The Rest of the Story...

Continued from the last post...
After not getting to watch the Penn State game, we slept there at Joseph's house for a few hours and then went back to TCS for a little bit. From there we went to Jenny's (ICC 2008) house for lunch.

While we were in Shillong the first time, Jerry (ICC 2006), Christina, and Grace (both ICC 2007) sang together a few times. They are really, really good and we wanted to get a good recording of some of their songs, so right after lunch on Friday morning, we headed over to a local studio and spent five or six hours recording two of the songs. Keep an eye out for the videos... I hope to post them on www.hearthunters.org in a few weeks. I'm sure you will agree that these kids are great!

From the studio session, we went straight back to Seilmat and to Eunices's house for dinner. Eunice is a girl that my brother, Marv, sponsors. We spent a few hours there and then went back to TCS for the night.

On Saturday morning, we went to Christina's (ICC 2007) grandparent's house for lunch. Christina's whole family was there from Shillong, having spent the Christmas and New Year holiday there.

At 12:30, the ICC reunion started. We had planned this event to bring together as many of the former ICC kis as possible. And a bunch of them came... right around 120 former choir members came together for a time of games, singing, and food. It was a lot of fun. If you want to hear some good singing, try putting over 100 former ICC kids in a room and have them sing together. It was great!

Since our days were winding down and we were out of time slots for meals, we started getting tea invitations, so after most of the kids had left arond 7:00 PM, we went to Angelyn's (ICC 2008) house for tea, and then to Christina's (ICC 2008) for, guess what, more tea!

On Sunday morning, we went to Seilmat church for the morning service, and then to John Mark and Lalnei's (ICC Leaders) house for lunch. From there, we visited the school hostel for a few minutes to see some kids there. Dinner was at Esther's (ICC 2008) house. Remember what I said about tea. Well, it was the last night for Marv, Kramer, and Herm to be in Seilmat, so we had tea at Jasper's (ICC 2007) house at 8:30 PM, Joseph's (ICC 2006) house at 9:30 PM, and tea at Elva's (ICC 2006) house at 10:30 PM!

On Monday morning, we had breakfast at Jacob and Zingi's (principal of TCS and his wife) house, and then spent an hour or so with a bunch of kids that came over to say goodbye to the guys. The three guys left around 10:30 and went to the airport. My plan was to stay for a few more days and then travel to Guwahati, meet the 2009 ICC kids, and the travel with them to Calcutta by train.

That all went according to plan for the first day. After the guys left, I went and had lunch at Fat James, and did some shopping. That evening I had dinner at Paul and Joyful's (ICC Leaders in 2006) house. Paul just received his PhD., and the dinner was in celebration of that. After that it was tea at Fred's (ICC 2001) house, and then tea at Beauty's (ICC 2005) house.

Tuesday morning, I went to Rengkai to eat lunch at Celia's (ICC 2006) house, and there is where the "plan" fell apart. While there, I got a call saying that my Manipur permit expired that day, and I needed to leave the state that day yet. I thought it expired a few days later, but not so. There were no flights available that day anymore, so they made an exception, and said that I had to leave first thing the next morning.

That evening, I had dinner at Mary and Esther's (ICC 2005) house, and then went back and did my packing. A bunch of people came over to say goodbye.

The next morning, after eating breakfast at Paul and Joyful's house, about 15 kids and I piled into a jeep-like vehicle and left for the airport. First we said that we had room to take six kids, but so many of them wanted to come, we piled all of them in. We drove to the airport and I made the flight to Guwahati. Instead of staying there with not much to do for a few days, I decided to make the 3 1/2 hour trip to Shillong. And so that is how I ended up there.

I spent two nights there and had a lot of fun with the kids from there again. On Friday morning, we headed back down to Guwahati, where I met the ICC kids. We boarded the 12:45 train and spent the next 18 hours traveling to Calcutta. We arrived here this morning around 6:00 AM.