..SouthAsiaRocks..

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!

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

Day 2 of the retreat was the first full day for everyone. We started off the morning by checking out the Langurs munching on rose bushes... they loved them! Later in the day we had some team time and did a fun team photo scavenger hunt! Here is our team's flag :) We called ourselves the "Dilli Pickles" :) This was part of the scavenger hunt - someone doing a hand-stand :) Our pregnant team member did the hand stand :) haha! Go Amberley! We were in a tiger reserve area for the retreat. There were tigers all around. The day before we left to come there was a big article on the front page of the paper about a man-eating tiger on the lose. Two of the people killed were within a kilometer from where we were staying!!! (about a half mile!) and one other was about 6 miles from where we were staying. Crazy hunh? We saw tiger paw prints REALLY close to our resort! This guard (below) had a gun to protect the horses (and people) from the tigers. They found tiger prints n...

This past week we went on a retreat up to the mountains!!! It was awesome!!!! There was all sorts of craziness leading up to this retreat, so we weren't sure what to expect, but it was awesome! It started off with a little normal craziness.... Our paperboy broke our window (again) the morning before we were going to leave. He broke a huge pane this time (the whole door!), so we had to get it repaired before we left. Luckily it worked out with no problems :) We got to our train with about 10 minutes to spare and were on our way. Luckily some fun people were on the train ride with us and they had their kids with them too! Aashini had a blast hanging out with her new friends :) Diya even took a nap :) Aashini decorated her nails with these cool gem stickers :) We got there that night and got settled into our room. The next morning we got them all bundled up - it was MUCH cooler than the Capital :) Here's Diya hanging out with her bed :) We got there the night before and w...

*Caution! This post is a little gross* So the other day I was out in the Central part of our city with my friend Erin. We had gotten to where we were going and I told the cycle rickshaw to stop. I got out and Erin was just frozen... and she was saying "umm...." Ends up I had told the rickshaw to stop right next to these ladies in the picture below.... This is what I saw... this is NOT what Erin saw.... ....Erin saw this (below).... All of the "leftover" parts from the sacrificed goats from Eid are either given to the poor, or thrown away. The area we were in had a lot of trash dumps and people were taking all the goat parts and sorting them and cleaning them up for their different uses. The ladies in the picture above were squeezing all the excrement out of the intestines (blah!). There were ladies even sitting in the middle of the road (below) working on this stuff. Here are some people at one of the trash dumps sorting the animal parts (don't look clos...