New Friend

Today I met a new friend! I was all set to spend the day relaxing and catching up on work. When I went to the pool to do a little reading and exercising, I got to chatting with a girl about my age from Scotland. She is here for work and the dates of our assignments are almost exactly the same! She was saying the last time she was in Mumbai she met all kinds of people but this time, no one. So of course I responded with, well you can meet me :) She has a ton of restaurant recommendations and tonight we tried out one. It was a beautiful Italian restaurant and infinitely less expensive than the hotel. I should have a lot more choices to show off to my visitor in May. In turn, I was able to share my bakery and produce store finds. The International Relations exercise continues as I expand my reach to Scotland!

P.S. In the spirit of irony, the hotel ran out of hot water today so the pool was actually warmer than my shower. Interesting situation

True Thankfulness

One of the most touching moments I've experienced since I've arrived is singing "Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart" in a church service this last weekend. To watch people that by US standards have little sing that song with passion was beautiful. The service I attended was held in both Hindi and English which was a different experience. The songs we sang were even more varied. We sang songs in 5 languages and even though I didn't understand 4 of them, hearing how the words sounded in song was great.

Holi

Holi is the festival of colors. It is a day full of fun. What happens is everyone throws or smears colored powder on everyone else. While that is going on, people with water guns spray you with colored water. This results in mayhem! The kids were so cute grabbing heaping handfuls of powder. The one in the picture below even had goggles on. I saw him later and he was completely colored except for right around his eyes! The apartments had their own celebration in the courtyard and I'm including a before and after shot of the area. Quite a striking difference! I missed getting lots of color on me because I was going out for brunch and wanted to stay mostly the correct color. However, on the way to the restaurant I got to see how everyone was celebrating. There was a lot of people odd shades of purple and some roads were closed for impromptu dances.

Elephanta Island

I finally visited the infamous Elephanta island. It was worth the trip but not the destination it was built up to be. Actually the most entertaining thing about it was watching the monkeys harass the people. At one point a monkey decided it wanted a bag being carried by an unsuspecting man. The monkey moved in and made a grab but luckily the man was holding on tight. He turned to see what happened and the monkey growled at him! It then made another grab but the man wasn't backing down and I'm glad to say he was able to keep his bag. I'm including a picture of the Indian equavalent of a dog treeing a cat in the states. This situation was also very amusing to me :) The ferry ride to the island was very nice but long! It was 1.5 hours there and another hour back. I did get some nice shots of the Gateway of India and the Taj hotel from the water though.

Cricket

After watching so much cricket during the world cup, I finally got my chance to play. We didn't get to play a whole game but we did get some batting and bowling (pitching) practice in. I went through about 90% of batting practice holding the bat like I would a baseball bat. This, it turns out, isn't even close. You hold it actually closer to a golf club than a baseball bat. Either way, I had a blast! Bowling was especially fun because you have to bounce the ball before it gets to the batsman. I appreciated this because often when I pitch for softball it ends up bouncing and in cricket this is desired behaviour! Overall, I had a blast. The people in the office again showed their hospitality by putting up with a bunch of cricket newbies. I don't have any good pictures of us playing but I'm including my
favorite snap from the day. I've titled it, "How many people does it take to hold a phone?". The back story is that Vishal was holding wickets at the time and the other guys were just helping him out.

Communication Breakdown

My driver and I are starting to get used to each other but we seem to have more problems than successes mostly due to language. I've been trying to get him to take me to a little store called Bread Talk the last two days after work. The first day the conversation went like this...

Andrea: I need to go to Bread Talk, do you know where that is?
Driver: Yes

And then he drove me straight to the hotel.

Then today, I planned ahead and wrote down the name of the shop thinking maybe Bread Talk sounds a lot like hotel. I even tried to direct him this time but we got to the pivotal junction and I said, "turn right here" but we turned left and again drove straight towards the hotel. I tried to navigate him back to the shop but we hit a one way and I gave up. I'm starting to think he may not like Bread Talk.

The second misunderstand was a little more surprising. I talked with another ex-pat to get advice about having a driver. She said some drivers like overtime and working weekends while others don't. I decided to be proactive and ask my driver.

Andrea: Do you like working overtime like nights and weekends.
Driver: Overtime bad.

I thought that was pretty clear so I assumed he would want the weekend off. So today, I told him the next time I would need him was Monday morning. He asked about Saturday and I said, very cheerfully, no you can have the day off. He looked very disappointed and said that's not good. I'm not sure where I went wrong but I'm sure we'll get this worked out.

Car and Driver

Yesterday was the first day I had my own car and driver instead of using taxis and the hotel cars. I'm very lucky to have it but I feel like I'm back at square one not knowing what I'm doing. I'm not sure how my driver gets paid, how long it takes him to get to me, where he goes when I'm at work, etc. I'm slowly piecing information together. I can't ask him directly because he knows limited English but others at work are helping me figure some of it out. On the other hand, my car is totally sweet. It's a fairly new Honda Civic with a decked out dashboard :) I think I've gotten the to and from work drill down but I'm sure I'll have an update about the weekend since I have no idea how that will work!

Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary & Crocodile Farm

I finally got to go on my safari today. We didn't see any tigers but we saw plenty of other animals: 3 types of deer, 2 types of monkeys, wild boar, a fox, crocodiles, a porcupine, peacocks, and a rabbit. We heard elephants but they never came out of the trees. At one point, a troupe of monkeys walked right up to us and then kept going down the road. It was pretty amazing.

We were with another couple from Mumbai on their honeymoon. They were great companions! I'm including a picture of the four of us as well.

We're off to Cochin to fly back to Mumbai tomorrow. It's been a great week away but a lot of traveling!

Kerala

So far Kerala has been fantastic. The space that doesn't exist in Mumbai is all down here. There are large estates and some very large, beautiful houses. We had a terrifying 5 hour drive from the Madurai airport to Thekkady. It took us 2 hours to get out of Madurai and at one point our taxi driving said he was banned from the Thekkady area. This made us feel very save with him. We stopped at his office, to get freon, to get gas and then finally we were on the road. The entire 4 hours was some variation of, we're passing a car and there is a bus coming right at us or that bus is passing someone and coming right at us. All this with no working seat belts! We made it to Thekkady and got to ride an elephant!

Wednesday, it was off to Munnar. We had a much better car and driver for this trip. It took a little over 3 hours and I was car sick most of the time due to all the switchbacks. It was constant curving road but the scenery was worth it. We drove through spice and tea plantations the whole way. I had never thought much about how spices or tea were grown but even if I did, it wouldn't be the reality. The picture I'm including is of a tea field and a picker.

Space

For those of you that have asked, my mom's luggage made it to the hotel about 36 hours after she landed. We fly out tomorrow for Kerala so hopefully all the luggage will make it with us this time.

I got to see something through an other's eyes regarding Mumbai this weekend. There are 15 million people in Mumbai and the people are resourceful. Every square inch of land is used. For example, in the middle of the road, on the median, people string up line to be used for drying clothes. This fact made the fire that swept through a Bandra slum even more sad since there is very little space for them to go. It took the fire truck 25 minutes to reach the area which is not surprising with the amount of traffic on the roads.

Despite that, it's been a fun two days of showing off what I've learned and my daily routine. I'm excited to experience a new state in India and for that matter a completely different region. I've heard southern India is much different than Mumbai which is much different than northern India. I'm sure I'll have much to share from our trip.

Oh, and P.S. I saw the crocodile today :)

Mother

Who can manage to lose her bags, get locked out on a fire escape, surprise the hotel painters and see a crocodile all on her first day? Yup, my mother :) I went to the airport to pick her up and no mother. When her arrival fell off the board I started to get a little nervous. Then when my driver asked, should we try the hotel, I got really nervous. I had visions of my mother wandering Mumbai alone. Finally I got a call from her using the baggage claim worker's mobile. They had lost her bags and she was filling out paperwork. Eventually, she did emerge and we made it back to the hotel. While I was at work, she came up with a plan to get a walk in my exiting one floor via the fire escape, going down a level and walking all the way across the floor to the other fire escape, etc. It wasn't until the door closed that she realized the fire escape doesn't open from the outside! She was eventually able to get in a few floors down where the door wasn't completely shut.

Next, as she was taking a nap in her PJs, she was awoken by painters directly outside her window. After covering up, she waited until their backs were turned before closing the curtains. She did get a fright though.

Finally, on a walk she saw what I have been trying for a month to see, a crocodile in Powai Lake. It was apparently a big one but the water buffalo didn't seem to be afraid nor the people paddling in the lake. One of these days, I hope to see the crocodile myself.