Top 10 Things That Made Life Wonderful (and at Times Wonderfully Awkward) in March and April...

10. Catching wind that I'm actually on someone's radar as a potential marriage candidate for their son. Have you ever thought, "I wonder how many camels and goats I'm worth?" After discussing this with my dad, he said that for ten goats and four camels, he'd make the deal. Thanks, Dad. No, really, thanks.

9. Danny Gokey lives to sing another day on American Idol. So, love this guy, love the voice, love the glasses. And he definitely tore it up this week on Rat Pack night. Only one to not be in the bottom three...things look good. If I could pick up the phone and vote from India, I totally would.

8. Having a local coffee shop reserve a table for us because we go there way too much. We also gave them a CD of our favorite songs because we grew tired of the rap music they play all the time. I've never heard them play our stuff yet, but I've heard that they have and that's enough for me.

7. Our landlord took off for an extended amount of time in the months of March and April. His son also left which left my roommates and me "alone" in our flat. Because of this, he thought we needed some extra protection for our house and for ourselves. So he had a soldier come down from the Northern part of the country to stay with us for two weeks. Yes, that's right, we had an armed guard, a personal armed guard. Hilarious.

6. After 16 months here, I finally figured out how to work my shower. No more bucket baths people.

5. We found out that some very good friends here are having a baby girl! That brings the number of single women in this city to a whopping 7.

4. White water rafting on the Ganga River. Now don't freak out. We rafted on the clean part of the river before it flows South and gets gross. Three days of rafting, staying in tents, wearing shorts in India and not feeling weird...it was awesome.

3. Going home (USA home). I can't even begin to describe the blessing that it was to go home for a week. Highlights include: Mexican food, running with Maya (my family's Australian Shepherd puppy), Em and Scott's wedding, seeing my family and friends, TRBC, and an awesome dinner (steak!) the night before I returned to India.

2. Coming home (India home). As much as I enjoyed being back in America, I literally breathed a sigh of relief when I came back to my India home, which was encouraging and exciting. Accompanying me back were my grandparents, which made the return that much sweeter!

And number 1) Getting back to life and work and the mountains. March and April have been filled with travel and meeting of various kinds. It's been amazing and exhausting and I'm looking forward to more of the same in the next six months.

Well that's the end of March and April's top 10. Hopefully I'll be a little better at keeping up with this thing so more details can be provided later! Thanks for reading!