Arrived in Bangkok two days ago after a middle of the night flight from Kolkata. We were feeling sad to leave India, because we don't know if we will ever be back and really, really enjoyed our time there. It is such a dynamic, real, intriguing, and complicated country. We just saw a small part of it and feel really lucky to have seen what we did and have some small understanding for what will soon be the world's most populated country (approximately one in 6 people on the globe are Indian)...
I had been to Thailand once before, with my friend Kelly, for a couple of weeks in 2001. It seems very changed since then...or maybe it is just me that is very changed? Anyway, Bangkok is a really, modern-looking, futuristic city these days. It has new, fancy, public transportation lines with televisions on the trains and announcements in English. We went to the commercial, center of Siam Square in Bangkok and wandered around giant,glittering, all-white malls filled with the most exclusive of Western and Asian shops of the kind you think might be in Tokyo. And we ate great street food and drank beers sitting at plastic tables and chairs on street corners...Many, many people visit Bangkok for sex tourism purposes and we stayed in a part of the city where a lot of these tourists and businesses were located: awful and depressing.
After one day in Bangkok, we took off for the island of Koh Chang, near the Cambodian border in the Gulf of Thailand. It is a wet (nearly 100% humidity), very green, lush island that is mostly (not very well protected) national park, with a mountainous interior. Joe has never been to Southeast Asia or anywhere in Asia prior to this trip and he said yesterday that "Thailand is like travel for dummies." It is really easy to get around here. The language and alphabet are unintelligible and English is not widely spoken aside from a few words, but the tourist infrastructure is very well established and comfortable. Thailand receives more than 3 times the amount of international tourists that India does, though it is less than 1/10th as large a country.
We leave for Cambodia in the next couple of days. We have one stop before going to Siem Reap to see the ruins of Angkor Wat. I would like to get to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, by November 5th to watch the elections results with a group of Democrats Abroad there who are planning an elections-viewing party at a hotel there. Go OBAMA!!!!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Strikes, Road Closures and Return to India
Wrapping up our time on the Indian Subcontinent now. We leave for Thailand on October 28th. We had a great time in Nepal and were happy to return to India last night. We had a long travel day to arrive in Darjeeling, India last night. We woke up to beautifu views of the surrounding highlands and the world's 3rd highest mountain, Kanchenjunga, on the border of India and Nepal this morning. While Darjeeling is similarly physically beautiful like neighboring Nepal, it has a chilled out tourist atmosphere (unlike the busloads of tourists we ran into everywhere in Nepal)! It is a remarkably clean and aesthetically pleasing Indian city (which can be quite overcrowded, polluted, lots of traffic, etc).
We were meant to arrive in Darjeeling the day before yesterday but got "stuck" at a beautiful place in Nepal, near the Tibet border...It was called the "Last Resort" and was owned by an Aussie and a Kiwi. They specialize in bungy jumping (something I would never do in a million years), but also do canyoning and rafting. Joe went canyoning one day (this is just mainly rapelling down a valley wall into the river below), but I just chilled out around the resort and joined Joe and a horribly grueling, all uphill 4 hour hike one day. I am still sore! On the day we were supposed to leave, the manager of the resort let us know that there was a "strike" on the road to Kathmandu...Nepal is known for such disruptions; basically, when people are aggrieved about any sort of social or political issue, they set up barricades on the roads and don't permit traffic through for sometimes days and weeks on end. So, we had no idea when the road would open again. We had to delay our flight back to India and hang out until the following day when the very, scary, mountain road with no guardrails and sheer drops down, down, down opened again and we could get out- yay!
We've met a lot of interesting travelers in the last few days, in Nepal and India. The one that tought us the most was a Nepali we met at the Last Resort who had been living in the U.S. for the last 10 years, after attending college and graduate school there. He now works for a South Asian-focused non-profit out of Madison, Wisconsin. We talked to him for hours about Nepali history, politics, culture and religion (including the caste system- so fascinating! and very much a part of everyday life) its relationship with India, etc.
Getting on a night train to Calcutta tonight. Our last train trip and destination in India. There are some unique things we have seen here on the Sub-Continent that we have never seen anywhere else before, we've been making a list in our heads the last few weeks...
Things We've Never Seen Outside of India (and Nepal)
1. Urban Monkeys (Yup, in cities of even 10 million people, multitudes of monkeys make the buildings and parks and temples their homes)
2. Urban Cows (They block the roads, the bridges, you can find them in crowds of hundreds of people- they are sacred here and accepted as part of the urban fabric)
3. Bicycle Rick-shaws (Apparently in Calcutta, where we go next, there are still rickshaws pulled by people on foot!)
4. Hawking (People clear their throats and noses and spit at the most amazing of decibels, all day long, men, women, children- everyone!)
5. Drivers (The best drivers on the planet! The things they do! The way everyone shares the road, weaves around each other, merging together in ways no Western driver ever could, passing huge trucks on mountain roads with guard rails, etc!)
6. Preponderance of Electrical Switches (I need to ask an Indian about this. Every hotel room we have stayed in has a row of at least 6 to sometimes 20 electrical switches - often all in a row. It is a major guessing game to figure out what, if anything, they connect to. I have often pressed a switch, unknowingly, that rings the front desk who then calls us up and I have to tell them in very basic English that "no", I do not need anything right now)
7. Hindu Temples and Stupas (They are everywhere: in the most unlikely and inconvenient of places. Giant, stone temples, on top of hills hours and hours from any road. a Stupa is a kind of pagoda-like Buddhist temple that can be of any size from 1 foot to 300 feet around and is our new favorite word: Stupa!)
We were meant to arrive in Darjeeling the day before yesterday but got "stuck" at a beautiful place in Nepal, near the Tibet border...It was called the "Last Resort" and was owned by an Aussie and a Kiwi. They specialize in bungy jumping (something I would never do in a million years), but also do canyoning and rafting. Joe went canyoning one day (this is just mainly rapelling down a valley wall into the river below), but I just chilled out around the resort and joined Joe and a horribly grueling, all uphill 4 hour hike one day. I am still sore! On the day we were supposed to leave, the manager of the resort let us know that there was a "strike" on the road to Kathmandu...Nepal is known for such disruptions; basically, when people are aggrieved about any sort of social or political issue, they set up barricades on the roads and don't permit traffic through for sometimes days and weeks on end. So, we had no idea when the road would open again. We had to delay our flight back to India and hang out until the following day when the very, scary, mountain road with no guardrails and sheer drops down, down, down opened again and we could get out- yay!
We've met a lot of interesting travelers in the last few days, in Nepal and India. The one that tought us the most was a Nepali we met at the Last Resort who had been living in the U.S. for the last 10 years, after attending college and graduate school there. He now works for a South Asian-focused non-profit out of Madison, Wisconsin. We talked to him for hours about Nepali history, politics, culture and religion (including the caste system- so fascinating! and very much a part of everyday life) its relationship with India, etc.
Getting on a night train to Calcutta tonight. Our last train trip and destination in India. There are some unique things we have seen here on the Sub-Continent that we have never seen anywhere else before, we've been making a list in our heads the last few weeks...
Things We've Never Seen Outside of India (and Nepal)
1. Urban Monkeys (Yup, in cities of even 10 million people, multitudes of monkeys make the buildings and parks and temples their homes)
2. Urban Cows (They block the roads, the bridges, you can find them in crowds of hundreds of people- they are sacred here and accepted as part of the urban fabric)
3. Bicycle Rick-shaws (Apparently in Calcutta, where we go next, there are still rickshaws pulled by people on foot!)
4. Hawking (People clear their throats and noses and spit at the most amazing of decibels, all day long, men, women, children- everyone!)
5. Drivers (The best drivers on the planet! The things they do! The way everyone shares the road, weaves around each other, merging together in ways no Western driver ever could, passing huge trucks on mountain roads with guard rails, etc!)
6. Preponderance of Electrical Switches (I need to ask an Indian about this. Every hotel room we have stayed in has a row of at least 6 to sometimes 20 electrical switches - often all in a row. It is a major guessing game to figure out what, if anything, they connect to. I have often pressed a switch, unknowingly, that rings the front desk who then calls us up and I have to tell them in very basic English that "no", I do not need anything right now)
7. Hindu Temples and Stupas (They are everywhere: in the most unlikely and inconvenient of places. Giant, stone temples, on top of hills hours and hours from any road. a Stupa is a kind of pagoda-like Buddhist temple that can be of any size from 1 foot to 300 feet around and is our new favorite word: Stupa!)
Friday, October 17, 2008
Kathmandu and Around
We arrived in Kathmandu 5 days ago after about 10 days in Rajasthan (state) in India and returning to Delhi for a couple of days before flying here. We had originally planned on traveling overland from India, by way of Varanasi, to Kathmandu but when we went to buy our train ticket, we struck out entirely. Trains from Rajasthan to Varanasi were booked solid for weeks. A disappointment. But we had been lucky, as we have met other tourists traveling in India who had booked their train tickets months in advance, from their home countries, in order to get where they wanted to go. We, on the other hand, were lucky in that we bought tickets the day of or the day before and didn't have any problems until we tried to go to Varanasi. Train travel in India is great! Very comfortable and easy and inexpensive- a great way to see the country. They even serve good food in the first class cars...India, overall, is a relatively easy place in wich to travel. People speak English widely (though there are daily frustrations and miscommunications about nearly everything). Even Delhi, which originally seemed charmless, hot and hectic, has really grown on us by the time we returned to it. We had some great interactions with Delhi-ites; cab drivers, hotel staff, people in restaurants, etc, were funny and kind and curious about us. Great food, nice parks, and temples and monuments (truthfully, though, we are getting a little "templed" out; these ornately carved, gold or marble-topped 700 year old buddhist or hindu temple in a lovely setting? we've seen too many of them!). And the hawking (people trying to sell things and services) is not nearly what we had anticipated from people who had traveled in India before. Another wonderful thing about India: there are many tourists and tourist sites, but us foreigners are a drop in the bucket compared to Indians. There are a billion people, and they like to visit the tourist sites, too. We are always outnumbered, enormously, wherever we go, by Indians and Indian tourists. Refreshing. And unlike Nepal, which I will get to next...
Nepal is gorgeous. The Himalayas and green hills and mountains and valleys. They grow everything here. It is lush and pleasant and sunny but cool at night. Great for sitting outside and walking around- which we have been doing a lot of! We spent the last 2 days in Nagargot, which is on a ridge about 30 km outside of Kathmandu. From the top of our hotel (on the 5th story was a little lookout tower), we could see a huge swath of the Himalayas, when they were not covered in clouds. They are powerful looking and enormous, breath-taking. Yesterday,we walked from Nagarkot, along a ridge and down into the valley almost back to Kathmandu. We walked along small paths, through towns and fields and temples. We walked by people bathing their children, washing their clothes, harvesting rice and millet, enjoying the view from their porches and lookouts, and everyone, everyone smiled at us and greeted us with "namaste". The children and the dogs accompanied us on our walks. This was a real highlight of our time here. The downside is that Kathmandu, particularly the section called Thamel, is a tourist ghetto! There are so many businesses catering to tourists. All the signs are in English and almost the only Nepalis around are those employed by those businesses. Nepal is a poor country (but poverty looks very different here than it did in Africa, for example. Clean, running water, a gorgeous natural environment, decent roads, electricity and larger houses and more complex buildings are things which make it different. It reminds us somewhat of mountainous countries in the Americas, like Guatemala and Bolivia: ancient and complex societies in beautiful surroundings). People here generally cannot afford the food and services that us tourists demand by the thousands and thousands each year. We feel conflicted about our role in this beast that is global tourism.
One more highlight about Nepal: food!!! Who knew? We are finding it spicier than Indian food (which is a plus for us) and a really wonderful combination of Chinese and Indian spices. We have been loving the Tibetan/Newari soups: hearty, vegetarian, with dumplings, noodles, beans, fresh veggies, chillies, ginger, garlic, etc. And momos: little dumplings with Indian-flavored veggies inside and a great, spicy, Indian-style dipping sauce. Yay!
Nepal is gorgeous. The Himalayas and green hills and mountains and valleys. They grow everything here. It is lush and pleasant and sunny but cool at night. Great for sitting outside and walking around- which we have been doing a lot of! We spent the last 2 days in Nagargot, which is on a ridge about 30 km outside of Kathmandu. From the top of our hotel (on the 5th story was a little lookout tower), we could see a huge swath of the Himalayas, when they were not covered in clouds. They are powerful looking and enormous, breath-taking. Yesterday,we walked from Nagarkot, along a ridge and down into the valley almost back to Kathmandu. We walked along small paths, through towns and fields and temples. We walked by people bathing their children, washing their clothes, harvesting rice and millet, enjoying the view from their porches and lookouts, and everyone, everyone smiled at us and greeted us with "namaste". The children and the dogs accompanied us on our walks. This was a real highlight of our time here. The downside is that Kathmandu, particularly the section called Thamel, is a tourist ghetto! There are so many businesses catering to tourists. All the signs are in English and almost the only Nepalis around are those employed by those businesses. Nepal is a poor country (but poverty looks very different here than it did in Africa, for example. Clean, running water, a gorgeous natural environment, decent roads, electricity and larger houses and more complex buildings are things which make it different. It reminds us somewhat of mountainous countries in the Americas, like Guatemala and Bolivia: ancient and complex societies in beautiful surroundings). People here generally cannot afford the food and services that us tourists demand by the thousands and thousands each year. We feel conflicted about our role in this beast that is global tourism.
One more highlight about Nepal: food!!! Who knew? We are finding it spicier than Indian food (which is a plus for us) and a really wonderful combination of Chinese and Indian spices. We have been loving the Tibetan/Newari soups: hearty, vegetarian, with dumplings, noodles, beans, fresh veggies, chillies, ginger, garlic, etc. And momos: little dumplings with Indian-flavored veggies inside and a great, spicy, Indian-style dipping sauce. Yay!
Monday, October 6, 2008
Pushkar and more...
Erica and I are sitting in a little internet cafe in Pushkar, India at the moment. Apparently, there are 5000 hindu temples in a town with a population of 14,000 people. All the buildings are huddled around a smallish lake which was created by damning a river. It's pretty touristy, with much of the main drag feeling a bit like Haight Ashbury, but you can certainly see the draw once here. We're on a day trip from Ajmer and heading to Udaipur tomorrow...
Our short time here has been one of the most thought provoking of any visits I've made. There are constantly images and views which jolt me : today locking eyes for a moment with an old woman wearing an impossibly bright pink shawl over her head and a huge gold hoop through her nose. walking behind a cow which appeared to be dancing (trotting?) through a tight bazaar at night just blocks from the Taj Mahal while music played at ear splitting level. while coming home (from the "Monkey Temple") in a rickshaw in Jaipur, we passed a line of men who were all lighting candles with a water fountain behind them at dusk, all wearing amazingly bright white clothing. I wish I had the energy to try to capture most of them in words to help remember them for later. I wonder if evenutally one gets desensitized to such sights. I can't imagine it.
Racing through the streets, especially at night, in a rickshaw can be easily listed as one of my favorite activities at this point. It's a great way to see a great deal at a relatively rapid pace (when you aren't stuck in gridlock with diesel fumes blowing your hair back), with the always exciting addition of slight to major chance of bodily harm. I love the way traffic moves in this country. It appears chaotic at first, but it is an amazing dance (to me, I think Erica is less impressed) which results in a tremendous number of vehicles getting where they are going much faster than I could've imagined. On more than a few ocassions now when we've taken a rickshaw to a temple or tomb or reallyoldbuilding of some kind, I've found the ride to or from to be almost or definitely better than the sight itself.
So far we've been lucky and managed to stay healthy. As Erica noted today, at this point in Senegal, we'd both been sick, healthy, and then sick again. Given what we'd heard for the past however many years about travel here, I think this is something to be very happy about.
Yesterday we took our first non-tourist class or regular class train ride. Pretty mellow overall, but I'm glad it was only 2.5 hours. I wish I could speak even a lick of Hindi as the only conversations I could have were largely like charades. I would act out what I was trying to say and then my luggage rack mate would answer in english. I believe Erica slept nearly the whole way.
We've yet to figure it out, and I'll upload some pics later, but for some reason Erica is attracting some occassionally significant attention from Indians with cameras. We haven't been able to figure out if they are laughing with her/us or at her/us, but at this point she's had her picture taken 4 times with a variety of different people.
All for now...
Our short time here has been one of the most thought provoking of any visits I've made. There are constantly images and views which jolt me : today locking eyes for a moment with an old woman wearing an impossibly bright pink shawl over her head and a huge gold hoop through her nose. walking behind a cow which appeared to be dancing (trotting?) through a tight bazaar at night just blocks from the Taj Mahal while music played at ear splitting level. while coming home (from the "Monkey Temple") in a rickshaw in Jaipur, we passed a line of men who were all lighting candles with a water fountain behind them at dusk, all wearing amazingly bright white clothing. I wish I had the energy to try to capture most of them in words to help remember them for later. I wonder if evenutally one gets desensitized to such sights. I can't imagine it.
Racing through the streets, especially at night, in a rickshaw can be easily listed as one of my favorite activities at this point. It's a great way to see a great deal at a relatively rapid pace (when you aren't stuck in gridlock with diesel fumes blowing your hair back), with the always exciting addition of slight to major chance of bodily harm. I love the way traffic moves in this country. It appears chaotic at first, but it is an amazing dance (to me, I think Erica is less impressed) which results in a tremendous number of vehicles getting where they are going much faster than I could've imagined. On more than a few ocassions now when we've taken a rickshaw to a temple or tomb or reallyoldbuilding of some kind, I've found the ride to or from to be almost or definitely better than the sight itself.
So far we've been lucky and managed to stay healthy. As Erica noted today, at this point in Senegal, we'd both been sick, healthy, and then sick again. Given what we'd heard for the past however many years about travel here, I think this is something to be very happy about.
Yesterday we took our first non-tourist class or regular class train ride. Pretty mellow overall, but I'm glad it was only 2.5 hours. I wish I could speak even a lick of Hindi as the only conversations I could have were largely like charades. I would act out what I was trying to say and then my luggage rack mate would answer in english. I believe Erica slept nearly the whole way.
We've yet to figure it out, and I'll upload some pics later, but for some reason Erica is attracting some occassionally significant attention from Indians with cameras. We haven't been able to figure out if they are laughing with her/us or at her/us, but at this point she's had her picture taken 4 times with a variety of different people.
All for now...
Saturday, October 4, 2008
A bit late but...
here's some notes which have been sitting on our little laptop for a shortwhile. we're in Jaipur right now and really enjoying it.
sooo... after a couple of weeks in the US which seemed like so much more, we landed in london after what seemed like a few minutes (due to some snoozing), to be greeted by a man with a sign reading “erica & joe”. I haven't had the pleasure of having someone waiting with my name on a piece of paper at the airport, and it was quite nice. we had a wonderful few days spent with Heather & Ian at their amazing abode in Surrey, and spent one day walking around London a bit. We then got on a plane bound for Kuwait...
Entering the airport in Kuwait City was a lot of fun. prayer rooms, smoking rooms (although everyone was smoking everywhere anyway), many people in traditional dress, and of course... a mcdonalds. we had a little exchange rate confusion, as the kuwaiti dinar is worth a lot more than I expected or had read or something. I was confused, but we ended up exchanging a 5 pound note for 2 and 1 quarter dinars, which was good for 1 strawberry juice and a blueberry muffin. not a screaming deal, but a lot of fun. the guy doing the exchange conversion was simultaneously working on some huge transaction with our tiny tiny one, so we both thought we were about to get a truckload of dinars. Because the currency board didn't have any decimal points, we didn't know what the rate was so, it was a little scary. he counted out about 200 notes (at which point I was hoping that people in the delhi airport really like kuwaiti dinars) and then eventually turned around and gave us 3 with a little receipt.
sooo... after a couple of weeks in the US which seemed like so much more, we landed in london after what seemed like a few minutes (due to some snoozing), to be greeted by a man with a sign reading “erica & joe”. I haven't had the pleasure of having someone waiting with my name on a piece of paper at the airport, and it was quite nice. we had a wonderful few days spent with Heather & Ian at their amazing abode in Surrey, and spent one day walking around London a bit. We then got on a plane bound for Kuwait...
Entering the airport in Kuwait City was a lot of fun. prayer rooms, smoking rooms (although everyone was smoking everywhere anyway), many people in traditional dress, and of course... a mcdonalds. we had a little exchange rate confusion, as the kuwaiti dinar is worth a lot more than I expected or had read or something. I was confused, but we ended up exchanging a 5 pound note for 2 and 1 quarter dinars, which was good for 1 strawberry juice and a blueberry muffin. not a screaming deal, but a lot of fun. the guy doing the exchange conversion was simultaneously working on some huge transaction with our tiny tiny one, so we both thought we were about to get a truckload of dinars. Because the currency board didn't have any decimal points, we didn't know what the rate was so, it was a little scary. he counted out about 200 notes (at which point I was hoping that people in the delhi airport really like kuwaiti dinars) and then eventually turned around and gave us 3 with a little receipt.
I awaited India with a fair amount of trepidation. We landed at around 5:30 am, and were lucky enough to have another man with a sign reading “Erica Blake” waiting to take us to our hotel. The ride from the airport took nearly 30 minutes, and gave us a pretty solid driving tour of the city. embassy row was beauitful, and the energy in the street is infectious. it was all somehow less overwhelming than Ivhad imagined. The colors are wonderful, and the driving is incredible. touts are less touty than I had expected, or we haven't really seen any yet. At this point, I think that west africa might have been a good warm up for ... well, the rest of the world, but certainly for India. More on India soon....
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Incredible India!
The title of this post is the Indian Government's tourism slogan, and so far, we tend to agree: India is Incredible.
We had been told (and were anxious) that we might be met with overwhelming heat, potential tummy sickness, pushy touts and taxi drivers and challenges finding things and arranging travel when we arrived in India. Of course, we just arrived this morning but so far, things are going smoothly. Our hotel-arranged cab drive was waiting for us at 5 a.m. when our plane got in and took us straight to our hotel which we would have never found ourselves as it is down windy roads through a bazaar in Central Delhi. The hotel air-conditioning works well and we took a nap after watching CNN (CNN would have been quite a luxury in Africa!) and catching up on the bad worldwide economic news. : (
The streets of Delhi were quite manageable when we went out today. We went to the pharmacy and stocked up on things we might need if we get sick, we went to the train station and bought train tickets to Agra where the Taj Mahal is for a day-trip tomorrow and for Jaipur, in Rajasthan the next day. Then, we took a bicycle rickshaw (not very far! and we paid him extra! but it was an experience) to a recommended restaurant for lunch where we did not recognize anything on the menu but were helped by a kind English-speaking Indian woman at the table next to us. Aftewards, we took an auto rickshaw to Hanuman's tomb, which is a set of buildings that looks like the Taj Mahal a bit, on beautiful grounds, dating back to the mid 16th century. We walked around there as the sun was getting low in the sky- it was magical! Now we are exhausted and going to bed!
We had been told (and were anxious) that we might be met with overwhelming heat, potential tummy sickness, pushy touts and taxi drivers and challenges finding things and arranging travel when we arrived in India. Of course, we just arrived this morning but so far, things are going smoothly. Our hotel-arranged cab drive was waiting for us at 5 a.m. when our plane got in and took us straight to our hotel which we would have never found ourselves as it is down windy roads through a bazaar in Central Delhi. The hotel air-conditioning works well and we took a nap after watching CNN (CNN would have been quite a luxury in Africa!) and catching up on the bad worldwide economic news. : (
The streets of Delhi were quite manageable when we went out today. We went to the pharmacy and stocked up on things we might need if we get sick, we went to the train station and bought train tickets to Agra where the Taj Mahal is for a day-trip tomorrow and for Jaipur, in Rajasthan the next day. Then, we took a bicycle rickshaw (not very far! and we paid him extra! but it was an experience) to a recommended restaurant for lunch where we did not recognize anything on the menu but were helped by a kind English-speaking Indian woman at the table next to us. Aftewards, we took an auto rickshaw to Hanuman's tomb, which is a set of buildings that looks like the Taj Mahal a bit, on beautiful grounds, dating back to the mid 16th century. We walked around there as the sun was getting low in the sky- it was magical! Now we are exhausted and going to bed!
Visits Home and to Surrey! Yay!
Joe and I just picked up our travels again (arrived in Delhi, India this morning and so far it is great) after 3 and 1/2 much treasured and wonderful weeks in the Western World- and at home!
We were in NJ (and made our way into NYC and beloved Brooklyn a few times) for 2 weeks, staying with my parents and sister Caroline and preparing for and celebrating my brother Patrick's wedding to Erin. It was such fun. Great to spend time with the family, see the extended family at the wedding, visit the Jersey shore and spend time with my graduate school ladies in Philadelphia! And not worry about getting stomach sick or being understood when speaking English!
We also attended Joe's friend Andy's wedding to Jen, which was a fun and artistically beautiful wedding at the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center. Joe wore a tux! And Andy seemed so happy. Then, we were off to Sanibel where we spent time at Joe's mom's house and with his grandma, uncle and cousin, lounging at the beach and by the pool. It was 90 degrees and beautiful in FL which was good preparation for our arrival in India.
But before we touched down in Delhi, we spent four blissful days with my dear old (ASL) highschool friend Heather at she and her husband, Ian's, lovely house outside of London in Surrey. We ate at the pubs in their village and went on walks in the fields and woods near their home and also combined the two in an extended walk in Box Hill, Surrey, where we walked through the hills and forests before making our way to a 16th century pub for lunch!
Thanks to everyone who took such good care of us and made our time home (and in England) memorable and comfortable! We sure miss you when we are away.
We were in NJ (and made our way into NYC and beloved Brooklyn a few times) for 2 weeks, staying with my parents and sister Caroline and preparing for and celebrating my brother Patrick's wedding to Erin. It was such fun. Great to spend time with the family, see the extended family at the wedding, visit the Jersey shore and spend time with my graduate school ladies in Philadelphia! And not worry about getting stomach sick or being understood when speaking English!
We also attended Joe's friend Andy's wedding to Jen, which was a fun and artistically beautiful wedding at the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center. Joe wore a tux! And Andy seemed so happy. Then, we were off to Sanibel where we spent time at Joe's mom's house and with his grandma, uncle and cousin, lounging at the beach and by the pool. It was 90 degrees and beautiful in FL which was good preparation for our arrival in India.
But before we touched down in Delhi, we spent four blissful days with my dear old (ASL) highschool friend Heather at she and her husband, Ian's, lovely house outside of London in Surrey. We ate at the pubs in their village and went on walks in the fields and woods near their home and also combined the two in an extended walk in Box Hill, Surrey, where we walked through the hills and forests before making our way to a 16th century pub for lunch!
Thanks to everyone who took such good care of us and made our time home (and in England) memorable and comfortable! We sure miss you when we are away.
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