Guest Blog #2 by Beth

I have made it to Thursday night here. I would have to say now I have experienced many different things in India. One of those things is that things often break here and it may take a while to fix. It is 6:00 pm here and the plumber has not been yet. I am guessing we may see him tomorrow at the earliest since it will be getting dark soon.

India is not the cleanest place I have been. So it did not bother me too much to go out today without being able to shower. I think this is why I find some humor in this sign.

Maybe in my next guest blog I will post a picture of the trash all over below this sign and across the street.

The next thing that I have noticed here besides the trash is the amount of motorbikes. I see more Honda motorbikes here in one day than I have seen in my life time in the U.S. Here is a picture of a very small portion of the amount we see everyday.

Here is my guess of the ways people get around here :

by car - 1%

by walking - 10%

by bus - 15%

by rickshaw - 25%

by motorbike - 49%

Here motor bikes are as good as cars. You can even carry "laptop" computers. This is a picture of one of the three we have seen since I have been here. The other two were the PC and this one is the monitor.

In the U.S., usually it does not matter where you are from for the cost of admissions for something. Here Overseas visitors are required to pay more...like yesterday when we were at Dakshina Chitra.

One of the things we did yesterday at Dakshina Chitra was watch a folk dance. Here is a picture of the peacock putting a lei over my mom's head during the folk dance.

I have not looked too hard, but yesterday was the first day I have seen chain restaurants here that we have in the U.S. We had a snack when we were at the mall at Subway. Then we ate at Pizza Hut last night. The total for the four of us to eat supper last night was 509 rupees. This is equal to about $12.75. This was for two medium pizzas, eight slices of garlic bread, and two liters of bottled water.

A Busy Day

After an easy day yesterday, today was a very busy day of sightseeing and shopping with my cousin and aunt. We only got home a little bit ago, and being that I'm really tired, I will work on posting some more photos of our outings tomorrow.

Tomorrow will probably be a slow day as we won't be going anywhere too quickly. We came home tonight to find out that a pipe to the hot water tank has burst. So, now we don't have any hot water, and thus showering will be extremely cold...maybe we should go out for a nice long walk to be hot and sweaty so the cold shower will feel good. Right now, we are all pretty smelly after being out all day today, and honestly we could probably just go out tomorrow without showering and no one would even notice. However, I don't think that is going to happen. American standards on b.o. are a little higher than Indian standards. Hopefully, the plumber will show up first thing in the morning to fix the pipe. Hopefully, but probably not. I'm not holding my breath. Actually, I'm not holding high hopes that it will be fixed by the end of the day tomorrow just knowing how these types of things go here in India. Oh well, at least this shows Diane and Beth some of the normal frustrations of living here...wouldn't want them to go back to the U.S. and tell everyone that life here is smooth as butter!

So, anyway, I'm off to bed now. More updates tomorrow.

A "Rock"y Day in India

On Monday, I took Beth and Diane sightseeing to Mahabalipuram (also known as Mamallapuram). This town is located about 25 minutes south of our house. It is a nice drive down to it as there isn't much traffic. This town is known for it's rock carvings. I'm not big into history, so the historical monuments don't interest me for their background and meaning. However, just the thought that the carvings and such are hundreds of years old boggles my mind. There isn't anything in the U.S. that even comes close to being this old.

The first stop in Mahabalipuram was the Shore Temple. Above is a photo of me and Diane standing in front of one of the carved temples. This temple has seen better days as it is showing it's age due to being weathered by the wind, rain, and sea. Of course, it does date back to the 7th century...I guess when I'm that old I'll probably be looking a little rough also!

Next stop on our tour was the lighthouse. Here is a photo of India that actually shows the beauty of the country. Doesn't everyone want to come see for themselves??? However, the real reason for stopping at the lighthouse was to see the monkeys.

The monkey population was a little disappointing as we only saw 3 or 4 monkeys. Last time I was here, I saw probably close to 15 to 20 monkeys. This little guy was very entertaining to watch. He kept trying to balance on the handrail, but then he would start to fall and have to grab on.

After the lighthouse stop, it was time for lunch. We went to a beach resort and ate lunch along the ocean. Beth and Diane commented that it felt like they were back in Hawaii...they were lucky enough to have went there a few years ago. After a nice relaxing lunch, it was time for more sightseeing.

The Five Rathas was the next place we visited. Once again, this place has a bunch of history and each of the carvings represents a Hindu god's chariot (or something like that). There are two very cool things about this place however. The first being that all of the carvings you can see in the above photo are made out of one piece of rock or stone. It must have been one very large rock to begin with! The second thing that amazes me about this place is that all of these carvings were buried under sand until about 200 years ago when they were uncovered by the British. These monuments also date to the 7th century. So my questions are when, how, and why were they buried in sand? Also, how come they remained buried for so long?

Here is Beth standing by the life sized carved elephant. Unless we end up going to the zoo, it will probably be the only elephant that she sees while in India (sorry Robb).

Our final stop of the day was at Krishna's Butter Ball. Essentially all it is is a large rock that looks like it should be rolling down the hill but for some reason doesn't. I was telling Diane and Beth that this is about as exciting as India gets. They travel about 10,000 miles to see a large rock! However, then we were talking that it is really no different than traveling to see Mt. Rushmore, which is also just a large rock. So, now this is known as the Mt. Rushmore of India.

Beth and I did have fun trying to roll the rock on to the Indians sitting in the shade under it. I'm in the white shirt and Beth is in the pink shirt. Personally, I think they are a little stupid to be sitting under it...if I tried that, knowing my luck, it would be about the time that the rock decided that it wanted to finally roll down the hill, and I would be a pancake!

Even though Mamallapuram isn't overly exciting, we made the best of it and had a great time. By the end of the day, we were hot, sun burnt, and tired! This was my 4th trip there, and I'm sure I'll probably make at least 4 more before I leave Chennai. Every time I go though, I see sometime new or learn something else that I didn't know before. Maybe I'll be a history buff by the time we move...maybe, but probably not.

Easter in India

Saturday night we got ready to go to bed and realized that we didn't have any fresh carrots for the Easter bunny. Therefore, we decided to leave him a can of carrots instead. However, we forgot to leave him a can opener, and thus, he got mad and didn't leave us anything! Oh, and by the way, for those of you who don't already know this, the Easter bunny comes up through the sewer pipes...or at least that is what my dad has always told me.

Here is the group of us in our yard. There is me, S, my cousin Beth, and my aunt Diane. Aren't we a good looking group??? We were going to have an Easter egg hunt in the yard...but then thought we might find more than just eggs...geckos, snakes, bugs, rats, lizards, frogs, etc...if we went searching too much through our bushes, so we opted not to have the egg hunt.

We gave our driver the day off for Easter. Normally, we give him Sundays off anyways, but he was willing to work since my family was visiting. However, he is Christian, and we felt that it was important for him to go to church with his family for Easter. Besides, we were easily able to entertain ourselves around the house. After an Easter lunch of chicken casserole, green bean casserole, and canned pears, we played some games. Then we decided to walk to the beach.

This photo of Diane and Beth almost makes the India beach look pleasant. Almost, but not quite!

This is a photo of a couple of the fishermen "walking" their boat down the beach. At first, we thought that they were putting the boat in the water to go out fishing. However, they were just moving the boat down the beach. The guy in front (in the white colored shirt) is pulling the boat with a rope while the guy near the boat is poking it with a stick to keep it out in the water.

On our way home from the beach, some cows had shown up on our road to eat the trash. The resort next to us had some big parties over the weekend, and I guess they have never heard of garbage bags as all of the cups and plates were just dumped in a pile on the side of the road. That is our house in the background, and you can see that our road is a little muddy (and quite bumpy) from all of the rain we have been receiving.

Here is a photo of me standing in front of our gate with one of our security guards. Not a great photo of me, but it's a good picture of our house.

This is a photo of our new neighbors. This "house" was built in about two hours a few weeks ago. It is built up against the backside of our wall. I haven't actually seen anyone in it yet, but I'm guessing someone will be moving in soon. We also have a similar type house on the property on the backside of our house. A very stark contrast to our house.

Anyway, that was our exciting Easter day in India. It was good to spend it with some family members. Now, I'm looking for some more family members to come spend 4th of July with us...any volunteers???

Guest blogging by Beth

For those of you who are frequent blog readers you may have heard J talking about her aunt and cousin coming. We are here. J told me I could be a guest blogger, so I am going to share my experience and thoughts so far.

Mom and I arrived here very early Saturday morning. J was very easy to spot at the airport. (I believe she was the only blond I saw.) We then met her driver. He is very nice. It took us about 45 minutes to go from the airport to J's house. I believe we arrived here at around 3 am. J then let us sleep to around 10 am yesterday. We ate breakfast and headed out to see some of Chennai.

I was glad J's driver was with us when a little boy started knocking on our window trying to sell me a puppet. As he went around to the other side, I then had a beggar knocking on the window. The other thing we saw yesterday was about three or four groups of people colored in purple. Yesterday was Holi, a holiday celebrated here. They throw paint on each other.

We ate lunch out at Little Italy. We also went to a hotel for S to get his haircut, the linen store, a grocery store, and one other store.

When we returned last night, I was able to see my first gecko here. It was a little one. I have not seen any Asia elephants yet. (My brother-in-law wants a picture of one.)

Today is Easter here. J's driver is off today for the holiday and does not usually work on Sundays. We are going to eat lunch and then walk to the beach. I believe J said it is about 3 or 4 blocks from here.

I may see if J will let me guest blog again later this week.

Off to the Airport

So, it's finally time to leave for the airport to pick up the world travelers. I did end up getting a few hours of sleep. However, I'm still glad that it isn't my job to drive at this hour of the night. Hopefully, my driver was able to get some rest as well...however, I doubt he got much as he told me that he was going to church being that it was Good Friday. Luckily for him, S isn't going to work tomorrow, and the rest of us won't be venturing out of the house at too early of a day either. Well time to go...and by the way, it's still pouring rain.

Rain, Rain Go Away

It poured rain this morning. So much so that it rained in through our kitchen air conditioner. Raining in through odd places is actually very common here in India. We also get water running down the walls in at least four different places. We are lucky though as some people have water come in through the electrical box and outlets.

Anyway, it let up raining for a few hours, but then got really muggy. It has now been pouring rain again for a couple of hours. All of this rain (it rained for 4 days straight last week while I was gone) is very unusual for this time of the year. I asked my driver about it, and he said that there is a cyclone that is causing all of this rain.

With it being rainy, my friend and I decided that it would be a good day to play Scrabble (I won't even rub it in to her that I beat her by A LOT). I was entertaining her while her kids had friends over as there was no school today due to it being Good Friday. The kids did end up swimming for a little bit. Anyway, spending time at her house was a good way to kill a few hours today.

Now, I'm just waiting for it to be time to go to the airport. Let's see only about 8 more hours to wait. My aunt and cousin have left London (or at least I'm assuming they are on the flight), but the flight is running about 30 minutes late. Ugh...let's just make a long day a little bit longer!

Well, I'm off to go see if we have water coming into the house in any other weird spots. This is India, so probably so!