Its been about a week now since I belly flopped into India. As I try to assemble some sort of overwhelming theme to what I've been feeling and seeing, the best I can is say "change". Although India still swarms with the sounds, sights, smells and electricity that do not compare to anywhere else I have been, so much of India for me has changed, and will keep changing.
One thing that has yet to change on my journeys to India, is that I will always find myself back in Kakinada, the place where I first landed back in 2003. Whatever it may be and however it may change, Kakinada will always feel most like home for me.
This poster was hanging on a wall in the Leprosy/HIV hospital in Kathipudi about 45min outside of Kakinada. An eerie comparison to the "Got Milk?" ad campaign... and a good reminder of the reality that still weighs on India
Seeing the faces of a friends , spending some time drinking chai and catching up on life in the past two years since my last visit is what I look forward to in Kakinada . My friend VijayKumari, a nurse at the Cancer Center, takes me to the hut/house where her brother and family lives. We relax under the trees and talk about her new home that is being built next door. I try to talk her out of painting her house gray, while I am ceremoniously re-dressed in a sari and overstuffed with food. Mostly we just sit and hold hands while her sister-in-law cuts vegetables and the crows drink water from the buckets around the yard.
Later, we walk next door to say some prayers to bless her new home. A wooden door frame is hauled up to the second floor where I say a prayer in english and then others in telegu. Afterwards some coconut oil is rubbed on the doorframe in little cross shapes... symbolizing that this will be a Christian house. I am asked to make some symbols as well and then we break out the sweets and spend some more time in the shade.
On my last of the three days in Kakinada, I was delighted by the sight of two familiar faces, Nathan and Joshua. Both are living and studying in Kakinada, and are about the only two boys (now young men) around Kakinada from my first days teaching at Hope Village 
orphanage.
Most of the others have moved to other cities for work or school. Nathan and Joshua are both studying computers and Joshua is working part time as a driver. In contrast to their more serious faces in the photos, we spent most of the time laughing, remembering and dreaming.... all mutually wondering what the future will hold for us, and hoping to see eachother soon.
orphanage. These last few photos are of my last afternoon in Kakinada:
Joshua squishing the train as it goes by.
Nathan talking while we wait in the back of an auto-rickshaw.
