The Tilsons

After five days in Madurai, our group has had a bit more time to examine Lady Doak College, Madurai, and service sites.  On Friday night we participated in “International Night” with the Lady Doak students.  Believe it or not, we had to perform (dancing and singing on stage).  With little time to prepare, we chose [...]

India is a land of juxtaposition – the ancient alongside the state-of-the-art, luxury hotels with shanties outside the gates, and people dressed in traditional saris alongside others dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, a place that is amazing and awe-inspiring but also very difficult.  My roommate here says that everything in India is with an [...]

I’m less than 36 hours from embarking on a voyage to the other side of the world.  On Thursday morning I leave for India where I will be studying and serving for three weeks alongside 10 other Portland State University graduate students.  Our professor Dilafruz Williams is originally from northern India and her words of [...]

We thought you’d like to see some pictures of our apartment.

Now that we’re back and fully rested from our Christmas holidays, we wanted to recount some of the highlights for everyone. We began the trip in Amsterdam and absolutely loved the city, especially the pace of life there. The human-scale of the streets, the human-speed of the bikes, the humanity of the markets, all intoxicated [...]

Happy New Years everyone! We’re back in Portland after a great trip to Europe for the Holidays. There wasn’t much chance to update the website during the trip, because we didn’t bring a laptop with us this time and tried to be minimally connected.  So, over the next few days, we’ll collect and write our [...]