Rachel's New Room

Here are some pictures for you all of Rachel's new room... she is loving it!

Leaving

I just realized that I haven't even let you all know when we are leaving Sri Lanka...it's funny how you don't think about putting up basic information like that on for everyone. So this might come as a shock to some, but we are actually leaving tomorrow. Our flight leaves at 2am on Tuesday (Dec. 5th), but we will leave our place by 10pm Monday to make sure we have enough time to check in.


So needless to say we are in packing mode. We are actually almost completely packed up, so tomorrow we will just have some time to enjoy one last day in Colombo. So far we have 13 bags to check....I know we feel very embarrassed about bringing 13 bags to the airport, but in our defense 3 are full of IJM work stuff. They are all at the weight limit or a little above, so hopefully we get someone nice checking us in, who wont charge us for extra weight.

Going Out With A Bang....

There was another bombing today in Colombo. It was in the neighborhood just north of ours. (Don't worry we are fine.) Again like the previous suicide bombings it was very targeted. This time they were trying to get the president's younger brother. They failed on getting him, but right now the news is reporting 3 dead with 14 injured. Chitra, the lady who's been cleaning our place and teaching me to cook, was only blocks away from the explosion when it happened. Everyone here is getting more worried, and looking at ways to leave Sri Lanka. It's so sad because Sri Lanka has so much potential! & this war is just ruining the country. Please keep Sri Lanka in your prayers. & especially all the friends we are leaving behind, please pray for their safety.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Since we were feeling a little lonely & jealous that we wouldn't get a big Thanksgiving meal this year, we took off for the beach. We went about an hour and a half south of Colombo to Bentota. Man, it was beautiful! We were surprised we hadn't heard much about it. This has to be the best beach Jesse and I have seen thus far in our life. Granted we haven't been to Hawaii, which I hear there is no comparison, but still they were amazing.


The waves were great, b/c they were quite small for Rachel to play in, but they also had bigger ones farther out, so Jesse had fun as well. Usually Rachel is scared of the ocean, but she overcame her fear, and had a fun time playing in the waves. She also learned to swim in the pool by herself. (well with arm bands on)


The hotel had a great location. On one side was the ocean, while on the other side was a river. So Jesse was able to go water skiing as well. We also went to a turtle hatchery, and went for a catamaran ride on a lake. So as you can see we stayed pretty busy. We had a great time...it almost made up for missing out on family, friends, and food. : )

Just Watching the Game

itunes did a great thing this past week, they decided to put up the Michigan vs. Ohio State game, so people could download it. Since we have not been able to watch any football this season, we were quite excited to be able to watch a game. We waited and waited for the game to come up on itunes. We figured it would at least be up by Sunday, but no we had to wait till Monday afternoon to be able to start downloading it. Once we started to download it we were in for another surprise, it said it would take 16 hours to download! So for the next two days we tried to download the game. We finally had it all downloaded by Tuesday evening. So we invited Moga (a guy who works with Jesse) over to watch some American football.


So even though we had to wait forever to watch, and we had to watch it on Jesse's small computer screen, it was still great! Rachel cheered for the Buckeyes (thanks Brian), while Jesse cheered for Michigan. Moga even seemed to enjoy it. : ) Jesse just wishes that they would put up the Husker games too.

Laundry Day

I know you will all be excited to know that this post is about laundry. But I feel I must fill you in with what it's like here. : )

First off if you want to get any laundry done, you have to make sure that you start by 8:30am, or it won't get done by the time you go to bed. We do have a wash machine, but as you can see by the picture it is a small washer, and not only that, but the 2:49 on the washer....that is how long it takes to do a load...yes 2 hours and 49 minutes.


So after the laundry is clean, you then have to hang it out to dry. Not a big deal, but in rainy season, it can be a pain. And since it is so humid out, it takes all day to dry, & I mean all day. This is again why you have to make sure you put the laundry in first thing in the morning. If you can get it out by noon, it is usually dry by about 8pm.


Then the next day is ironing. Because everything is line dried, it's not very soft, so ironing tends to help. Thankfully Rachel loves to iron! : )


I miss the old days when I could do 3 loads of laundry a day, and it really only requiring about 15 minutes of my time. But I am very grateful I don't have to do it by hand!

Ahh.. The Pitter Patter of Jackboots in the Morning

This morning, at around 4:30 am, we were torn from our slumber by a sudden, loud and assertive BANG-bang-BANG on our door. Jesse jumped up quickly, tossed on some shorts and went into the living room. By the time he got there, the would-be visitors were banging again and yelling "Police." Somewhat out of it from the dream that he was still halfway in, Jesse went to the door and cracked it open, asking what they wanted. He faced six people in full military garb - five men, one woman and three machine guns - who didn't appear to want to explain the purpose of their visit. The group started moving into the house and Jesse asked them to wait while he made sure that everyone was properly dressed. They politely obliged, but swiftly moved into the living room as soon as the bedroom door was shut after Jesse asked me to get dressed.

While I got dressed and Rachel wandered into the living room, asking what was going on, the commander of the little brigade demanded our passports. Of course, Jesse had left his passport in the office, making for a few tense moments, as he imagined how they would react when he realized that he didn't have what they were demanding (they ended up accepting Jesse's driver's license). One soldier kind of poked his head into the room while they looked over the identification, asked us questions about where we came from and wrote some stuff down. Apparently satisfied after about five minutes, they left as quickly as they came, moving on to the apartment across the hall.

Obviously this was a first for us. While we had heard about the police "sweeps" in the night, we had not yet had the opportunity to experience it first hand. Rachel thought it was kind of fun and new - Jesse and I found it new, but not fun. After the adrenaline worked its way out of our systems, we all settled down for the rest of our night's sleep.

Here's a picture of a traditional military man w/ machine gun. Jesse didn't think it would be a good idea if I asked the people this morning if I could take their picture for our blog.

Kid Friendly

One of the things that I love about Sri Lanka is how kid friendly they are. People love kids, and always make them feel as comfortable as possible. For example, at one of the restaurants we love to go to, there is a room full of toys & a babysitter. Rachel loves going here to go play while we wait for our food to come. It makes going to dinner so nice!



And our malls always have a huge kids play area. One big department store here offers free babysitting while you shop. Why don't they have this in the states? Jesse is quick to remind me "liability" --isn't he a great lawyer! : )

Happy Halloween!

Hope you all are having a fun Halloween. Rachel is a little sad that she can't go door to door saying "trick or treat" and getting lots of candy! But Jesse brought some candy home for her today, and let her pretend to go trick or treating, which she thought was quite fun.

Here's some pics of her "carving" her pumpkin.



Okay so I was going to try to post some more pictures, but for some reason this is all blogger is letting me post....so i'll try again later.

Rain, Rain, Go Away...

We've been getting a lot of rain lately. In the past 24 hours it has stopped raining for about 20 minutes total. The average rainfall in October is 348mm. In comparrison Virginia gets about 782mm of rain a year. So as you can tell I'm a little rained out. : )

Usually it is nice in the mornings and then around 4 gets cloudy & then starts to rain from 5pm onwards into the evening. We've also had some incrediable lightning storms too. God did give us a nice surprise the other day though. It was a beautiful rainbow. Here's a picture, looking at it from our balcony. (the picture doens't really do it justice-but do they ever?!)



Jesse's working hard putting the proposal together. He has to have it done by Nov. 11th. It looks like we will be coming back to the states early December. We are looking forward to seeing friends & family again, but not really looking forward to the cold weather. : ) Although at this point I think I would rather have snow than rain.

Pics of Rachel

Not much exciting stuff has been going on lately. But thought you might want to see more pics of Rachel, so here you go.

We went to an aquarium this week. It was pretty good. Lots of fish & they even had a small shark tank with 3 ft. reef sharks.


Today we went down to the nice hotel pool & then went to play on the beach. Rachel loves pretending she's a mermaid.



She's still too scared to go in the water, but that's probably best...I'm not sure how clean the water really is. (it's pretty close to the city, & I've seen what they throw in up there) : (

The Big Game

Today there is some tension in the Rudy household. You see, as most of you know Jesse is from Nebraska, and a die hard Husker fan. While we were still living in Virginia, one of our good friends, whose from Texas, taught Rachel how to do the hook 'em horns sign. Rachel caught on real fast that this really annoys her dad. So she is constantly running up to Jesse shouting "Hook 'em horns dad" with her hands making the sign. With which Jesse replies, "Go Big Red!". Rachel gets a real kick out of and so it goes on. : ) Today the Huskers play Texas. So far Jesse can't find a place to watch it, which I think might be a blessing for their relationship.

Settling Back In

Sorry that I haven't been on in a while. This past week has been a little hectic. Rachel & I got back to Sri Lanka Monday morning. And although Austria is only a 4 hour difference, we have been suffering trying to get back on a normal sleep schedule.

Rachel also has been sick all week. Some type of flu, my dad has had a similar thing as well this week. Thankfully she is finally back to her old self. But b/c of that I got behind on everything.

I didn't even get to unpack until Friday. & we had an ant problem in the kitchen, so everything had to be cleaned out. One great thing, is that while we were gone, we had the lady that cleans the office/John's place, come and clean our place once a week, so she came this week as well, and boy was that wonderful! It was great to finally feel a little more settled.

We are having problems with our vonage phone too. It will work at the office, but not at our house. Hopefully soon we can figure out what the problem is. Here's a picture of Jesse trying to rewire everything to try to get it to work. : )

Family Time

Just an update to let you know how we are doing. Last Friday (22nd) we flew to Vienna Austria to spend some time with my family. My sister & her husband had already arrived 2 days before we got here. We had a couple of days to hang out with them here in Vienna, before we all piled into a van and headed to Croatia. We picked up my brother & his girlfriend in Italy on our way down.


My parents had booked a guest house for us all, it was amazing. There were actually 3 little cottages, so we all had our own space, and a kitchen/living space outside for all of us. The owners were wonderful & it was just the perfect place! If you are ever going to go to Croatia,(which is beautiful) you need to stay here! We stayed in Croatia from Monday till Friday, and then drove back with everyone to Vienna.


We then just had a couple of days in Vienna before Jesse, Erik, & Lauren all left on Sunday, while Tamara & Brian left on Monday. So it's just Rachel & I left for the next week. It will be great to just have some relaxing time with the folks. : )


Also some great news! IJM has decided to let us stay in Sri Lanka. We feel really relieved on this decision. & Jesse is ready to really get back into work. Thank you for your prayers!

Back in Lanka

We are back in Sri Lanka, but only for 16 hours. But it does feel great to be back home! We leave tomorrow morning for Vienna, Austria to visit my parents. My sister & her husband, and my brother & his girlfriend are all coming as well. We are so excited to see everyone.

We will be traveling to Croatia as well while we are there. Should be a great time of relaxing! Jesse will be there for a week, while Rachel & I are staying for two. IJM will be deciding next week if we will be able to come back to Sri Lanka to finish up our time, or if we will have to pack up everything and move to India. Please pray that IJM will make a wise decision on where we need to be.

Sparky's

There is this resteraunt here called Sparky's. It is run by an american named Tom Petty (his real name!) and actually has some pretty good food. Everyone from IJM eats here all the time, and on Sundays he gives a 20% discount to everyone who goes to the church we've been going too. So needless to say Sundays is packed with all the expats who love to get some american food.


Jesse & I always laugh at the situation, b/c it's almost like a sitcom. Everyone knows everyone, we all know the staff's first names & they know ours. All the kids just run around the resteraunt, & the owner just sits & hangs out while we are all there. It's very nice to see such a great community. It is the one thing we will miss about India.

Lots & lots of gods

We really haven't gotten out to see much of Chennai since we've been here... although honestly there really isn't that much to see. : ) So today we went to Kapaleswarar a Hindu Temple. It is the biggest one in Chennai.

It's very interesting to hear about the different religions in the world, and to hear their take on Christianity. They often think that there is not much of a difference at all. For me the biggest difference is that there is not much grace if any at all in Hinduism & Buddhism (mainly about works/penance) where as grace is what Christianity is all about. (okay enough of a sermon) : ) I really enjoy seeing all the beuatiful art work and architecture that goes into all their temples. The big temple above has over 300 statues on it, & was just repainted which took 3 years. Amazing. Our guide is going to do a fire walking ceremony tomorrow evening, we were thinking of going, but they also do a lot of piercings, and body mutilation, which I'm not too sure Rachel or I could take. So don't count on any pictures...sorry.

Adjusting

So we are still in the hotel, & it looks like we will stay in the hotel for the next 11 days. We leave Sept. 21st to fly back to Sri Lanka so that we will be able to make our flight on the 22nd to Austria. (a trip we already had planned before we were told that we had to leave Sri Lanka) While we are in Austria IJM will make a decision if we can go back to Sri Lanka or if we will have to stay in India. If we have to come back, we will stay in an apartment.

We are still adjusting, but doing better. The one great thing here is that there are a lot of people working for IJM here, so we already feel apart of a community. Rachel has already met a lot of new friends here. and they've been great with inviting us to lots of activities. In fact Jesse & I were able to go on our first real night on the town since May on Friday without Rachel. Our friends have a housekeeper who watches their two girls every Friday night, so let us leave Rachel with her as well, so we could all go out. It was great.

Yesterday we got invited to the beach. It's about 1hour drive. But it was worth it. It felt so nice to get out of Chennai for a day. Rachel loved playing in the pool, & is getting so good at swimming.


Sorry I don't have more pictures for you all. I will try to get some up soon.

Oh yeah, other good news is that our vonage phone works here too, so we can be reached at our 703 number.

Hello from India

Just wanted to let you know that we have arrived in India. Very different from Sri Lanka. We are looking for a place to live this week. Hopefully we find something soon. I'll get pics up soon, but just wanted to let you know that we are here. : )

Update

We are now leaving for Chennai, India on Monday. Tomorrow (Friday) we are going to Nuwara Eliya, which is in the middle of the Island, for a short trip. It will be nice to decompress from all the craziness that has been going on in our lives the past week. We will be back Sunday, finish packing, and fly out Monday evening.

Not sure what our situation will be once we arrive in Chennai. But hopefully we can get settled in quickly. We will update you all as soon as we can.

Wafflers

We went to a waffle house yesterday for lunch. But it is like no waffle house you have ever been to! For one thing it is not open for breakfast, only lunch & dinner. Then you get the menu. Instead of putting normal things on a waffle like butter, syrup, even fruit, you put meat....yes you read right meat.


I was very skeptical, but hey sometimes you just got to try things. So Jesse got a BBQ beef & I got a curry chicken. And believe it or not, it was actually pretty good. They did have great waffle desserts too. (Jesse was in heaven)


---this is a picture of Jesse, his assistant John, Jesse's boss Mike, & Mike's assistant Aleshia (who has been staying with us this past week).---

Mt. Lavinia

Jesse's boss is here this week, so we spent the day yesterday at a really nice hotel just south of here called Mt. Lavinia. They have a great pool, & the beach is pretty nice, although the waves are a little too rough to swim in. It was a great day to be out in the sun. (sometimes I can't believe we really live here in this paradise!)


There was a beautiful sunset, (this picture doesn't do it justice) and then we went to dinner at this seafood restaurant on the beach. It was great...although a little weird to see them fix your dinner right there in front of you. : )

We are moving to India

So we were told by IJM on Sunday that we are to leave Sri Lanka and move to Chennai, India by next Wednesday. I guess they are worried about the situation over here, and don't want to take any risks. They want us to go to Chennai b/c they already have an office there, and it's only 1 hour plane ride from Colombo to there. That way Jesse can get back to Colombo if he needs to set up any meetings.

Jesse & I are very sad about leaving. It was a shock to hear that they want us to leave so soon. We still feel very safe here, and don't feel it necessary to leave. Jesse has also just hired some locals to help out with researching & setting up the office, so it's hard for him to now have to leave them without really having the chance to work closely with them.

The one good thing about going to India, is that most of our friends that we have here, are all leaving or have already left. & there are two families with small children already in Chennai, so we would already have some what of a community once we got there.

It's just very hard to have to pack everything up, and move again. Especially since we now feel quite comfortable with Sri Lanka. We know where the grocery store is, how much things cost, where to find mac & cheese, etc. : ) Please pray for this transition for us, or even that it might be able to be avoided. Jesse's boss is coming into town tomorrow for a week, so we will be getting more information then. We'll keep you posted.

Technical Difficulties

Okay so I've been trying to post some pictures on the blog, but it's not working. I have no idea why not. Hopefully it will fix itself...wishful thinking, I know. : ) I will try again tomorrow. But we are all okay. Jesse is in Mumbai, India this week for another training confrence. We miss him. Not much else going on. I'll post more w/ pics hopefully soon.

Natural History Museum

Today Rachel & I went to the Natural History museum. It was....well...interesting. Maybe we have just been spoiled since we live in D.C. and have great, free, museums so close?! (but I don't think that's it) ; )

I think the museum was put together in the 70's, and hasn't been touched yet. But we did learn some new things. Like: "Easy ways to make all agricultural chemicals safe for you and everyone else." Very important thing to know!



They had lots of birds on display. & learned that eyes are sometimes optional.



And Rachel even learned about why the leopard was eating that "red ball" that was inside that deer.


And One of the guides was very excited to show Rachel all the snakes & lizards & then went on to tell her how they could bite her. So overall, it was a very educational day. : )

Close to Home

On our way home from the train station (just getting back from Kandy), one of the cross streets that we live on was closed. We could see a badly destroyed car, but nothing else b/c of the crowd. When we arrived at our place, we asked the security guard what happened, and he said that a bomb had gone off 3 hours earlier. We went upstairs and immediatley got on the internet to find out what happened. Jesse went back down to the scene to see what he could find out.

We are fine. I am very glad that we were not home when it happened. Again it was a very targeted attack, but it still so weird to have it happen so close to home. I am copying an article from BBC...but some of their facts are wrong (such as it was a little girl not boy), but it will give you an idea.

Again, like we've said before this isn't to scare you all, but we just want to let you know everything that is going on, especially since we know many of you are praying for us, and want to know specifics of what to pray for. Thank you for your prayers & support!

'Car bomb' hits Sri Lanka capital

The blast came as people were leaving work. At least two people, one of them a three-year-old boy, have been killed by a car bomb in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, police and witnesses say. The bomb went off near a girls' school in a residential area of the city.

A Tamil government minister opposed to the Tamil Tigers told the BBC the target was one of his party colleagues.

The blast comes as the Tigers and military continue heavy fighting in the Trincomalee district in the north-east of the island.

'Going home'

Douglas Devananda, the leader of the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP) which opposes the Tamil Tigers' armed separatist campaign told the BBC that the target was his colleague S Sivathasan.

Police say the bomb was attached to the van that Mr Sivathasan was travelling in.

Mr Devananda told the BBC's Sinhala service that Mr Sivathasan was in intensive care in a Colombo hospital but that his life was not in danger.

The grandfather of the boy killed in the blast said: "The child is three-years-old. His mother is working as a maid here. We were going home after work when it exploded," Reuters reports.

A number of other people were injured in the blast.

Kandy

We've been up in Kandy the last couple of days for the yearly festival called the Perahera. The festival lasts for 10 days, we just went up for two nights. The festival is in celebration of Buddha's tooth. Not kidding. They say they have one of his cannine teeth, which they keep in a temple. Once a year they bring it out, and parade it around. (they don't actually bring it out anymore, in fear of something happening to it...but they still have the parade)


The parade was great. Lots of dancers, music, & elephants. There were probably at least 70 elephants in the parade, all in costume. It was great fun.

We also were able to go to an elephant park, where we got to wash them & then take a ride. Rachel enjoyed it, but said it was a little bumpy.


Here we are in front of the Temple of the Tooth.


Kandy was beautiful. We went with the family from Scotland and had a great time. It was so nice to get a little break from daily life.

My Aunt

I received terrible news last night. My Aunt Kathy, my mom's younger sister, passed away in her sleep. This was very unexpected and is obviously hard on everyone. My parents were able to find flights out of Austria and are on their way there now. The viewing will be Friday and the funeral on Saturday. It has been very hard being so far away. I have searched frantically for flights to get back, but they are all full & by the time I can get on a flight I won't arrive till Sunday evening. Jesse is still in Thailand & was just waiting to see if we could find something. So needless to say I am very sad that I will not be able to be there with my family during this time.

Please pray for my family during this difficult time. My aunt is leaving behind her husband, Ron; her two kids, Matthew & Katie; Matthew's wife Melissa & their two kids; my grandmother, and my mom. She will be sorely missed. If you've ever met her you know her energy for life was contagious. The only comfort we hold on to is knowing that she is with the Lord. Thank you for your prayers.