..SouthAsiaRocks..

I bought some of these off this cart the other day... When we first got here, I saw them all around (especially this time of year) and had no idea what they were... Now, I buy them all the time - they're a great snack and fun to cook with... Do you know what they are???....  Water Chestnuts !!!!  It's popularly known as the "Water Fruit" here.  They are those fun white, sliced circle shaped things that are in a stir fry and other dishes :)  Anyway, I had no idea this is what they looked like in their "original" form :) haha!    This is another fruit that I really like... It's bit of a pain to eat, but it's yummy!  This is a Custard Apple!  It's super sweet but has lots of big annoying black seeds haha!  It's really good though and full of Vitamin C :)  (you can tell how sweet it is... if you look closely you can see the bees on it!).

We have a small mall that has opened up in the last 6 months near our house.  It's not full of shops yet (only about 10 stores or so are open) but it has a good mini-wal-mart-like-store and a play area for the kids!   It also has.... Sno Cones (or Shave Ice, Shaved Ice, Snow Cones, etc) :) They are so fun!!!  You can find snow cone type things all over the city, but it's usually made with unfiltered water.... this is made with filtered water! whoo hoo!  It's the little things.... :)

Last week was Guru Nanak's Birthday.  This is a big holiday for Sikhs.  Guru Nanak was the founder of the Sikh religion and the first of their 10 Gurus.  In many ways, this holiday is a celebration of the beginning of Sikhism.  We live in a neighborhood that has a very high population of Sikhs, so our neighborhood is abuzz with all the festivities! The other day (a few days before his birthday), I walked out of my house to see this: It was one of the many parades that took place last week.  We had at least one parade a day for a week!  Some days there were multiple parades.   Since it's an important date then there were also a lot of  weddings as well.  It was quite an exciting week!! Here are some of the kids getting ready for the parade. This is one of the trucks for the parade. There are multiple Sikh Schools in our neighborhood and they each had something to do in the parade. Here are a few of the groups marchi...

So, the other day when we were at the airport about to fly to Kerala, I got to meet two famous people!  I met two of the contestants from Indian Idol Season 5!!!  It's the most recent season that just finished airing.  I met Sreerama Chandra Mynampati (on the right) - he was the Indian Idol Winner! ... and I met Bhoomi Trivedi (the girl on the left) - she was the 2nd place winner!!  Cool hunh? Click HERE to see other famous people we've met while living in South Asia :)   You never know who you're going to run into :)

 Lighthouse Beach is called that because it has a lighthouse on it :) haha!  Here is the lighthouse on the beach :)  We were told you could climb to the top of the lighthouse, so we walked up the hill to see it... There was this door (below) that we walked through to get up... (when we went to walk down, that door was locked and we had to figure out another way to get down - haha!)...  At the lighthouse there was a little playground :)  My girls (especially Diya) LOVE to swing, so they had a great time :)  We decided to climb to the top of the lighthouse... There was a long spiral staircase to get up to the top.  The view on the way up was really great!  There were windows on the way up where you could look out - it was so neat!  Awesome view of Lighthouse Beach!  The view from the window - cool hunh?  Out one side you could see a small peninsula.  It had these 2 mosques at the end of it. ...

After staying at the resort we moved to Lighthouse Beach.  This was a black sand beach - it was so neat!!   One of our new friends lives in that area so he and Adam went surfing!  The water was AWESOME!  The temperature was great and it was so clear!  You can see how clear it is in the pic below... you can see the surfer duck-diving under a wave - so cool! :) Chili peppers and lemons on the beach...  This is Lighthouse Beach.  It's a small crescent shaped beach that I loved!  Here's a nice little man that was selling stuff on the beach :)  This lady was selling fruit... it was fun to get fresh fruit on the beach :)  This beach had a lot of damage from the Tsunami of 2004, but it is all fixed up now!  I had a Lemon Lassi - it was super tart but really good!!!  ... a guy selling drums on the beach... that's a normal thing to sell on the beach right? :)  This is how many of the locals t...