ROAD BLOG AHEAD

Yes, I really do know just how LONG it has been since I posted. I hang my head in shame and apologize - especially to all of those who wrote me (or Lena or Nyondo) worried e-mails asking what happened to the blog, to us, to our corner of the universe. What about the Emergency Medical Fund? Well… all of that is still here. Lena, Nyondo, me. Tso Pema/Rewalsar our little world up in the Himalayas. The EMF and the people receiving medical treatment and assistance are still happening.  Even this blog. Still here.

I’m not going to try to go into any long, detailed explanation of why I haven’t managed to write a blog entry in… what… five months?  That’s what’s been hanging me up, actually, for the past month or so: trying to figure out how to both catch up and summarize such a period of time. I froze in the face of the task. Where to begin? How much to say? Uh…. Thus it didn’t happen. And still didn’t happen. Today it will happen. I will summarize the summer and fall of 2008 thusly:

Traveled a lot. Hugged a bunch of grandkids. Traveled a lot more. Cried and said goodbye to grandkids until 2009. Came back to India. Was sick.  Got sicker. Got better. Got worse. Got busy. Got really busy. Had lots of visitors. Became a too sick, too busy stunned bunny with no words. But DID get a broadband internet connection up here. When it works. When there is electricity. Which is more than half the time which is good. Means I have no excuse for not at least posting pictures.

So… Today is simply the day I start the blog again, no other theme or message or appeal. Today is the day I got inspired by the blog of my friend claudia which gave me a really good way to pick a place to jump back into blog land.  She posted a blog challenge she had received. In essence (and excluding the stuff I’m not going to do) it reads:

* Go to your Sixth Picture Folder then pick your Sixth Picture.

* Pray that you remember the details.

So I did. Claudia got pictures of sheep. I got this:

Taken during the many days of ceremony and preparation that are a traditional Indian wedding in these parts. The bride, seated, is Mina, the daughter of our friend and neighbor Nahru. I don’t know who the woman standing might be, but isn’t she intense? We all got lucky this time - the sixth picture in the sixth photo folder could just as easily have been an out-of-focus image of some yak hair. There’s a lot of those.
I’ll be back. Ice has been broken and all that. Hold me to that, would you?