As a little kid in the 1950s, I loved the "Buster Brown Show" on TV. One of the short films featured each week portrayed a young Indian boy's adventures. Those short films were my favorite part of the show. Then, when Penn (Robinson Ansorg) and I were old enough to ride our bikes through our Bethesda neighborhood, we would give romantic names to pieces of land that as yet had no homes built on them. One we named "Africa" and another, a scary place under a bridge, was called "Egypt," and our favorite one was "India," where the tulip trees were very tall, festooned with lots of long twisting vines.

Years later, in 1966, Terry Cogley and I got married. We knew many friends who were being drafted and sent to Viet Nam. Terry's draft board in California kept sending him urgent messages and he responded with "change of address" cards. We joined the Peace Corps and chose India as our assignment. We had been living in a small village in Northern India for several months when the California draft board finally accepted defeat, and we were legally settled in a place called Chattarpur in the state of Uttar Pradesh, in Northern India.

We lived in the village "meeting house," and hired an eccentric and very funny Nepali cook named Budhri Singh. He made friends with lots of the villagers and kept me informed about various naughty activities going on. When the sugar cane grew tall, he explained, it provided good cover for amorous couples to meet in private!

From the beginning, village children gathered on our front porch, and I made up games to play with them and showed them how to write their names in English. I think that finding a way to keep them busy and entertained probably had something to do with my becoming a Montessori teacher years later! For the next two years, we spoke Hindi, drank lots of tea, and sometimes came up with somewhat useful projects. I became friends with a lovely Indian woman who was a "Village Level Worker" and I accompanied her on tours to other villages where she talked about subjects like preserving fruit or making the best foods for babies. When her lecture ended, the ladies could ask questions about me, mostly about why in the world would I want to be living in a village!

Always looking for a way to be useful, Terry organized the men to dump lots of dirt in the middle of the village, which, due to years and years of bullock carts rolling though the courtyard, a deep gully had formed that filled up with stagnant water during the monsoon season. The yucky water attracted lots of insects and was a definite health hazard. Who knows if the men kept it level after we left! But at least one season didn't have stinky water to deal with! Terry also worked in a seed processing plant for a few months, where the owners thought, being an American, he would have great advice on efficiency. During our time off, we traveled to Bombay, Goa, and other southern vacation spots. Halfway through our planned trip, we decided to turn around and go back to Goa. It was so much fun to be on a beach, hanging out with other Peace Corps people and, "World Travelers" (people our age who were just wandering around the world!)

It turned out that we left India a few months earlier than we had planned. We were informed that one could not travel by air if one were 8 months pregnant! Being an expectant couple was a big hit with all our Indian friends! At last we had accomplished something! In case it turned out to be a girl, we searched and searched for wonderful names, and came up with a sweet name we felt sue no one else would choose: "Jennifer!"