her.  She has a two burner hotplate on one of the counters which is fired by gas.  I have to remember to turn it off and on......then there is a shelving unit on one wall for plates and dishes.  On the counter in the corner you can see a white 3 shelf unit where she keeps spices and smaller food items.   Not a straw hut with mud floors by any means!

I've mentioned before that the campus community is a great support.  Yesterday, we had a few more visitors stop in...and it seems every day we have some whether it's a child or adults.  One day, 3 girls about Ariana's age came to the door and sang me a Happy Birthday song as they heard my birthday was last week!  This is all a huge blessing as Morgan is so social that it is helping with the culture shock so much!  If she were in a place that basically ignored her, it would have been miserable for her.  When I walk about campus, I am greeted all over and asked how Morgan and the baby are doing!  There are about 170 seminary students and 18 faculty.  There is also a grade school on campus where about 1000 children attend.

Andrew asked a couple that visited last night about finding someone to do their ironing for them.  They said they knew of  a man on campus who could do it and told Andrew where to take it.  Lo, and behold, about 15 minutes after the couple left, there was a knock on the door and two men were there.  One was the man who irons and the other his translator....telling Andrew they had just heard he needed some ironing done!  H We have found that word spreads fast around here! He was told it would be 3 rupees per items.  That would be .048 cents per item...or about 2 items a penny!  (Okay, forget all the inconveniences here, let's move to India, ladies....house help is cheap!)

A&M buy most of their food here locally.  They get fresh home grown vegetables which are very economical.  The meat is grown locally.  It can be rather tough for us Americans, but the pressure cooker helps.  I'm still learning how to cook well here, but it's not been too hard.