We went to church this morning. We went to "New Life Church", Hyderabad's answer to the megachurch phenomenon. I really did not know that such places existed outide of the US, but it appears that there are many places just like it around the world. My friend Jamie goes to "Warehouse 242" in Charlotte, a place we have dropped by about half a dozen times. The kids love it. This place was just like that.
There are about 6,000 people who attend New Life Church. It has video feeds, a contemporary choir singing the latest rock songs, drama skits, and the like. The kids really enjoyed it, I found it pretty fun, but Tara is a traditionalist - she does not think church should be like that. There was a mime troupe during the service, and mimes creep Tara out, so she was not pleased.
Fear not, you Selwynites, we look forward to being reunited with you in 2009!!
From Saturday - this has happened twice - some guys walk down our street and play huge oboes really loudly and in a very squawking manner. I have to believe they are scaring off spirits or some such thing, because they sound terrible. In turn, they want money for their services.
I brought Liam and Jonah down to stand in the middle of these guys. Here's the picture.
It is "Ganesh Chaturthi", yet another festival here in India. This festival leads to a huge amount of activity depicting Ganesh, an elephant headed deity of Hinduism. He is depicted in huge statues all over the city, and those will all be unveiled next weekend. Then they are marched to the water and submerged. The sand sculpture is from a beach in Mumbai.
Here is a group positioning a huge Ganesh in a tent near our home.
Yesterday, we went to a place called Runway 9, where you can do archery, riflery, go carts and the like. It is an "entertainment center" like they have in the states. But only in India would they put Aidan in a high powered go cart. Here's a film of when Liam and Aidan were on the track together. It's Liam you see. Aidan wiped out twice, they had to take him off the track.
