General Update!

Here is an update on a bunch of things.

Firstly, for those of you that were still concerned about my tummy troubles, rest assured, I think that I am on the recovery path!! It took about a week, and included frequent visits to the restroom and a lack of desire to eat. With the latter to be an alarm since me and food are really tight!! I am not 100%, but things are looking up. And since my approach to tackle this was to tough it out(nope, no immodium here), this hopefully has 'toughened' my tummy! Lets hope my theory works!!

Next.... India is such a service oriented country.... This is really a hard concept to grasp. At restaurants, especially the nicer ones, there are at least 3-4 waiters (yes, always waiters, not waitresses - I will have to write about that later) that are completely attentive and responsive. Then there is the driver, he drives you around whenever, wherever and in between driving, he just waits. This drives Vim crazy. One day after our driver (Devaraj) dropped me off at work, I had him go back to the hotel to take Vim and the kids shopping. Vim was all worried that driver was just going to be waiting around for him. I had to explain that 'waiting' is what he does.

Next.... making friends... Like I mentioned earlier there are several other families that are in a 'holding pattern' at the hotel until their house is ready (it does provide comfort knowing that we are not alone!). Well, we have started making friends!! There is the family from Atlanta - with four kids - James (12), Sarah (10), Olivia (5), William (2), all the kids get along really well. Then there is the family from NY with 3 kids - Talyor (8), Andrew (9) and Lauren (3), and the family from Australia with a daughter - bella (2). It really feels like we have a connection with all of them. Every time we are at the restaurant, we are bound to run into one of the families, and sometimes all of them. It is really nice, the kids love it!! Every afternoon they are pool side swimming, playing in the sand and just hanging out. Yesterday, we actually went out for dinner with the family from NY. We went to a really nice pizza place. The kids had a great time. It will be nice to keep the friendships going once we get into our house.

Lastly..... Even tough I paint a negative picture about the 'hotel' living, it actually has been great. One, it really has brought the 4 of us closer together. We have had a lot of 'together' time. It is nice. We probably have had more meals together as a family over the past week and a half, than what we have had for the last 6 months!! Really!! We have played games together, we have all watched the same tv shows (yes only 1 tv in the room) and many times it was either cartoon network or Disney channel and we have just hung out and gotten on each others nerves. It really has been great!!

that's all for now....take care...