..SouthAsiaRocks..

Ear Surgery!!

2012-02-09T17:00:00.000+05:30

In October (just after our vacation to the beach where Diya fell off the balcony), I got a cold. During my cold my ears started to hurt a lot and my right ear was totally clogged! I looked up every home remedy and I tried them all (just about)... but it stayed clogged and I couldn't hear out of my right ear at all. I figured it would just go away, but it never did. One day I noticed that I was losing my balance a lot more. I knew the ear can mess with your balance so I figured that was what it was.

I started having daily balance problems. Then, after a couple of days, I got my first experience with vertigo. It was horrible... I was nauseous, vomiting and my whole body was spinning while I was laying still (and it lasted 6 hours!!!). After that I decided it was time to go to the doctor. We went in the morning to an ENT and he prescribed some antibiotics. I took those for a few days while still having vertigo just about every evening. During that time I tried out quite a few ENT doctors. One doctor said my vertigo was from using my computer... I was looking up my symptoms online and I have EVERY symptom of Meniere's Disease, but no doctor even mentioned that. At that point I knew that I needed to find a really good ENT. I was having vertigo at least once a day and it was no fun!

Adam remembered about a great ENT that works at a hospital next to our house (he used him for a physical once). He has many inventions that are used around the world and is pretty famous (and is the Prime Minister's ENT!), so we wanted to give him a try! He had another office, so we went to that. I met with him and after I told him my story he said: "I think you have Meniere's Disease. Let's do some tests to confirm and see." I did some ear tests and he said all of my symptoms and everything else was completely typical of Meniere's Disease, and he diagnosed me with that.

He put me on some medication that completely stopped my vertigo!! It was AWESOME!!!! I also had to start a Low-Sodium diet (which is really hard to do!!) But, after a month, I started having vertigo again. This time I was having vertigo episodes anywhere from one to three times a day! They would last anywhere between 1 hour and 6 hours! Anyway, to make a long story short, the doctor would try another medicine, and it would work and then after a while it would stop working again. The only thing that did work were the steroids. He didn't want to put me on them for over a week (because of the side effects) but he also wanted to see if they worked. Well, they did work, so after trying the oral steroids twice and having positive results from those, the next thing to try was steroid injections in my ears (it doesn't have the side effects that taking oral steroids does).... to do that, they had to put a tube/grommet in my ear.

So, on Monday I had the surgery! Here I am right before the surgery :)

This was a minor surgery, but it was my 3rd surgery in South Asia! Crazy hunh? (The other two were c-sections). We "tried out" a new hospital for this surgery. It's the one my ENT doctor works out of and it's only one Metro stop from our house, so it was really convenient. We were really impressed with it (for the most part :))

They took me from my "cubicle" above in "Day Care" (for outpatients) and wheeled me into the pre-op/post-op room. Adam wasn't allowed in, so he took a picture from the door.

These are all "cell phone pictures" so they're not that great :) but here they are wheeling me in....

This picture makes me look like I don't have any fingers, so it makes me laugh!

I was in a "pre-op" room for a while (one surgery before me got complicated), so I had to wait around for a while (about 4 hours)... Luckily I had a fun nurse friend who got my book out of my room so I could read while I waited. We also watched some TV together - it was pretty fun :)

Eventually I went in for surgery. I only had Local Anesthesia, but they did sedate me, so I only remember the first few minutes of being in the operating room. The surgery itself only lasted about 10 minutes. I hung out in post-op for a little while and then they wheeled me back into my cubicle in "day care".

They brought me a Juice Box in Day Care.... I thought that was funny :)

So I got my first steroid injection during the surgery, so the next day I went to my doctor's office and got another injection.... It HURTS!!!! At first I thought it was something that Adam could do at home... I didn't realize that it involved lot of special equipment and a NEEDLE! haha! :)

In this picture you can see the tube.... It's a little gross looking :) You may not be able to tell, but my eardrum is really swollen!

These are all "phone pictures" so they're not that great, but you can see the tube again in this picture :) It is really weird having a hole in my eardrum!!! If I have the hiccups or blow my nose, I can feel air moving through my ear! It's crazy!

I had another steroid injection in my ear yesterday (ouch!!). Since the surgery I have not had any vertigo!!!! Praise G0d!!! My doctor is out of town the rest of the week, so I'll resume the injections on Monday. Please pray that the vertigo doesn't come back between now and then!!! We're going to our friend Mayank's wedding this weekend!!! I'd love not have vertigo for the drive there & back and for the wedding!!!

Thanks everyone for praying!!!!

Funny Things :)

2012-02-04T07:35:00.002+05:30

Laughing always makes me feel better, so I thought I'd post some "funny things" pictures :)

This picture was taken near our house. It's common to see trucks full of people in traffic with you, but this one was REALLY leaning to the left and I thought it was really funny :) A truck full of people is always kinda funny too :)

Adam and the girls like to eat cereal with these big soup spoons. The other I dropped this one and it broke... it seemed pretty funny to me that our Humpty Dumpty spoon broke.... We couldn't put it together again, so we threw it away :)

The other day at the girls' school this lady was picking up her son. He had a big sword poking out of his backpack... not sure what that is for... totally a normal thing to bring with you to school - a big (seemingly real) metal sword :) made me laugh :)

Does anyone know what beard perming is? I'm thinking it probably just means beard dying... but I can totally picture a man in the beauty parlor with curlers in his beard :) haha! That would be awesome!

Clothes Drying & Other Random Things...

2012-01-31T22:20:00.001+05:30

Sorry for the lack of posting... This Meniere's Disease has been killer... ugh!

Anyway... just though I'd post something :) I wasn't sure what to post (I've been in bed with vertigo a lot)... so I thought I'd post something that I see daily...

This time of year there is quite a bit of humidity in the Capital. Since we don't have central heating or AC, the humidity is in the house also ... which means that air-drying clothes can be challenging!

The other day Adam got creative and made a "clothes dryer" for us :)

He put all the wet clothes on our clothes drying rack and then covered it with 2 double sheets and pinning it with clothes pins.

Then we put our blower heater under it... and even have a vent on top (this wasn't a good pin job this day... we've gotten better) :) And there you have it! A (really ugly) Clothes Dryer! :) It works awesome!

And just for fun....

Here's one of the markets next to our house... Adam loves this section of the market - it's a Mobile/Cell Phone Market :)

Hanging around Kathmandu!

2012-01-11T07:19:00.000+05:30

On our second day in Kathmandu, we went to Thamel. It's an area of town that has a lot of shops and fun food places! We all bought new jackets and we ate at a really fun Brick Oven Pizza Place (Roadhouse Cafe). The market was really fun :)

While the girls were napping, I walked around the Stupa during the day to take some pictures.

Tibetan Buddhism is something I haven't really ever seen much of, so it was new and very interesting to see.

Here's a picture of the Stupa from the night before.

It has eyes that go around the whole thing. It felt like it was staring at you the whole time. Aashini said it looked like an Angry Bird.

This lady looked so cool to me.

A lady saying prayers at the Stupa.

A monk feeding the pigeons :)

I took tons of pictures! I'll post more on Facebook in the next few days! We loved our trip to Kathmandu. It's a really cool city!

NEPAL!

2012-01-10T22:05:00.003+05:30

I'm sorry for the lack of blogging! I have been diagnosed with Meniere's Disease and have been dealing with lots of nasty vertigo! ugh! So, we went to Kathmandu, Nepal for a vist this past week! When we flew in, I sat on the left side of the plane and as we descended, I got to sit by the window and snap some pics! The picture below is of the Himalayas! If you look at the highest point in this picture you'll see....

MOUNT EVEREST!!!

Cool hunh?

Another view from the plane :)

Here's a view of Kathmandu from the plane :)

The guesthouse we were staying in was near the Tibetan area of town. We LOVED it! There was a Stupa in walking distance from where we stayed and there were places to eat and shop all around it. It was VERY interesting. The first night we were there was the last day of a holiday, so everyone was out and about :)

This lady has a cute smile :)

There are prayer wheels all around the stupa. This was a big one that I thought was neat.

This area made me feel like I was at Disney World :) It was so fun!

Aashini and I overlooking the Stupa and all the people :)

Another lady with candles near the Stupa.

I have a ton of pictures :) I'm hoping to get them all posted soon :) AND I still have to post Christmas pictures! haha!

Funny Things - Christmas

2011-12-28T22:41:00.000+05:30

At Christmas time it is pretty normal to see people selling "Santa Gear" at the red lights... but the other day I saw something I hadn't seen paired with Santa Hats before... haha! You never know what you'll see... :)

Random Post - Jewelry

2011-12-15T19:01:00.000+05:30

So this is going to be a random post... but I finally found a good way to "store" my jewelry and I thought I'd share :) I found this fun hook thing and hung my necklaces on it. I finally got a bangle stand to put my bangles on too...

I used to store my earrings in a box but I never remembered what I had and I always had to look for the match... NOW, I can see all of them and they stay together! My mom mailed me one of those plastic sheets that you can do cross stitch on (and things like that) and I had it framed without glass!

I know this is random - thought I'd share :) haha!

Funny Things!

2011-12-12T07:59:00.000+05:30

My favorite kind of "Funny Things" pictures are nose picking pictures... this time I caught my own daughter in the pick :)

This picture (below) isn't funny because the restaurant is called "Yo! China" (it's actually a huge chain and pretty good!!!)... I think it's funny because of the huge sign next to it that says "Calories"... it must say something else in the fine print, but I'd say that their advertising scheme is lacking something.... "Come to Yo! China and you can have Calories!!!" :) haha!

We went to the American Embassy School for their Fall Festival and I saw this... it cracked me up :)

This makes me smile every time I see it!! This guy in the advertisement is so happy! I love it! :)

More to come...

In the Mountains! - Thanksgiving 2011

2011-12-07T19:07:00.000+05:30

This year for Thanksgiving we went to the Mountains again :) Our train was 3 hours late leaving... so we spent some time in the train station before getting on the train :)

BUT...we made it!! The air was clean & cool, the sky was blue, the water was awesome... it was fun an relaxing!

We had lots of opportunities to hang out with friends and play!! Here is a pic of a fun game of Frisbee Golf :)

And of course, a Thanksgiving Day Football game!

Here we are eating our Thanksgiving meal :) It was super fun :)

We went on a safari one day. We were looking for tigers. We never saw one, but we saw lot of tiger tracks! In this pic you can see tiger tracks AND peacock tracks! :)

We stopped at a little store in the middle of the safari (that was surrounded by an electric fence!) and when we got out of our jeeps, the monkeys came running in and looked for things to take! One monkey even started eating some of the car!

On our last night we had S'mores! The folks that were there from the US brought marshmallows, Hershey's Chocolate & Graham Crackers!

Our train ride home was uneventful! Last year this same train stopped on the tracks for 4 hours - yuck! and was really late! BUT this year our train was only about 30 minutes late! The kiddos slept for some of the trip... it was pretty easy!

I have a bunch of pictures posted on Facebook - to see them click HERE!

Veggies & Fruit :)

2011-11-21T07:30:00.000+05:30

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!).

Shave Ice!!

2011-11-18T07:30:00.000+05:30

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.... :)

Guru Nanak's Birthday Celebration

2011-11-11T20:55:00.001+05:30

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 marching down the street. Most of the banners and things were written in Punjabi.

These kids were funny. They had these funny little hula hoops that they moved to the beat of the drums.

These kids did the same thing but with what looked like little dumbells :) haha!

I thought these girls were cute.

In one of the parades there was a group of guys doing all kinds of interesting tricks with different things. This boy was spinning a metal spikey ball around - yikes!!! (I also love that he's wearing Converse shoes with his outfit) :)

Some girls dressed up.

This guy was with one of the bands... he had these fun metal maracas :)

This guy was spinning this cool rope thing with beads on the end. It looked like fun :)

At one point towards the end of that parade they had a big water truck come by and they were washing the street. I thought it was the end of the parade, but....

... then this guy came. He had a big horn and was walking barefoot (along with the other guys behind him). After the street in front of him was cleaned, he blew his horn and everyone followed him.

With him were some men with swords and a tractor carrying a copy of their holy book (their 11th and final guru of the Sikhs).

Here are the men with swords... yes, they are real!

Indian Idol!!!

2011-11-10T15:04:00.000+05:30

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 :)

The Lighthouse

2011-11-09T15:26:00.000+05:30

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. They had calls to prayer that were super loud and you could hear them from REALLY far away!

When you got to the top of the stairs you then had to climb up a steep ladder to get to the top. Here are Adam and Diya at the top :)

Here are Aashini & I.... Let me just say that going to the top of a TALL tower that you could totally fall off of was NOT the best thing for a mom to do just 2 days after Diya fell off the balcony.... Can you see the death grip I have on Aashini's wrist... not to mention the look on my face? haha!!

GREAT views of the beach - so neat!

It was super windy at the top and the view was so awesome!

Here is the lighthouse at night... it's a working lighthouse - so cool!

Lighthouse Beach Fun!

2011-11-08T18:41:00.000+05:30

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 took to the beach... in traditional clothes :)

I think the black sand is so cool!! The area where the waves hit was tan/red sand but if you dug under it (just an inch or so) it was black - it was so cool! The black sand really sparkled too! It was SUPER HOT in the sun though - OUCH! You had to wear your shoes on the beach when it turned about noon - HOT!

The restaurants on the beach were awesome! It was so fun to sit and look at the water while you ate! Fun!

This guy was cracking me up... I think he was wearing a dhoti... but it just didn't look right! :)

... another view of the beach :)

It was really beautiful! We loved it!

Here is a full view of Lighthouse Beach. The beach past Lighthouse beach is the public beach I posted a picture of a few days ago. There is a bib piece of land that sticks out and past that is the beach where we were at when we were at the resort... All the other beaches are red sand but Lighthouse was black sand... pretty interesting...

These guys were coming back from getting mollusks.

This is an area where they get lots of mollusks in the mornings. It's so pretty! :)

We never ate here, but definitely wanted to take a picture here :)

The beach ROCKED!

Kerala - FISHING!!!!

2011-11-04T17:03:00.000+05:30

This was probably the most interesting part of being on the beach in Kerala for me! Every morning these guys would go out on the beach and fish. I had never seen fishermen fish like this before! I first walked out to the beach and saw a rope with some men holding on to it. I was intrigued and watched for hours. I tried to figure out what kind of fishing they were doing and I'm still a little unsure, but I think they are using dragnets....

Anyway, at the beginning there were two lines of guys holding on to two ropes that were VERY far apart. I didn't know they were connected to the same net until much later in the morning.

As the morning went on, one of the guys (seemed like a senior guy that was in charge) went out in the water to check on the status of the fish and nets and to start "organizing the net".

It's hard to see in this picture, but this is later in the morning but you can see how huge the net is and how spread apart the net is... the little white dots in the water are the floating part of the net.

Here is one of the lines of guys pulling the net. This was more of the "holding the net" stage. They weren't really pulling, only holding it in place - I think waiting for the fish to get in the net.

This is the other line of guys holding the ropes. It takes a LOT of guys to do this - it was amazing the teamwork and brute strength it took to pull these nets in!!

After a while the "swimmers" went out and started to gather the net while the others held the rope on the beach. The guys in the water would shout out reports to the men on shore about the amount of fish and things like that. The men on shore would cheer! They also had some organized chants they would do when it was time to pull the nets or stop. It was REALLY cool to listen to!

After the guys start to gather the net, the guys on shore start to pull the net in.

They brought the net closer and closer together....

... until it was totally together...

Then they really started to pull it all in! They timed their "pulling" with the waves to make it easier - it seemed sooooo heavy!!!!

More pulling :)

Here is the net after they pulled it in (it's the brown below... it kinda looks like sand)....

Here is the net full of fish (and TONS of jellyfish!).

After that I went to eat breakfast.... so a couple of days later we were staying off of another beach and I got to see what happened next in the process....

They then open the nets and start sorting the fish... you can see all the jellyfish! These jellyfish were weird. They didn't have much stinging power. You could touch them and even pick them up and you couldn't really feel their sting. Their stings just kinda felt itchy... which is nice since they were everywhere!

Here is one pile of the fish that were sorted - anyone know what kind of fish these are?

After they were sorted, they were being bought and sold. Once they were sold they were put into buckets of water and carried off. You can see squid in this picture...

It was interesting to watch. The "money guy" had money rolled in between his fingers and was shouting and yelling and dealing. There were also little tiny fish (like minnow or sardine size) that seemed to have been left and some poor people were pulling them out of the sand and putting them in bags. It was very interesting! I learned a lot! :)

Kerala - Beach Time!

2011-11-02T17:24:00.000+05:30

We spent most of our time in the city of Kovlum. It was a GREAT vacation spot!!! It was beautiful and relaxing! It was a definite beach town! We really loved it and plan on going back sometime!!

One of our favorite restaurants was "Area 51" :) We ate there a couple of times ;)

Adam & Keith :)

I saw these guys walking down the street one day... it kinda cracked me up to see 3 guys in matching suits walking down the street in a very beachy area :) haha! After leaving Area 51 it made me think of Men in Black :)

We stayed at this AWESOME resort!! It had 3 pools... We actually never swam in this one but it's the only one I got a pic of :) haha! I have pics of us IN the other pool though (more pics to come). This pool had a restaurant in it... you could eat in the pool! (you can see the chefs in the little hut connected to the pool)... The resort was really great!

This was the beach! It was really interesting!!! The orange sand was very different. I've never seen an orange sand beach before :)

The beaches were divided into different coves. It wasn't one long beach, but a cove. It was cool! Here's my rockin' friend Carie :)

This is at Area 51 ... you can see the stuff on the wall :)

It was fun to hang out with our fun friends ;)

Keith got this Kerala Fried Chicken

One beach over from ours was a public beach - it was a totally different atmosphere! haha! Look at all the people!!! :)

On our last night at the hotel, the hotel put on a show with some Keralan dancers.

It was fun to watch them do kathak dancing!

Kerala!

2011-10-31T16:52:00.000+05:30

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 could rent a Sari or a Dhoti if you didn't wear one.

In this picture in the distance you can see the temple. The line was SUPER long!!! It was a big holiday (Dusshera) and everyone was going to the temple for the holiday. On the left of this picture is part of the palace! We went on a tour of the palace. It was really neat! We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so I don't have any pictures, but they had a so many cool things - a crystal throne & and ivory throne and lots of other things! The royal family had tons and tons of jewels and wealth! One of the stories they told us in the palace was that the king would weigh himself every year and give his weight in gold to the people! They had a lot of gold (more on that to come...).

Here are more people in line :)

Here is the temple entrance (the temple is in the back). I wasn't supposed to take pictures up close, so I didn't really get any - the security was very tight here (more on that to come...)

OK, so here is the temple. It's called the Padmanabhaswamy Temple. This is where it gets interesting... The temple and the assets inside below to "Lord Padmanabhaswamy" and are controlled by a trust that is run by the Royal family. In January the Kerala High Court ordered the temple and its assets be managed by the state. The Royal family have challenged that decision in the Supreme Court. This past June, the Supreme Court ordered that the secret chambers of the temple be open for inspection.

The temple has 6 vaults. Some have been opened from time to time, but two of them haven't been opened in a long time. They Supreme court directed that those vaults be opened for inventory of the articles inside. When they went inside they found gold and jewels. There were coins from Napoleon's era, golden statues, rubies, emeralds - all kinds of treasure!! ONE, just ONE of the precious stones inside of the vault was worth $10 million dollars!!! If you DON'T take into count the antique value of everything inside, the items in just that one vault are worth over $26.76 BILLION!!!!!!!!! If the antique value is taken into account then those assets could be worth ten times the current market price!!! WOW!!!!!

They have decided to postpone opening the last vault. The vault's chamber is sealed with an iron door with the image of a cobra on it. It hasn't been opened because there is the belief that opening it would result in much misfortune.... I wonder what is inside!!!!!!!!!

One thing that Kerala is famous for is it's "backwaters". We didn't end up going on a backwater tour, but we went on a speedboat tour - it was fun!

The driver guy kept swerving all around and freaked me out some :) haha! but it was fun :)

We saw a few houses and other interesting things on our tour.

After our tour we went to this beach area. There wasn't anyone there so it was a little weird. They were fixing things up and painting while we were there. Monsoon was just ending and they are preparing for the "on season" :)

These little table areas were cute :)

The sand at these beaches was orange. It was very interesting! We saw this old temple on the beach (at least that's what I think it is... maybe it's just a cool looking old shelter thing...I couldn't find any info on it). It looked cool!

The waves were pretty high!!! People were on the beach watching the waves - it was really fun to see!

DIWALI!

2011-10-27T16:40:00.000+05:30

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 it... it's kinda like shopping on the day after Thanksgiving - it's awesome! :) haha!

Day two of Diwali is called Choti Diwali (little Diwali). Our local market was so fun and buzzing with activity! Many people were out buying diyas (oil lamps - seen below), sweets, flowers, gifts and firecrackers!

The whole center of the market was full of people selling marigolds. People will have marigolds and mango leaves somewhere in their house for Diwali.

On Diwali we went to the market in the neighborhood over from us. It's a super fun and HUGE market!

This guy (below) drove by the marigold cart and picked up some flowers, hung them on his handle bars and drove on... :)

This is our local market (just a few feet from our house) on Diwali night.

More of our local market... the night of Diwali many people are getting last-minute things like sweets & firecrackers :)

This picture isn't that great but if look closely you can see a man with a big bag full of cotton. The cotton is used for wicks in the diyas. You take a little clay diya and put mustard oil (or other oil) in it. Then you take some cotton and roll it into a wick, put it in the oil and light it!

Many of the business owners in the market did worship at their shops as well as at their homes. The candles are lit for the goddess Lakshmi.

Our downstairs neighbor put their candles around the outside of their house. This candle seemed a little dangerous :) haha!

Most people have rangolis (decorated designs) at the entrance to their house.

This is what a typical middle class house will look like on Diwali... Lights, candles or diyas, rangoli, merigold & mango leaves.

These neighbors have REALLY LOUD fireworks that they've been shooting off for weeks... it's funny though, on Diwali night they didn't set off that many... maybe they used them all up before Diwali :) haha!

Diwali night is FULL of firecrackers!!!!! They go off all night long!!!

These are our upstairs neighbors :) They were having a lot of fun "bursting crackers" :)

The view from our roof is AWESOME! I couldn't really capture it in pictures, but you could see the firecrackers going off all over our area of the city!!! It was awesome!

It's a fun (and LOUD) night :) It's pretty exciting :) haha!

A Very Scary Day....

2011-10-11T07:47:00.000+05:30

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 on the balcony and we would grab the sun screen and bring it out there and put it on them. As I was getting the sunscreen, I hear a "THUD" and then hear Aashini scream: "Diya!"... We run outside and look over the balcony... I see Diya laying face down on the ground - not moving.

A lady that was in the hotel room on the ground floor ran out. She heard the sound (and it woke her husband up from his nap) and wanted to see what it was (she though it was some coconuts or something). At this point Adam is sprinting down the stairs to her and I'm yelling down to the lady (Fiona) that my husband is on his way down. Diya starts to try to get up, so Fiona picks her up. I grab Aashini and run downstairs as well.

The area our balcony looks over was really hard to get to unless you have a ground floor. Adam ran around to the side and jumped over a wall to get over there, while Fiona went through her room into the middle lobby area of the building we were in to find us. Adam got to the outside area and Diya wasn't there, so he ran through Fiona's room into the lobby area. There he was able to get to Diya about the same time Aashini and I reached them.

At that point we ran with Diya & Aashini to the doctor's office at the resort. There were some American doctors there for the week, so we ran to them. They did a quick look-over of Diya. Her right arm was covered in red mud/dirt and her right side (rear-end & leg) was red. She seemed to be able to move her arms just fine, but wouldn't stand up and was crying a lot, so we weren't sure if something was wrong with her hip or leg area.

So we rushed her to the hospital. Aashini was super freaked out at this point, so Adam took Diya to the hospital and I kept Aashini at the hotel. Right as we were leaving the doctor's office and Adam was headed to the hotel car that was going to take him to the hospital, our friend Karen was at the pool. Aashini had been wanting to swim with her, so it was perfect timing. Karen was a life-saver and watched Aashini while I grabbed some things in the room to bring to Adam in the car (and for about an hour after that while I sat by the pool talking with Adam on the phone).

He rushed Diya off to the hospital. I then went to Keith and Carie's room and told them what had just happened. We prayed and Keith left and went to the hospital to be with Adam and Diya. It was really hard not to be with them at the hospital, but Aashini didn't need to be at the hospital and she really needed me. She was dealing with it in her own kid way. It came in waves. She kept saying: "Diya fell. Why did Diya fall? I couldn't catch her. I couldn't catch her". We talked about it a lot and talked it though and told her it wasn't her fault, but it was still really hard on her. She was worried about Diya.

Adam went to the first hospital which was super small and they sent him on to the larger hospital in the capital city (just about 20-30 minutes away). They looked Diya over and then gave her a sedative so that they could do x-rays and a CT Scan on her head. The sedative made her hyper! She was running all around the emergency room and singing (this made me so happy!!! Her bones seemed fine, so now we just had to make sure there wasn't anything wrong in her head). Eventually they gave her more sedative and she fell asleep.

They did the X-rays of her spine and the CT Scan. We got the results back and there was NOTHING WRONG! Diya was perfectly fine!!!!!!!!!!! She fell from the 3rd floor balcony and nothing was wrong!!!!!!! She didn't have a cut, scrape, bruise or bump!!!!! NOTHING!!!!

Praise God! He totally protected Diya!!!!! I will share this story over and over again about how God protected our little girl. She fell from the 3rd floor balcony and didn't get a scratch or a bruise! God protected her!!!! Thank you God!!!

Here is the balcony. The balcony (except the one side) is fully covered with glass. For most of the time we were staying there, we had a towel over the far end (with the X) so we didn't realize what a hazard it was! In the few seconds that she was out there by herself, she fell through those holes! Do you see how high up it is??? We are at the tops of the trees??? WOW! I kept looking down and thinking that if I fell I KNOW I would have broken something!

The is the ground where Diya fell. Right where those two holes are is where she landed. She was just a few inches from both concrete walls!!!

Here is Diya at the hospital trying to fall asleep. She had her swimsuit on when we did her exam at the resort with the American doctors, but Adam took her with just the beach towel... so that's all she had! Poor thing! When Keith left to go to Adam, my brain was not working well, so I didn't send him with anything! Keith was a super hero though! He got Diya some diapers, milk, cup, straws & biscuits (crackers)) all in a country he doesn't know in a language he doesn't know!

Here is Diya asleep getting her CT Scan.

This isn't our balcony, but it's the same balcony on the other side of the building. It was over 20 feet off the ground!! We took this picture so you could get an idea... The arrow is pointing to the balcony and on the ground you can see little Diya... just to see the perspective.

Diya got home that night around 10:00 pm! Wow! Here's a picture of her the next day :) We've always called her "Bam-Bam" and she is REALLY living up to that name!!!! She keeps talking about what happened and says: "Fell down and 'BONK'" She still talks about it some. When she saw this blog post, she recognized the balcony and started talking about it.

Here is Aashini the next day too :) She was so worried about Diya and had a really hard time going to sleep that night without her there. She was soooooo happy when Diya was there when she woke up!

I am soooo thankful for this miracle that happened in our life this past week! Thank you Jesus!! :) Whoo hoo!!!!

Check out this awesome Bible Story about a boy that fell from a 3rd floor window! - Click here to read

Adam's Birthday

2011-09-29T21:25:00.000+05:30

Adam's birthday was a couple of weeks ago (I know I'm really behind!)... We hung out with some friends, the boys played a little basketball while the girls watched the kids at the play place... and we ended it with dinner :) Adam got a special desert after dinner :)

Aashini was so excited for Adam when we sang Happy Birthday... she thought it was Awesome!! :)

Funny Things????

2011-09-21T21:06:00.000+05:30

So I"m not sure if this qualifies as a funny thing or not :) but it did make me laugh ....

The other day we walked out to our car and saw this... FOUR red stamps along the side of our car...

Now, it wouldn't be a big deal if I could easily wipe it off, or wash it off... but it wouldn't come off!! I scrubbed and scrubbed but it didn't even smear!

The thing that made me laugh is that the stamp was about electing and supporting a political candidate. I don't know about you, but I don't think that's the best way to win votes :) haha!

We got them all off a few days later with some wax and some elbow grease... It's not super funny, but it did make me laugh :) haha!

Agrasen ki Baoli (Agrasen's Well)

2011-09-12T21:09:00.002+05:30

The other weekend we went out looking for Agrasen ki Baoli (Agrasen's Well). We like to see and discover new things in our city - it's so fun! :) We knew about this place. We had seen pictures of it, heard about it and knew it wasn't too far from our house, so when we had a little bit of time one Saturday we decided to find it :)

We found the road leading up to it and saw some people just hanging out at the end of the road :) It looked like they were having fun :)

Then we found it! This well is an old step well. There are no historical records to show who built it, but it is said that it was built by King Agrasen. It was said to have been rebuilt and fixed up again in the 14th century but since there aren't any historical records, so it is unknown as to how old it actually is.

We walked in and there it was! You can see the sky scrapers in the background! It is so crazy to be in the middle of our big crazy city and see this:

Aashini loved it!!! Diya was a little scared to be on the steps without Adam though :)

Aashini loved exploring! She kept telling us that she was brave :) haha! It was cute :) The water used to be so much higher! With all the construction in the city the water level has dropped a TON! In the 80s you could jump off the top into the water!

I was taking pictures as they first ventured down ... Adam took a picture of me with his phone... Now I can show proof that I was there :) haha!

Aashini loved exploring in the sides of the well and going in the dark rooms where all the bats were. The girl LOVES Bats and Bugs!! haha!

There were TONS of bats!!!! Look at them all!!!

Here's a view from the back :) Look at all those stairs!

In the very back, there is a deeper part of the well (that we couldn't see very well). It had some water in it, but it was still VERY dry!

These pigeons made me smile :)

It was a fun trip :) It's fun to explore our city :)

Eid 2011

2011-09-04T21:09:00.000+05:30

Eid was celebrated last week. Eid is the celebration of the end of Ramadan - Go here for more info.

It's always fun to see the energy and excitement around town on major holidays :) Here's Aashini outside one of the local mosques.

This guy (below) kept wanting his picture taken but kept making this scary face when I pulled up the camera :) haha!

I eventually caught him smiling :) haha!

Here are the girls hanging out ;)

I like people pictures, so here are a few pictures of people that were visiting one of the local mosques.

This kid was interesting to me. He made some intense faces.

For big holidays everyone gets dressed up. It's hard to tell in this picture, but this kid was so cute in this super shiny outfit! (the pants were super shiny too but it's hard to tell in this picture).

These guys were super excited and kept talking about what foods they had for breaking the fast :)

Riding on Cycle Rickshaws around town :)

There was a carnival next to a really old fort. It was kinda funny to see them next to each other.

These kids were trying to decide what rides they wanted to go on :) They were cute :)

That's just a few Eid pictures :) Thought I'd share ;)

Guys Trip :)

2011-08-30T14:39:00.005+05:30

I haven't posted this week because it has been a CRAZY week! Adam and some of the guys we live near went on a trekking guys trip. They went way up North in the Himalayas. It was a really cool trip! He's going to blog about it later :) While he was gone things got crazy over here - doesn't always seem to happen that way??? Everything was breaking! The electricity to our flat broke (not our neighbors...just mine).... our inverter (battery back up) broke.... our water filter broke... our house was filled with a swarm of flies (it was like the plagues were on me - they were insane!) and a bunch of other things! It was crazy!!! Anyway, here are a few pictures - I'll post more from him soon :)

Funny Things!!

2011-08-17T22:44:00.008+05:30

I haven't done a "funny things" post in a while, so I thought it was time :)

I have been meaning to post a picture like this for years but finally did today! I love it when the red lights say: "Relax" :)

This sign just makes me smile! This is an Elephant-Free Zone!

...and if you look closely to the background of the picture above you'll see this sign as well... haha!

I think this is supposed to be a painting of Mickey Mouse... what do you think?

I'm sure I've posted a picture like this before, but I'll never get tired of or quit laughing at some of the funny wiring methods :)

On my way to the metro station the other day I saw this. Made me laugh... not sure why this guy had a whole bunch of plastic deer on his bicycle :) haha! You never know... :)

Protesting

2011-08-16T21:08:00.006+05:30

There's some political stuff going on in our city (and now the country) right now. People are peacefully fighting against corruption. It's been very interesting to follow. Tonight there was some protesting in our neighborhood.

Here are some more protesting pictures. There will probably be more protesting to come... we'll see what happens!

Temples

2011-08-05T16:15:00.000+05:30

Before we went to the US, I took some pictures outside of a very famous temple that isn't very far from our house. I thought this little boy walking around the temple grounds was really cute :)There were lots of people outside of the temple begging. They sat in organized rows and people brought them food and money.
This temple has a lot of shoe stations where you can give your shoes to someone to watch while you're in the temple.... it's hard to see in this picture but there are a bunch of them.
The last time I was there, there were a ton of blind beggars all sitting together.
Here they are again. All of the people sitting in this area were blind. People would come and bring them food and money.
There are a couple of temples in this complex, but the one that is the most famous is the Hanuman Temple. Hanuman is the monkey god in H'nduism. There were a few people walking around dressed like him. This guy was asking for money as well.
I thought his tail was quite interesting...

More Metro Fun :)

2011-08-02T17:20:00.003+05:30

Here's a picture I took at the metro the other day :) It was a pretty full train :) Imagine trying to get off the train while those people are trying to get on! haha! It's pretty amusing! :)

The View From our Metro :)

2011-07-31T19:53:00.008+05:30

We live about a five minute walk from the metro station (like a subway but it's both above and below ground in different parts of the city). It's awesome! Our house is in a great location! Anyway, the other day I was waiting for the metro and took a few pictures from the metro station :)

Here's a market area next to the metro station:
Here's the street below...
Here's a guy selling roasted corn on the street - YUM! They cook it straight on the coals!
... and here's the metro station! :) Nice hunh?

Mega Store!!!!

2011-07-28T16:56:00.001+05:30

We have a new mall near our house!!! It's only 2 metro stops away from our house!!! It's not very big and only has 2 open stores in it right now, but it's AWESOME!!! One of the stores is a "mega store" (like a small Wal-Mart)! It's so fun and modern! They even have those fun shopping carts for kids with the cars!! It is awesome!! (can you tell I'm excited!?)

America - Fun Friends

2011-07-25T19:46:00.002+05:30

We got to see a lot of fun friends while we were in America! I got pictures with only a few of them (need to do better with that next time!) :) but thought I would post some of them :)

This is my friend Priya :) She's from South Asia so it's always fun to see her when we come into Tally :)

The girls had fun fun playing together... this picture makes me laugh because Diya looks sooooo huge!We had a super-fun intern reunion! (more pictures here on facebook). We always have so much fun :)

We have a bunch of kids between us all now! haha! :) This was our attempt at getting all the kids in the picture :) There are 11 kids in this picture (You probably can't see little Levi... Aashini is holding him - she was so proud to get to hold the baby!!!!)

This is my friend Annie! I was so excited to get to see her and her fun family! This is a picture she took and I loved it, so I'm posting it too :)

Here are our kids (minus two) :)We got to see our friends Mike & Cari.... we have picture with them on their camera that I still want to get, but here are pics of our kids :) Fun!This is my awesome friend Erin! We met, hung out and worked together in South Asia while she was there and she's now in the US. We got to see each other when we were in Virginia - this picture cracks me up :)In Virginia Aashini had sooooo much fun! She got to go to a fun class for a week and make some super fun new friends! This is her fun friend Victory :)This is Victory's mom :) Susan is my fun new friend :)This is a fun friend from college :) I got to see Betsy when we were in Orlando :)In Orlando we also got to see our fun friends Ish & Beatriz :) We met Ish the first time in Thailand! Fun hunh?This is Rahul - Annie's husband :) We got to visit him at his work one day when we were in Tampa :) It was so fun to see him!I got to see one friend I haven't seen in a while! We've known each other and have been friends since Elementary School!! Our moms worked together for a while, and we used to live around the corner from each other. One summer we were on a bicycle trip together and had a big accident together (& shared a hospital room!). Here we were in middle school :)She teaches school in Georgia now and she was in town and we got to see each other! It was fun!! It was fun to see all of those fun friends (plus so many others that we didn't get pictures with!!!) It was awesome!!!

Saturday Night :)

2011-07-23T23:04:00.002+05:30

Just a typical Saturday night at the mall!! :)

Funny Things - American Edition :)

2011-07-17T16:30:00.001+05:30

I saw a lot of things that really made me laugh while in America. This first one was by far the funniest things we saw there. We laughed forever when we saw this van... You can see very well in this picture but the windows are full of crazy stuff.... but the thing that makes this van funny is the sign on the side....

It says "The Quintessential Genetic C.O.D.E, C.O.D.E and C.O.D.E. of Empathy Mobile" - haha!! We have no idea what this is or what it means... but it was so funny and random!There were definitely some funny clothing things that made me laugh.... these boys shorts for example... the 80s are totally coming back... yikes!This lady's hat definitely made me smile :)This made me laugh too :) The bag of popcorn seeds said: "100% Whole Grain"... haha! Yes, it is a whole grain - duh! haha! it made me laugh :)This one was crazy to me!! So many people use the ER as a doctor's office because of insurance (or lack of it), that there is always a long wait at the Emergency Room. There were signs all over the interstate that said how long the wait was at their ER... that was crazy!Veggies in America tend to be MUCH bigger - this red onion was so big to me!!This one made me laugh :) We were up in Tennessee at my grandmother's house and we were trying to clean some things out. Adam and my dad decided to tackle the deep freezer.... they found some funny things. This one was the funniest to me... Some shredded zucchini from 1978!!!!!!! That's the year I was born!! haha! Hilarious! We kept betting each other to eat some but nobody was brave enough :) haha! I love funny things :)

HapPy 4th of July! 2011

2011-07-05T06:50:00.018+05:30

HaPpY 4th of JuLy!

We started the morning off with Chick-Fil-A!! It was fun :) Aashini LOVED the cow!!Diya LOVES playing at "play places" :)We had some Ice Cream to start off the day :)They had crafts and things for the kids :) Aashini and the cow really hit it off :) She showed him her craft and he told her he liked it and she was super happy :)Diya liked the cow from a distance :)The cow wanted to come along with us :) He got in our trunk :) haha!!We went to Lake Ella afterwards :) Adam & the girls in a tree :) haha!Diya had fun feeding the ducks :)After naps we went to Tom Brown Park for the festivities :) We ran into an old friend - Todd (or Taco as i called him :)).

Aashini got a balloon that she LOVED!!!She accidently let go of it....

She was upset.... (don't worry, we got her another one :))Tom Brown has a fun park to play at too :)It was a fun day! Hope everyone had a happy 4th of July!!

America - New Orleans / Slidell / Pearl River

2011-06-15T06:41:00.016+05:30

This past weekend we spent some time with some awesome friends in New Orleans/Slidell/Pearl River. We stayed with our friends George & Carrie - they are awesome!

We went down to the French Quarter on Saturday morning. We haven't been there in a while - It was fun :)

The French Quarter always has fun stuff around :)

Aashini liked the view from the top the best :)

We had some yummy Muffalatas for lunch!! Yum!!

We were there during the Creole Tomato Festival, so there were some fun extra things there (like this balloon lady) :)

French Market!

We got some yummy Slidell Snowballs :)

We got the girls Strawberry - Clear ... doesn't stain the clothes! haha!

Aashini loved it :)

We went to Northshore Church on Sunday and got to see some fun friends (and missed seeing a few too) :) It was soooo good to get to go to Northsore and see everyone!! LOVE that church!!!!

It was a fun trip :)

America - Tennessee - Knoxville

2011-06-09T17:34:00.015+05:30

This past week we went to Gatlinburg, but we also went to Knoxville to visit family. Aashini & Diya had a great time playinig with their cousins :)

My Aunt Melinda has soooo many toys at her house! Diiya called her house the "play place".

This is my Uncle Reggie pulling the kids around :)

We got to visit with my grandmother quite a few times while we were up there. Aashini was loved holding her hand. It was sweet.

Here's Diya with my Great Aunt Violet. She just recently turned 90! Awesome!

While we were there I got to go to a baby shower for my new cousin :)

Adam & I with my cousins and their wives and our kids :)

My Aunt Melinda made TONS of deserts while we were there. One desert she made was Bread Pudding made with KRISPY KREME donuts (instead of bread!)!!!!!!! Crazy! It was super sweet! (and yummy too!) :)

Here are some more cousins :) The kids definitely had fun! :)

Then we were back on the road again... We're off to New Orleans/Slidell next weekend! :)

America - Tennessee - Gatlinburg

2011-06-08T08:15:00.015+05:30

After a ton of driving we made it to the Smokies for a couple of days in Gatlinburg before going to visit our Tennessee family.

Here's Adam stretching after a long car ride :)

While staying in Gatlinburg we went on a hike in Sugarlands in the Smokies. It was a short hike but the perfect length for the kids. There were signs about the different plants and trees at the begining of the hike and Aashini loved it - she "read" every sign!

We could even bring the stroller on most of the trail - awesome :) (Diya is quite heavy!)

Aashini's favorite part was playing in the creek. She fell in once and got wet and really had fun :) She even found a quarter in the creek (maybe from the last person that fell in - haha!).

...just a little wet :)

This makes me laugh :)

We walked around the strip in Gatlinburg (love that place :) haha!). Aashini got to push the big huge rock in front of Ripley's Believe it or Not :)

We went into one of the arcades and found a few games that had credits, so we got to play a few games for free. We won enough tickets to get Aashini some teeth :) haha!

Here's Aashini enjoying a local band playing on the strip :) It was a fun trip!

More to come on ths trip and I'll post more pics on Facebook :)

America - Orlando!

2011-05-26T06:01:00.026+05:30

I'm slow in posting, but here are some pics from our visit in Orlando to visit Adam's dad and brother (Notice that everyone in the pic below has blue eyes!! :))

Aashini found some rings one day and put them on all of her fingers :)

The girls had fun rocking out with all the awesome musical equipment that Adam's dad and bro have! Diya was serious about drumming! She loved it!!!

Aashini loved the drums & keyboard, but her favorite by far was the microphone!! She would sing and talk into it as long as we would let her - haha!

... a little fun in the crazy daisy sprinkler :)

We got Sean to push the stroller in the mall :)

We sang some karaoke one night - Adam really got into it :) haha!!

One night we went to Chuck E Cheese's. For the first time in her life Aashini was NOT afraid of the character in the costume - she ran up to Chuck and gave him a big hug and a high-five!

Aashini's favorite game was the Stinky Feet game... at the end of the game it let off a stinky smell - haha! She wanted to play it over and over!

You can see the progression below... Diya was excited to see Chuck... She ran up to him with her arms out... when she got to him she had 2nd thoughts and came running back pretty scared. She went back up to see him when Adam was holding her though :)

Look at this HUGE pizza!!!

One night we went to this fun dancing musical fountain. Aashini had sooo much fun!

Aashini made a little friend (in the pic below) - she had a lot of fun with him. When the fountain started up she thought it was awesome!

One day we went over to Lego Land in Downtown Disney.... the dragon and stuff in the pic below is ALL made of Legos!

Blurry family photo someone took for us :)

I was wearing my Mr. Potato Head shirt... so I had to get a picture with him :)

Aashini & Diya wanted to get their pic with Cinderella :)

Over the weekend we went camping. Adam's dad just recently got a pop-up camper - it was great!

Aashini got a new Rapunzel Doll from her friend Eden and I braided her doll's hair... so then Aashini needed her hair braided too :)

Diya loved the swings at the campground :)

The girls had fun playing in the dirt, playing at the spring, playing at the playground and all over the camp site :)

The girls had fun camping!!

Diya was super dirty most of the weekend ;) haha! This picture cracks me up :)

We had a great time in Orlando :)

America - DeLand

2011-05-16T23:03:00.013+05:30

We just got back from spending some time in DeLand with Adam's mom. Here are a few pictures from our time.

We went to the beach one day. They girls had fun with the sand! Aashini called it the desert :) haha!!

Daytona has hard packed sand and you can drive on parts of the beach. You can also pull wagons :)

Adam got to play basketball one day :)

We watched a soccer (football) game one morning. Aashini had fun with the soccer balls :)

... Diya was more into the athletes :) haha! We'd better watch out for this one!!!

Here's Aashini going for a walk one day :) (as you can see, Diya is busy doing some phone business on the walk) ;) haha!

One night we went and watched Adam's mom dance at a restaurant.

One of the days we went to Tampa and visited Adam's grandparents.

Aashini got to visit the dentist office that Adam's mom works in.

Dr. Pittman even looked inside Aashini's mouth :)

She had fun :)

If you want to see more, I havemore posted on Facebook :)

CAKE!

2011-04-25T19:58:00.004+05:30

We have a very busy night market on Fridays in our neighborhood. It's really fun :) I love walking around in it :) The other night I saw something different in the market. It was a cart full of cake!!! You could buy slices of cake or cake in a cup (cupcake?) and they would put it in a plastic bag for you to take with you!!

I thought that was so cool!! How fun is that!?

You never know what you're going to see on the streets! :)

CRICKET!

2011-04-21T17:15:00.001+05:30

This week we went to see a Cricket Match :) Aashini hadn't been to a game since her first one (http://southasiarocks.blogspot.com/2008/05/cricket-rocks.html)... she didn't like it so much back then - every time people would cheer, she would cry and scream! This time (a couple of years later) she had a TON of fun!

We weren't sure how Diya would do, but she clapped and cheered along with everyone! She had a lot of fun too! ;)

They both did a little coloring durin the game as well :)

These pics aren't very great - I wasn't allowed to bring my camera into the stadium, so these are all taken on my phone :) Anyway, this picture makes the laugh... this was the half-time mosquito repelling time! haha!

It was a fun game (even though we didn't win) :)

Aashini kept cheering "Go Team Go! You Can Do it! Go for it!" :) haha!

Awesome! Cricket has definitely grown on me - I'm a total fan now! :)

Campa Cola!

2011-04-20T14:30:00.001+05:30

So I don't know if anyone remembers a post I did almost exactly 2 years ago (WOW!) about my attempt to find the old Campa Cola building... (click here - http://southasiarocks.blogspot.com/2009/06/campa-cola-exploring.html to read about our Campa Cola Adventure and why it's so interesting to me)

Well, we didn't find it, but today I did find a CAMPA COLA!!!!!!!!

I was so excited when I found it... I think my friend Meagan thought I was weird :) Tonight Adam and I drank it... It wasn't bad... tasted a little like an RC cola with extra sugar :)

Anyway, thought I'd share my Campa Cola excitement with you :)

Concert Fun!!

2011-04-19T14:09:00.002+05:30

Last weekend we went to see our upstairs neighbor sing with a big singer here named Jasbir Jassi (check him out here - http://www.jasbirjassi.com/ if interested)....

Here is our neighbor in the picture behind Jassi. Aankit did awesome!!

Here's Aankit again :)

He had quite the band! It was cool!

We weren't sure how the girls would do because it was late (it started at their bedtime!) and it would be loud and things like that - but they LOVED it!! Here's a video of people dancing and Aashini doing some fun dancing :) - if you can't see the video you can check it out here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhCLt7mYUu8

Jassi went to the lower stage a few times and sang and danced with some people in the crowd.

This couple (in the front of the picture with the lady in orange) cracked me up! She kept coming up on stage to dance, but made her husband carry her huge purse! So he was dancing too while holding her purse most of the time :)

Here's a short video of people dancing and the man dancing with the purse about halfway through - haha! love it! (if you can't see it - click here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqR2lM0UO0c)

At one point all the adults got off the lower stage and a couple of kids got up there. Aashini wanted to go up and dance too :) When I got her to the stage she got a little nervous and decided not to get up there, but one of the guys that was down on the front row helped encourage Aashini to get on the stage :) (Please note that Aashini is wearing a jacket... it was 90+ degrees outside, but the wind was blowing and Aashini kept complaining that she was cold and needed a jacket... haha!)

Diya saw Aashini up there and wanted to get up there too :)

Here are the girls dancing... Aashini is doing a funny little dance ;)

You can see a fun video of Aashini dancing. The song that's play is a new song that is in a new movie that's coming out :) Fun! Here's the link in case you can't see it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-13wOLjEFU

Aashini was mixing in some of her Taekwondo with her dancing :) haha!

It was a super fun night! We all had a lot of fun!

Great Job Aankit!!!! :)

Happy Birthday Mom!

Funny Things Friday :)

2011-04-15T20:39:00.007+05:30

I definitely need some funny things this Friday :) so..... for your viewing pleasure :)

Here's a "Frams Torner" Action Figure :)

This was on a big sign about giving your kids the injections (shots) they need :) I just think it's funny that the shot is hugging the baby :)

The other night at our Friday night market I saw this cart being pushed around. I couldn't get a very good picture because he didn't want me to take a picture... but I just had to :) It's a cart full of toothbrushes! They were 5 rupees :) (about 11 cents) :)

This sign is in the metro and always makes me laugh :) One of our friends got fined the other day :)... haha! (yeah, this sign and the fine are totally necessary)

The other day we were watching the Cricket World Cup with our neighbors and one of the guys wanted more water, so he yelled up to his wife on the top floor. she threw down the basket and he put his empty bottles in it and she pulled them back up. She filled them up and sent them back down :)

At lot of people that live on top floors do this for deliveries, getting vegetables and all kinds of things - I think it's hilarious :)

Awesome :) I hope you have a fun Funny Friday :)

Pigeons

2011-04-11T22:37:00.004+05:30

The other day I was in a rickshaw and my driver stopped and pulled over at the median and told me it would be one minute. Rickshaw drivers tend to pull over every now and then to get snacks, tobacco or to relieve themselves, so I wasn't surprised he was stopping... but it was weird we were stopping in the middle of the street! The driver got out and paid for a bowl full of birdseed and then started feeding the birds.

He fed the birds, did a short puja (worship) and got right back in the auto and we drove off... After living here almost 6 years, that was definitely a new thing for me :) I love how this country consistently surprises me :)

Cricket World Cup!!

2011-04-04T09:00:00.004+05:30

Saturday was the Cricket World Cup Finals! It was so fun! I've gotten into cricket the last few years, so it was really fun to watch the World Cup! South Asia hosted the Cup, so that made it extra fun!

We live in the coolest new neighborhood! We LOVE it! Our area of the neighborhood does all kinds of cool things. For the game, they set up a projector and screen in the alley street next to our house! Here's some kids watching earlier in the day (the game started at 2:30 pm and lasts about 8+ hours, so not everyone was there at the beginning of the game :))

The girls had fun running around and playing. Here's Aashini in her cricket shirt, sporting her blues :)

This is a horrible picture, but it's the only one I have of them from the day :) haha! We were all wearing blue for the game :) Adam has his cool cricket hat :)

Here's the game on the big screen!

This is the view from the back of the house (next to the girls' room). (this is before everyone was there). It was great that it was so close to our house! We put the girls to sleep around 8:00 pm and we went back out there and brought the baby monitors to hear them if they woke up or needed anything - it worked out perfectly!

This picture is horrible, but the only one I have like this. It was super dark outside (which is why the picture is so bad) but here is everyone watching the game :)

OUR TEAM WON!!!!!! It was super fun and super exciting!!! Here's a video of everyone's reaction when we won! We won at the end with a 6 - it was AWESOME! (if you can't see the video you can click here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeH715k9rfA )

After some celebration, the fireworks came out!

Everyone was having a blast and playing with fireworks and sparklers :)

More fireworks pictures :) If you look closely, the lady on the top left of the picture is holding a little boy. He's one of Aashini's buddies. He's only 2 weeks younger than Aashini. They play well together and have a lot of fun together :)

Some of the fireworks got a little too close.... (which was why I was at a distance taking pictures :) haha!)

After all of the celebration we all ate together! (here's the man making all the roti :))

It was fun to eat together after a fun night!!

The city was alive and honking all night! It was a great night!!

Funny Things - School :)

2011-03-29T09:34:00.000+05:30

Since it's the beginning of the school year here, I thought I'd do a funny things post that was school related :) (The school year here begins in April. May & June are summer break and school starts back in July :)). Anyway, this is a book that we got from Aashini's school when she started there. It's a "coffee table book" called: "Celebrate Childhood"....

Each page has a picture on one side and "something to celebrate" on the other side. They say things like: "Celebrate holidays... celebrate winning prizes, etc..." This one below is an example. It says on the top: "Celebrate unexpected guests who drop by to see the baby". The bottom part says: "Teach children to welcome guests and respect elders. Let them learn good social manners early on." OK, that's cool.... but this next one....

I'm not sure how well this next one would go over in the US.... It says: "Celebrate drawing on Papa's office files". The bottom says: "Get angry with your child and you are showing behavior you want to discourage in him." haha! Did you see the picture????? "Papa" is totally punching his son in the head!!! Uhh.... yeah....

This next one I put in because I thought the picture was a little inappropriate... It says: "Celebrate frustrating potty training sessions." The kid is totally running around without pants - haha! This is the most interesting "coffee table parenting book" I've seen... actually I think it's the only one I've seen :) haha!

Anyway, thought I'd share :)

Holi 2011

2011-03-23T15:22:00.014+05:30

This year's Holi was a little different than planned :) haha! Aashini was super excited about Holi this year! Last year she was pretty terrified, but this year she LOVED it! (for previous Holi posts, click HERE). She came out with her huge water gun and quickly switched to her small one. She LOVED it!

Here's a pic of Adam - just about the only one I got of him... Diya didn't like Holi very much. If water was squirted near her she freaked out.

Aashini's favorite thing to do was to squirt the colors and "clean up" people's steps :) haha!

Our little section of our neighborhood (about 20 houses) celebrates Holi together on this road (one of our balconies overlooks it). Here's some of our neighbors :)

Here's Aashini having fun :)

Here's a couple of our neighbors. The girl on the left lives upstairs from us and has a little sister that is Aashini's age - she plays with her most afternoons - it's awesome!

Aashini having fun :) These pictures aren't the best quality - but I got to take some fun ones this year because I brought out my small camera with the waterproof case - so I didn't have to worry about it getting wet or anything :)

Well, about this time I was down on one end of the street with Aashini and the other kids and Adam was down on the other end of the street with the men. One of the kids ran up to me and told me that Adam was sick. (He had been sick for the last 5 days or so and had really wanted to come out for about 5-10 minutes of Holi). I knew he was sick, but thought it was weird that the kid was telling me that, so I went to the other side of the street to see Adam in a chair with a bunch of men gathered around him. He had totally passed out and was still out. I told the men to get me some juice and they poured a bottle of water over his head and he came to. After drinking some sugary drink he was back to "normal". They made him some ORS (lemon juice, water, sugar & salt) and he sat and drank that for a little bit while I let the kids play a little more.

Diya was a little concerned with everything. This was the only pic I got of her.

Aashini continued having fun :) The girl behind her in the black LOVES Aashini. She comes to see her every day and calls Aashini her little sister. She's the youngest in her family and has always wanted a little sister :) It's cute :)

Aashini and this little girl (can't remember her name right now) had fun running in circles shooting each other) :)

At one point I asked Aashini to smile and she posed like this - haha!!!

Aashini LOVED it and had a blast :)

We waiting until it was "safe" to go out on the streets (about 4:30) and Adam went to the doctor. There is a new (2 year old) nice hospital about 5 blocks from our house. We had taken someone to it earlier in the week, so it was nice to be able to go so close! The doc gave him an IV for a couple of hours and did some tests. The doc thought he might have Typhoid and treated him for it. We haven't gotten the official Typhoid test back yet, but the medicine made him feel TONS better. He's already doing MUCH better! Yay! PTL!! Quite an interesting Holi!

New Neighborhood - the Market :)

2011-03-19T04:33:00.001+05:30

Thought I'd post a couple of pictures of our new neighborhood! :) Here's the market in our new neighborhood (not a great picture) :) This is just around the corner from our house :)

Here are the girls riding a ride in the market :)

Our market has a special Friday Night Market - it's walking distance from my house! It's awesome!!! I'm so excited!

This isn't a great shot - but this is the view from our roof :) Pretty cool!!

Funny Things :)

2011-03-16T15:23:00.000+05:30

Here's just a few funny things I've seen recently :) It's starting to get warm (70s and upper 80s) but some people are still dressing warm. Check out this girl's outfit! I think everything she's wearing was knitted! Awesome!

This train made me laugh! haha!

This is in our new neighborhood. They had this sign up and it made me laugh :) It says: "Fix Prise means No Tention" haha! Love it!

This is a chain of stores in our area of the city... they are totally OWSOME! :)

We Have Shifted!

2011-03-10T13:02:00.014+05:30

We moved houses!! We moved last week! Our house had some serious termite issues and through some crazy events we ended up having to move earlier than planned.

Here's our house being packed up :)

This is what I and the girls did while Adam and the boys were moving and packing up the house :) Our awesome friends took us in for the day (and ended up being the night too!) while we moved! There was a glitch with the moving (and city rules) so they had to sit with the packed up truck until 9:00 pm... they weren't done unloading the truck until 3:45 am!!

Here's a picture of a room with all our stuff moved in!!

I love the house shaped windows - haha!

This is our landlord at her house :) She's awesome ;)

This is a road right behind our house that leads to this awesome ridge/park!! It's called the Rock Garden. It's full of big rocks - it's awesome!

Aashini LOVES it!

Here's one of the views from the top!

Aashini & Diya LOVE climbing on the rocks!

In our local market there is an awesome playground! It's even lit up at night and moms are there with their kids :) It's fun :)

We LOVE our new neighborhood and neighbors! It's awesome! Moving in is very slow (having to watch kids and move - it's a mess! haha!) It's going good though :) We'll post pics of our house once we get it all set up :)

Monkeys & the City

2011-03-01T15:22:00.001+05:30

Today Emily and I went out around town to do some business things, "other things" and to have some fun. To start off the morning we went to one of my favorite parantha places :) We had yummy paranthas (I had a yummy lemon one!). Here's a picture of Emily by the Parantha place - see the monkey? - he was throwing things in my hair - ick!

I thought these quits were awesome!

Here's a view from one of the metro stations :) There weren't many cars on the road, so it looked a little funny :)

I thought this doorway was cool :) It's not a great picture (my 50 mm lens is stuck on my camera and I couldn't stand in the middle of the road to take the picture) but it was so cool I just had to take a picture ;)

Fun!

Monkeying Around

2011-02-28T15:58:00.003+05:30

Today as we were leaving our house the monkey man came down the street. He comes down the street on his bicycle multiple times a day with his monkeys riding on the back. You can pay him to have the monkeys perform. Our across the street neighbors paid to have the monkeys come over to preform and they invited us in to see it too :)

The owner made the monkeys do a bunch of tricks. I felt a little bad for the monkeys, but the show was entertaining :)

Aashini and Hazel had a fun time watching it :)

The whole monkey show was a story about this monkey and his wife and life. It was pretty funny... a little weird too.

... there were a few "scenes" that I totally didn't get... like this one - haha!

It was quite entertaining and the kids loved it :) haha!

Mehndi & Friends

2011-02-26T14:49:00.008+05:30

My friend Emily that used to live here is here visiting right now :) The other night I went out with Emily & Kiley (who is here visiting too) to get Mehndi.

I am still always amazed at the artwork these guys do - amazing!

Here are Emily's hands :)

We've been having fun and have done some shopping too (for business and for pleasure) haha! Emily is helping us with our business and we are soooo thankful for her! We've had fun shopping and picking out things for it :) Very fun! yay!

Comic Con!!

2011-02-21T15:27:00.001+05:30

We found out that Comic Con was coming to our country and we thought that was awesome! They were doing it for the first time ever AND it was going to be in our city - so why not?! I always thought it would be awesome to go in America and this was probably the closest I would ever get :) haha! Here are a couple of comics they drew of a South Asian Superhero - awesome!

Of course, as soon as we got off the metro, the papad man was there selling his fun crunchy snacks, so we had to gobble some up! :) It's one of our favorite snacks :)

Comic Con was in it's first year here, so it wasn't very big, but it was cool! There were people even dressed up! I wasn't sure what to expect, but some people went all out! There were quite a few jokers, batman, scarecrow, some characters I didn't recognize....

... even Captain American made a showing!

Wolverine really did look like wolverine! Not sure who these guys are in the black... when we were first coming in I saw them and said to Adam: "Hey! Look some people wore costumes!"... then Adam said: "Andrea, those aren't costumes, they're burkas!".... then I felt really bad until we got closer and we saw that they really were costumes :) haha!

He really does look a lot like Wolverine.... Diya wasn't that impressed :)

... but she was intrigued :)

These guys made me laugh... A female Scarecrow & Jafar sharing some ice cream :) haha!

It was fun :) I can't wait to see how awesome it is next year :) Very fun :)

Friends :)

2011-02-08T16:37:00.001+05:30

OK, I'm back :) We've been having a lot of computer issues and my computer had to be wiped a couple of times, but hopefully I'm good now :)

A couple of weeks ago school was canceled all over the city because it was too cold (we don't have heaters in the classrooms here :)) We thought it would be a fun day to visit our friend Deepak & his family because their kids were out of school & so were ours :)

Here's Aashini with Daniel & Ashish.
ALL the kids in the neighborhood were out of school too :) There was a bunch of kids to play with :)
Aashini had a lot of fun :)
This is the street Deepak lives on. It was full of activity!!!!
Cute kids :) You can see Daniel on the left :)
Aashini was trying to practice her Hindi :)
Diya with Ashish :)
Deepak & Sunita ;)
Aashini playing tea party :)
She has a great smile :)
This little girl cracks me up!
Ashish & Daniel :) Too cute :)

Fun New Friends ;)

2011-01-31T17:03:00.013+05:30

The other night we got the opportunity to host 5 people that we had never met before for dinner at our house. These fun people are from all parts of our country and are a part of a cool program that helps them in going to the US or UK to further their education and then come back and use that education here in this country :) We hosted 5 students that are going to be going to the US to get their masters this fall. We had them over for dinner to help them know what it's like in America, to eat with Americans, to eat American food, and let them ask any question they may have. It was super fun!

We were supposed to make American food but also make a Vegetarian option. I couldn't really think of many veg American dinners, but I decided that Bean Burritos were quite American (haha! yeah, I know that it's Mexican, but almost all American food is from somewhere else). We also had a Chicken Casserole and a cheese dip. I did an apple cobbler with ice cream for desert (VERY American) and some No-Bake cookies as well :)

The Burritos were so fun! haha! We taught them how to stuff their burritos and fold them and eat them :) Very fun! Some people stuffed theirs too full (I ALWAYS do that!), so they totally fell apart (which was really funny!).

Once most everyone's burritos fell apart we pulled out the forks and knives and taught them how to use knives because with the food we eat here, we don't use knives (spoons sometimes and hands most of the time)... That was super fun!

After dinner we played foosball. One of the girls said: "I have been wanting to see this game. I see it on TV when I watch Friends and I have always wondered about it." :) It was fun :)

We talked a while and taught them funny things about Americans and things to do or not to do so that they don't offend anyone :)

After that we played some Catchphrase :) They had fun playing that game... it was a learning experience also :) haha!

One of the guys took this picture with his camera :) It was fun. One of the girls told us that they were so nervous to come to our house and didn't know what to expect :) It was a fun night :)

Funny Things - Gulf Edition :)

2011-01-21T16:42:00.001+05:30

I love finding funny things :) There was no lack of funny things in the Gulf either :) Here are a few funny things we found :)

This one is a little hard to see... but this PSP is an "off-brand"...

It's the "PCP Station" - haha!

The wording on this "mini household set" made me laugh... at the bottom it says: "Let our children more Hardworking."

This one may not be so funny but according to my pronunciation of the top word it's funny :) It looks like the "sucker" service center... you're a sucker if you go there... haha! (ok, I thought it was funny) :)

This was a South Asian restaurant that we saw. The name of the restaurant was funny to me - "Top Most Restaurant" :)

This tailor shop had a picture of Matt Damon on their advertisement... I wonder if he gave them permission to use his picture :)

This was one of my favorites :) These dolls were for sale... the doll on the upper left doesn't have a head- haha! The one on the right is only the head! haha! Which one do you want to buy? :)

There were quite a few funny things we saw but these were the ones I was able to capture :) I love funny things :)

Markets!

2011-01-20T17:17:00.001+05:30

We had a great time with our friends in the Gulf :) I have soooo many pictures that I need to post but I decided this will be the last blog post on our trip and I'll post the rest of the pictures on Facebook in the next few days.

Anyway, one thing I love to check out in other countries are the markets. I think you can see so much about a city through the markets (or Souks as they call them on that side of the world) :)

The Gulf has some really fun people!

In this market there was a cool tea stall. It was so cute and colorful.

It was a really fun tea stall :)

Thanks friends! We had fun hanging out with you guys!!!!

Forts and Fun!

2011-01-15T14:05:00.010+05:30

I still have a few more Gulf pictures I wanted to post... so here it goes...

One day we went to check out an old fort. You can see it in the top right corner of the pic below.

If you looked at the corners of the fort just the right way it kinda looked like a person :)

It's fun seeing forts in different countries.

Aashini had fun playing at it. We met a family while we were there and she played with their little girl for a while ;)

This was the grandmother of the little girl.

This is another relative of the little girl that Aashini was playing with. Anytime I picked my camera up she would pose (even if I wasn't taking picture sin her direction - haha!)

The view from the fort as we were leaving was awesome!