What's New in Chennai?

Not too much, but I'll give an update to those of you who care about our boring lives. Sorry about how long of post this is...you might want to grab a drink and a snack before reading any further.

Let me first flash back to before we left for the U.S.

Yes, we did receive our food shipment about 5 hours before we were to leave for the airport. Luckily I was all packed and ready to go...and luckily the delivery people were notified by a few different people to get our food to us ASAP. I guess originally we were scheduled to have our stuff delivered last...ugh, that would have been a nightmare. Since the delivery people weren't planning on bringing our food to us so soon, they had to unload about half the truck to get to our boxes.

I started sorting through the boxes to check for bugs...no ants this time, but instead we had two boxes with mold in them. The culprits:

Yep, that's a can of tomato soup and a can of mandarin oranges. One box also had a freshly smashed cup of applesauce in it. While I worked on putting away the food, S had the fun task of washing gunk and mold off the two boxes of canned goods.

In the end, I got all of the food put away. Having just received the shipment, it did make it hard shopping for food while I was in the U.S. Our next shipment goes out the first week of February. I kept thinking that I didn't need anything because I have X number of it in my pantry already. However, then I had to think that I will be using the stuff up. It really is hard to buy food in December that won't be consumed until March, April, and May. Since my mom is in Florida for the winter, I'll probably end up ordering some more food online right before the shipment goes out...or talk my brother into picking some stuff up for me. Anyway for now, we are good.

A photo of S's pop supply for the quarter. The sad thing is that not only will all of this be consumed before the next shipment arrives but also that what you can't see is the other stash of pop we have on the other side of the room that also will probably be consumed.

Critter update: we returned to our house in Chennai to find a dead rat in one of our rat boxes. So, that's rat number two. We also found a dead frog in our gecko room (sun porch) plus I saw another frog (or maybe it was a toad...never could quite figure out the difference between them) in the same room last night. Our driver told me that while we were gone there was one snake in the yard. So that makes snake number 6 (but who's counting?). I've only seen one gecko so far, and it was in the gecko room. None in the house, which is a good thing. However, we do have a gazillion ants in the house. I've been feeding them Terro that I brought back with me, but so far I'm not sure it is doing anything but attracting more ants.

I've been working (very slowly) at getting the house organized and cleaned. We took down the Christmas decorations, and I've unpacked our suitcases. I've got most of the laundry caught up. S did some cleaning in the house, but there is still a lot to do. Now, I'm working on putting away everything out of our suitcases and getting the regular decorations back out. Plus trying to get fixed everything that broke while we were away. We came back to two A/Cs being broken, and the door handle on the bathroom broken. Only in India would these things break when we were away and not being used. We completely turned off all of the A/Cs before we left. Plus, the bathroom door that won't open is on a bathroom that we don't even use. How then did it get broke?

S and I went out for the first time ever on New Year's Eve. We had a great time at GRT Temple Bay (it's a beach resort) in Mamallapuram, which is about a 30 minute drive from our house. The party was outside, and it was a beautiful night. This made me realize why we don't go out in Illinois for New Year's Eve...who wants to travel around in the cold???

A photo of me, S, our friend JC, and his friend who is visiting Chennai. We had a great time with unlimited food and drinks, entertainment, and of course fireworks at midnight. The best part of the night...having a built in designated driver. I don't think the combination of alcohol, jet lag, and India driving would have been a good thing for us to attempt. Of course not getting home until 1:30am didn't help much with the jet lag. We did get some sleep, and then we were able to watch the ball drop in New York live as our CNN channel was covering it, and it was 10:30am our time.

So what exciting will be happening with us in 2008? Well the first few months will bring traveling and visitors. S will be making a trip to Beijing at the end of the month. Normally, I would be figuring out a way to go along, but one of my Beijing friends will actually be coming to Chennai at this time while her husband does some work here. She'll be in town for 2 weeks and is coming to see me and India. Right before she leaves, another friend from Beijing will be coming also for 2 weeks. They will overlap for a few days, so for over 3 weeks, I will be busy with them. I'm very excited to have them coming to see me, and I'm looking forward to showing them "Incredible India."

S will also be making a trip to Singapore in February, and it sounds like hopefully I'll be able to go along with him. I've been in the Singapore airport quite a few times, but never seen the country. I've heard that the shopping is great, the food is great, and that it is very clean. I can't wait to see it for myself.

Then in March, my cousin and my aunt are coming to visit us. I'm very excited about this! My cousin really wanted to come to Beijing, but it just didn't work out before we moved. Then she said she wanted to come see us here. Since she works for a school district, she was going to come in the summer when she is off of work. I suggested that she come over her spring break because it should be cooler than the summer months will be. Not wanting to make the trip alone, she somehow talked her mom, my aunt, into coming with her. My aunt also works for a school district and just so happens to have the same spring break as my cousin. She told me that India wasn't really on her list of places to ever go to (and honestly I don't really blame her or anyone else who doesn't have the desire to come here). However, she thought about it and decided that if I could live here, then she could come survive here for a week visit. Plus, she said that if she were in my shoes and lived in India that she would want people to come see her. Very true! So, I'm really looking forward to their visit!

Besides this, our company has 4 or 5 new families moving to Chennai this month and next. It'll be good to meet some more people and to be able to help them out in anyway that I can. S and I will also be starting to plan our vacations for the year. Right now, we don't know if or when we will be making another trip back to the U.S. before Christmas. I'll keep everyone posted on that issue. We are planning to probably go to Hong Kong & Macau maybe in April. I just found out that good friends of ours will be in Thailand in August for a week, so maybe we'll make a trip there to meet up with them. Plus I would like to make it back to Beijing sometime this summer...probably not for the Olympics...and I would like to go back to Europe again...just haven't decided which country yet. Hopefully, we'll also be able to travel around India...have to make sure that I make it to the Taj Mahal while I'm living here.

2008 is definitely shaping up to be another busy year for us. I have decided that I'm way to busy to try to keep our house in order, and thus I am finally hiring a maid. We are definitely in the minority among foreigners by not having a maid. I can't think of anyone else that I know here that doesn't have at least one maid working for them. It's almost like taboo and unheard of not to have someone working in the house for us...I'm sure our driver and security guards have had conversations about why we don't have a maid. I've said all along that I would get one if I happened to hear of one looking for a job. Well that's just what has happened. A friend of mine had to move across town, and her new home is too far for her maid to travel to daily. Since her maid only works a few hours each day and lives close to me, it should work out well. Plus I feel good about hiring someone who comes highly recommended from someone I know. I think she is starting next week, so I'll let you guys know how it is going.

Well, congratulations if you have read all the way to end of this very long post. For now, I think I've pretty much covered everything that I can think of. Tomorrow I'll try to do a post about our trip to Illinois. In the meantime, have a great day!