Tonight will be our third night in the new place.  We piled all of our belongings into an autorickshaw and a cycle rickshaw and essentially made the move in just two trips,but since then we’ve been making multiple trips to the market to pick up various things– a mirror, a dish rack, bamboo shelves, a mosquito net, a wool blanket to sleep under, now that the nights are getting colder.  The first day was intense as we tried to clean and organize our room under the curious scrutiny of our landlady’s family and our new neighbors.  A flood of children ebbed and flowed into our room throughout the day, and we were talking with people constantly as we tried to get the room set up.  We killed a few of the big spiders lurking around and tried to get organized, but it was hard with so many people helping us.  By nightfall, there was still no sign of the electrician who we thought was coming, so A. set up the wiring himself by cell phone light and we sighed with relief when the light bulb flicked on.  

At the end of that first chaotic day, we fell asleep exhausted from meeting so many new people and from speaking in Hindi for hours on end, but we were thankful for all of the ways we already felt accepted into the community.  While we were moving that day, some neighbors found out that we hadn’t brought our stove and gas cylinder yet, so they shared their lunch with us while we worked and then invited us over for dinner.  We found out that the water drum we had just bought was leaking, and a group of guys stopped in to repair it for us on the spot.  And our landlady’s little girl was so excited about us moving in that she took the cleaning supplies out of our hands and enthusiastically mopped our floor while we tried to take the job back from her and eventually gave up!  So many people have invited us into their homes, and so many people have stopped by our home, that the slum is already beginning to feel familiar.  As we continue to gradually put together our new living space– going to bargain for a bed at the market with our landlady, commissioning wooden shutters for the window, and hopefully in the next few days cementing the holes in the floor– we continue to feel that strange mixture of stress, thankfulness, tiredness, and excitement.  We had thought that as we moved into our room we might feel as though we had “arrived”, but now we realize that this is just the beginning– and we’re looking forward to what comes next.