My Preview of 2014 - Part Two

I will continue yesterday’s pre-view of the coming year today:

May

I can already imagine how the beginning of May will look like for us: we will be excitedly planning for our trip to Germany! While it will be getting hot in India, we will be looking forward to reach Germany and see many of our friends again! Once there, we will be watching Apra again – she will love being in Germany once more!

June

While we will of course visit friends, we are planning to work a bit in Europe this time, too! We will travel, work, enjoy and have fun. Oh, and as we are mentioning fun – there is a beach holiday in Spain in sight as well!

July

Back in Vrindavan in July, the new school year will start. As always, there will be excited children who come to school for the first time and the first 7th grade of our school will begin. We will celebrate Purnendu’s birthday, probably in the middle of beautiful monsoon rains.

August

Yashendu’s birthday party will follow in August. In summer and until August we usually don’t have a lot of people at the Ashram, so maybe some of the many plans that we have for our place will become reality over the summer. If so, our next guests will have new changes to marvel at!

September

In September our retreats will start again, as the weather gets better and more pleasant. We hope that the monsoon will not be too long and rainy, so that we don’t have any floods in the beginning of this month. If everything goes normal however, we will have the first guests here again and the rooms filling up by the end of the month.

October

October will be the month of celebrations with my birthday and Diwali in it. A time to celebrate once more!

November

Cooler weather, guests at the Ashram and a beautiful time – what else do you wish in November?

December

For December we already have some plans: Michael and Andrea are going to come to India and we are still talking about a travelling route that we could enjoy together!

Finally, at the end of the year, we will have our non-religious Christmas celebration, distribute blankets in the cold winter nights and probably prepare for the party on Apra’s third birthday! And that’s when the year will come to its end.

While writing these lines, we realize that we are not planning as long ahead as we were doing before. When we were travelling a lot, we knew a year or two in advance when we would be where. Amazing how life changes!

Of course the biggest changes that will take place in 2014 will be in connection with Apra. She will grow and develop, gain much more vocabulary and discover more of the world. We are looking forward to be part of all of these changes!