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.

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....