..SouthAsiaRocks..

 At the beginning of October we went on a vacation to Kerala!  Our ultimate destination was the beach, but we wanted to check out the Capital as well, so we spent the first couple of days there (seen in the picture above).  Our awesome friends Keith & Carie met us there!  It was so awesome to see them!  They are awesome friends :) One of the first things we did was go to a famous palace and temple.  The temple is very interesting!!!!  Only Hindus are allowed entry, so we weren't allowed in, but just being outside of it was very interesting.  Everyone that goes inside has to wear either a Sari or a Dhoti .  A sari is what the women are wearing in this picture...a 6 meter piece of fabric wrapped around themselves.  The men are wearing dhotis... A dhoti is a 4.5 meter unstiched piece of fabric that men wrap around themselves (in many different ways) and tie at the waist...  There were stations at the temple where you c...

Wednesday was Diwali  :)  It's an exciting time of year.  For those in America, think of Christmas season... lights, people out shopping and buying things, stores (and markets) full of sales and fun things to buy for loved ones, special TV shows for the holidays, etc...  Diwali is a 5 day holiday but Wednesday (the 3rd day of Diwali) is what people usually refer to as "Diwali".   The first day of Diwali is called Dhantaras.  During this day people honor and worship Lakshmi (the goddess of Wealth).  Purchasing new things - especially in the form of a precious metals like gold or silver - is said to bring good luck and wealth to your family and household for the next year.  The more precious metals and more money you spend, the more luck and wealth you will have.   This is what one store in our little "mall" looked like (there are only a few stores in the mall open now - it's a new mall)... it was PACKED out!  I had so much fun in ...

I'm posting this story on both blogs...  I'm going to tell you a story about one of the scariest days of my life.  I get knots in my stomach just thinking about it, but the story just has to be told!   This past week we went on a vacation to a beach city to south of us.  Our awesome friends Keith & Carie met up with us there and we had a really great time!  One of the days though, we had the scare of our life!   Before I begin this story, let me tell you a little about our hotel room... we were on what we call in America the THIRD floor (In South Asia we would call it the 2nd floor because the ground floor is either called 0 or ground)....  Anyway.... We were about to take the kids to the swimming pool.  They had just gotten up from their naps, and we put their swimsuits on.  The swimsuits were still a little wet from that morning and Aashini kept complaining that she was cold.  We told them to go outside and stand ...