"Matt, the monkeys are not going to attack us..."

So, clearly it's been way too long since we blogged here. Our access has been troublesome, so we have some real catching up to do. But before that, a story.... We are in India now, having a wonderful time with our dear friends Steffen and Grace. After three days in Delhi, we moved on to the wonderful little town of Bundi, where this adventure takes place.

Bundi is a picturesque little town, full of blue houses, many temples and lots of cows, pigs and dogs wandering the colorful (and odorous) streets. It also has an amazing hillside palace and fort that is only partially restored, and therefore great for real exploration. Our first day in town we took a fabulous wander through the palace (we were almost the only ones there), soaking up all the history and architecture. We also met many of the non-human inhabitants of the town - the monkeys that are everywhere. Day one, they were cute and fun to watch.

Day two.... We headed up to the top of the hill, and the unrenovated fort - which, it turns out, is really monkey-land. I'll let you enjoy the story in Andy's voice, with his journal entry for the day:

"Today, we were attacked by monkeys! Grace was also sick. We all decided it was a good day for her to be sick. She is pretty scared of monkeys. We were up in the ruins of the palace, up in the high ruins. Up until then, we hadn't had any problem with the monkeys. We were going to head in a different direction. There were a couple of monkeys making us a little bit nervous. We had all made it past the two monkeys, but they were still eyeing us. Steffen went back to scare them off with a stick. The first sign of danger was when the monkeys began to growl. All of a sudden I heard Steffen start to yell. At first I thought that Steffen was trying to scare the monkeys away. When I looked up, one of the monkeys was gone, and Steffen was slowly backing up. That was when I got worried and started to walk away. All of a sudden the other monkey also began to chase Steffen. He began to scream bloody murder. The last thing I saw was a monkey jump at Steffen from the roof of a building. Matt was already halfway out of the puny doorway. I raced out after him. I remember watching my mom come out after me. I had my slingshot, and grabbed a rock and loaded my slingshot. I heard Steffen yell again. I aimed my slingshot at the doorway. Matt started to cry because he thought Steffen and my dad were getting eaten by monkeys. Then, out came my dad (bleeding on his face), and Steffen, who closed the door behind them. We all breathed a sigh of relief. We then proceeded to walk down the hill. We were then caught in a migration of approximately 100 monkeys coming up the hill. That was very nerve wracking. After being chased by monkeys, we very scared. We finally made it through. It was a wild experience." From Andy's journal - Jan. 26, 2008

Some editorial comments from the father and a few important asides to fill out the details:

Steffen might argue with some of the details, but as we know, eyewitness accounts can often differ. The blood on me... When the monkeys screamed at Steffen, I assumed that would be it, and then they would run off. I turned to see they were not leaving at all, and Steffen was moving quickly down my way. Chrissie and the boys were safely making their escape, so I jumped down a bit, and turned to see how Steffen was faring (of course, ready to stand by his side in battle, if necessary). At this point, Steffen jumped down, swinging his stick to keep the monkeys at bay, and also effectively kept me at bay by hitting me with his monkey stick. I am healing up just fine.

Chrissie's prediction-reputation with her boys, however, will take much longer to heal than my face. Just prior to the real adventure starting, Chrissie-the-mother shared that she was not interested in exploration of the unchartered fort (monkey) territory that we seemed to be wandering into. A moment after that, she reassured Matt with the line that titles this blog - "Don't worry Matt, the monkeys are not going to attack us." Shortly after those words are out of her mouth, we are set upon. Here's a bit from Matt's journal to explain...

"I screamed and pushed Andy out of my way and jumped through the hole we had gotten in through. Andy poised his slingshot to hit a monkey. My mom and dad and Steffen made it through alright. We called Mom a jinx because she said earlier that the monkeys would not attack. In Yellowstone, she said we would not see a bear, and we saw a bear [ed. note: the bear sighting came approximately 3 minutes after Chrissie's reassuring statement]. In South Africa, she said we would not see a snake and a snake reared up at us and flattened its neck and swayed[ed note: again... appr. 3 minutes time between mother's reassuring comments and the event she assured would not happen]." From Matt's journal - Jan. 26, 2008.

As you can see, Chrissie's animal assurance credibility has taken a serious blow here. So, there's the monkey adventure - funny now, not then...

There are many other updates we should give, but we'll try to summarize a bit, since many of you have a life outside of our blog.

Our second week in Cambodia was great. Chrissie and the boys had a great time at the beach, and I had a great adventure out to Rattanakiri on a school leaders training trip with John Morefield. I picked up an interesting little bug out in the wilds of rural northeast Cambodia that I think I've finally gotten rid of, but that just makes the trip more interesting.

We survived our time apart, and then headed out to Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor Wat. As I have said many times, pictures can't capture the feel of these amazing temple complexes - some of which are 1000 years old, but we'll show you some anyway. We made friends with some of the local Khmer girls selling us things, one of whom said "save one of your boys for me...." Our big adventure in the midst of the temples was renting electric bikes for a day. We had to ride about 25 kilometers total that day. The temples are about 7km from our guest house (through the busy and crazy streets of Siem Reap), and are then spread out on a 17km or so route. Let's just say no one died, and that the e-bikes are very fun when they have electricity, but don't work so well when you just have to pedal.

We met up with Steffen and Grace in Delhi, India, on Jan 21, (it is wonderful to have them along) and had three full days there. We wandered far and wide, got 3-day passes for the Delhi Metro and took the great city in. The markets of Old Delhi were intense, and my favorite part of the time there (though I don't think all would concur with me on that). Our monkey adventure was part of our 3 days in Bundi. The people of the town were wonderfully welcoming and friendly, and the boys even got in on a wee bit of a cricket match.

We are now hanging out in a fabulous guest house in Udaipur - a gorgeous city with palace on the lake, and surrounding hills. The guest house is a sizable place but we have all the rooms, so have the place to ourselves. There's a big yard (huge bonus) so room for us to play soccer (Steffen and I need a rematch with the boys after losing yesterday afternoon) and have shuttlecock (a sort of hand-worthy version of badmitton and hackey-sack combined that we picked up in Cambodia) tournaments.

We head to Bangalore (and our great friends, the Hanstad family!) on Wednesday. From here on, we should have more regular internet, so won't have such blogging gaps. We continue to have a ball, and still all like each other, so that is good news.