..SouthAsiaRocks..

We're on vacation in the Gulf right now and having a great time hanging out with friends and just relaxing :) Very fun :) More pictures to come :)

We had a great Christmas this year :) This year for Christmas Eve we went to the house of some new friends. They had all the kids in their family and their neighbors over (about 10 kids) and we told the kids (and the parents) the Christmas story (and a few other stories). Many people have started to celebrate Christmas in Capital (by buying gifts for each other and decorating their houses with lights and trees) but most do not know the story of Christmas or why it's important. Here is the Christmas tree at the house we were at on Christmas eve. Notice that the tree is right next to Ganesh (H'ndu god). Diya had fun playing with the girls afterwards :) The kiddos got a 2 seater bike for Christmas. It's a funny thing :) They had fun riding around together :) Even the big kid had fun :) Later that morning we went to Aashini's school for a yearbook photoshoot (more on that another time) and then later that afternoon we went to a friend's house and all ate together...

The city is starting to look a little Christmassy! Every year there seems to be more Christmas stuff out in our city. The malls are crazy-decked out this year! There are plenty of scary Santa masks!! Aashini doesn't seem to be scared of Santa this year... we'll see when she sees someone dressed up in this mask! Santa with blue glasses made me laugh :) The other day I made about 100 no-bake cookies! My friend Erin and I wrapped them up (individually) and put a note on them and gave them out to our friends in another part of the city :) Here's the finished product! :)

Just a few random things that have made me smile recently.... This dog was sticking his head out of a rickshaw and it really made me laugh :) He's probably going to the vet or something like that - but it was so funny to me :) Saw this shirt the other day :) Wanna go with me to "Slorida?" :) This made me laugh :) Pecans are VERY hard to get here. They are imported and extremely expensive!... These were the most crazily priced ones I had ever seen though! In the states they are only 99 cents... but here they cost 350 rps! That is about $7.72 for about 20 pecans! CRAZY! (especially when I know it should cost 99 cents - haha!)

We have some super fun friends that live in our city. They knew we (as well as a few other friends) missed the traditional Thanksgiving meal, so they cooked one for us! (How cool is that!). So last week (I think it was last week... my weeks are starting to run together) we all got together and had a fun Thanksgiving meal. I contributed my mom's famous yeast rolls (that I didn't give justice, but they were still pretty good)... and I made the first Apple Pie I've ever made... It was OK, but it looked pretty :) haha! We played a little Wii (even Diya played :) haha!) The girls had fun together too :) Thanks B & K-Rob for the fun Thanksgiving! :)

Dolls here are typically not so cute! They actually tend to scare me - haha! We saw this fun one in the store the other day :) The bib says: "Happy Baby"... haha! There were actually quite a few "happy babies" :) You could take your pick :) haha! This one freaked me out a little too.... not sure if it's the eyes, or the legs that are bent in a really awkward position! Anyway, those are some funny dolls I've seen lately... more to come :)

On our last day we woke up a little earlier than normal, had breakfast and then got everything ready to head to the train station :) Right before we left, the mountain across from us was covered with mountain goats! It was cool! We had to rush to the train station and we thought we were going to miss our train, but we made it! During the train ride I took a few pictures out of the door (if you haven't ridden a train here before - you can totally open the doors in between cars and hang out and take pictures and whatever else you want to do!). Anyway, you get so see some fun things if you do that, so I took some pictures. I think this village looks really cool :) The lighting was pretty crazy in this picture - I thought it was really interesting. These guys wanted to cross the street but had to wait for our train to pass.... At one point we decided that it would be a good nap time. Diya was a little too excited to nap - haha! Our train stopped at the last stop before the Capital...

On the last morning of the retreat most everyone got up super early to go on a tiger safari! It was early and really cold!!! This picture is blurry, but I thought Diya looked really cute :) We got in our jeeps and lined up at the entrance to the park. We had to sign up ahead of time and bring our passports to the gate for them to check - this was the family waiting next to us :) I love that the baby has on 3 hats! Here we are all lined up! .... and we're off! (another blurry photo - it was still really dark out!). We started off really close together so I was thinking we wouldn't get to see anything... but after a little bit we were all spread out :) This is one of the roads we drove over :) There were rivers everywhere. They took us over a lot of the rivers because that is where tigers tend to hang out. There were a few village houses in the park and there was a small area we stopped at to have chai and snacks. All of those areas were surrounded by electric fences! I...