..SouthAsiaRocks..

It's starting to get hot... the heat started up a little later this year, which is nice, but it's coming on strong now!! Every day it's gotten up about one degree hotter than the next - so it won't be long before we get those wonderful 125 degree days :) Luckily our flat is a lot cooler than the one we had in M-town. In M-town, it was so hot in our flat that our toothpaste melted!! I used to put my pajamas in a ziplock in the freezer during the day so that I would have something cool to put on at night when I went to bed :) . OK, so on our friend's blog the other day they made a list, so I thought I'd copy them and do the same: . YOU KNOW IT'S HOT WHEN... - It's 11 pm and your thermometer still reads 95 F (even though the sun went down 4 hours ago). - It’s hotter to be driving in the rickshaw, than to be sitting still in traffic (because the air is so hot it feels like a blow-dryer blowing in your face) - You decide to take a shower to cool off and find...

Some of our good friends in the states have a son named Drew. Drew sent us his Flat Stanley (or "Flat Drew") for his school project. So we took him along with us this week to the Old part of our city. Here is Flat Drew at a toy store (this store is actually in another market area). Toy stores are different here than in the states... usually a lot smaller and more cramped - but FULL of toys!!!! Aashini had fun looking at everything while we were out. The old part of the city is really cramped and FULL of people, carts, bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, etc. I thought this pic (below) was fun :) Aashini was very popular in the market. People seem to get excited when they see a white baby. They always want to take her picture :) This street (in the picture below) is a very famous street. It's cool because it's a small side street in the middle of the craziness of the old city and it's 9 really cute houses next to each other that are all owned by people of the same ...

Today Emily & I headed over to the old part of the city. We needed to do a few things, and Emily needed a new Sari. Saris are much cheaper in the old part of the city and it's fun! We went to the Sari market... This is the Sari that Emily got. The sales guy tried it on for her to show her how it would look! haha! In the other stores, they let her try it on, but this guy thought he should try it on for her :) haha!! We were looking at some saris in boxes and we found a brand of saris that was pretty funny - see if you can see it... :) This guy (below) was selling bras and underwear - does he look like someone you'd want to buy that stuff from? :) haha! These guys crack me up. You can find them all over the old part of the city. They wear red hats. Their job.... EAR CLEANERS!! They come up to everyone and ask if they can clean out your ears :) haha! They usually have a long metal rod, and a rag. They dig around with the metal rod and then wipe the stuff off on their rag......

OK, so this may not be that exciting to you, but our neighbors have a mango tree!!! Last year, it didn't have mangoes , but this year it does!! They just started growing and they're growing fast! I can't wait! Mango season is quickly approaching! YUM!! Anybody have some good mango recipes? I like to make Mango smoothies... but here's my favorite Mango recipe :) (If you don't have access to mangoes , or don't want to spend the money, Apples work great in this recipe) :) Mango Cobbler Preheat oven to 350 degrees TOPPING ¼ c Flour ¾ c Oats ¾ c Brown Sugar 1 tsp Cinnamon ½ c Butter Optional – chopped walnuts as desired Slice mango fairly thin to cover the bottom of the pan – depending on the amount of mango you want. (if you want apple, do the same thing… peel it if you don’t want peel… and you can also do a mix of mango and apple). I can't remember how long to cook it - I think about 15 minutes :)

This was on the front page of the paper a while back... Check out the guy on the bottom right... does that crack you up too?? :) Front page baby!

Our friends Deepak and family just had a baby :) They had a baby boy and named him Ashish - it means "blessing". Here he is :) He's definitely a cutie! He's only 3 weeks old :) I took this pic this week and I liked it :) thought I'd share... This lady's job is to carry bricks (on her head) from place to place. I love how ladies here will still wear saris while doing hard manual labor! You guys ROCK!!!

So I have a bunch of funny pics that I've been meaning to post... so I thought I'd do so today :) This pic below cracks me up... right above this McDonalds is "The Wellness Store" - it cracks me up every time I see it :) In the pic below you can see the eggs that we normally buy... here there are pretty much two types of eggs you can buy... the cheap ones that most people buy (and you tell them how many you want and they put them in a plastic bag for you - so you have to be careful) and these eggs... we actually like the taste of these better and the stamp on them says "guaranteed against bird flu" so we figured they were good eggs to pick.... But what cracks me up is that on the box of eggs it says that they are "Near Organic"... Not sure what that means - I thought things were either organic or not... Maybe not, but it still makes me laugh :) We got this tomato the other day... it's kinda cute :) I've been meaning to post this pic (bel...