India, it's not you, it's me...

This post has been a long time coming.  No, we are not breaking up with India.  In fact, we are apologizing and starting a fresh relationship.

See, the truth is, while India has definitely been an adjustment, the problem isn't the country or the people.  I, legs, have realized that there are other factors about my job that have really affected our morale at post.  Recognizing that the organizational culture might or might not fit our family's needs has been very hard--particularly because of how much time and effort I put in to get here.  It doesn't mean that we want to leave, it just means that we are finding our selves particularly introspective trying to identify what is important to us right now and how we can get our needs met while pursuing this career.  Either way, in the end, it's not you, India, it's me and I'm sorry.

India is different but it is truly incredible.  Once you find your place in Hyderabad the city becomes that much more familiar.  I drive just about anywhere now and that freedom has been huge for us.  Yesterday, we ran errands all over the city and it was *almost* like any other weekend in the States.  I posted a while back about our relationship with our driver and yesterday he invited us to spend a very special holiday with his joint family in their home.  It was that much more special for us after really starting over with India.  Again, we are reminded why we wanted to live this life despite the challenges.  The only question in the next few years is whether or not the culture of the agency is a good fit for us.  But isn't that the question everywhere we work?

Mehindi done at the Eid festival by our friend's nieces...I was surrounded by women, all of us sitting on the floor in saris or kurtas, little kids watching intently as the girls did both of my hands...lots of giggling...amazing.

Well, We're Back in India

Our recent trip to Bankok was, quite simply, amazing!  We went out to some wonderful restaurants, ate incredible street food, enjoyed massages nearly every day for around $10/hr, toured exquisite Buddhist temples, and took in the scenery along a never ending expanse of canals from long tail boats.  Thailand was a remarkable mixture of rugged, cultural experiences and beautiful upscale living.  The Thai people were very friendly, and helped to make our stay a memorable one.

We stayed on the 55th floor at the Lebua Tower hotel, which just so happens to be the hotel at which The Hangover 2 was filmed.  The staff was completely over the top nice, and they all loved to interact with Thumper.  It wasn't long before he was saying, "Kap kun krap!" and "Sawatdee krap!" which is thank you, and hello/goodbye, respectively, for a male speaker in Thai.  We arranged a date night, using a baby sitter provided by the hotel, and Legs and I got to enjoy a fabulous dinner on the 52 floor outdoor restaurant.  The view from our table of Bangkok and the river was breathtaking.

All of that relaxation and adventurous traveler spirit was soon smashed to pieces when we returned to good ol' Hyderabad.  The other day I had taken Thumper to a birthday party for one of his classmates, and I was surprised to see a quaint little outdoor setting of straw bales, large paper mache animals, and more toddler toys than I could count.  I thought, "This looks like my kind of birthday party."  However, it seems like always is the case, India manages to come so close to awesome, and then someone said, "Meh, this'll do."

As Thumper ran around playing, I realized that not all of the animals were fake.  There, terrified for their lives, caught in a gaggle of screaming toddlers were three live chickens, each with about a 4 foot length of ribbon tied around one leg.  Kids were grabbing the 'leashes' and tugging, yanking, and swinging the chickens around as they pleased.  The kids were laughing hysterically, the parents smiled in amusement, and some of the nannies even got in on the fun.  I just couldn't bring myself to understand how no one there cared about what they were doing to those poor little animals.  Even Thumper looked upset at seeing the chickens so clearly distressed.

After leaving the party we were stopped at an intersection and I heard a loud thumping on the car door.  I looked over to see an older man hitting our car with a stick.  I looked at him trying to convey with my facial expression that I'd like him to stop, and he held out his hand asking for money.  I shook my head no; however, I'm not really sure if it was in disbelief that this was his strategy for getting money, or if I was genuinely telling him, "No, not today sir."  I looked at our driver, both of us shared a light chuckle, and then back at the intersection only to hear the banging again.  This time I tried to put on my mean face and shook my head no again, but he just put out his hand and gave me the same deer-in-the-headlights look.  As soon as I looked away again, there was the banging on the door.  This time I skipped the mean face and got out of the car, snatched the stick from his hands, and threw it out into the intersection.  Without a word, I got back in the car, the police officer in the intersection directing traffic waved us on, and we drove away.

Happy Travels!

Pancho

Bad Words and Chocolate

Not much has happened in the couple of weeks since we returned from Singapore except for a few parenthood moments that are definitely worth sharing.  Oh and the fumigation that happens every week, only now we have pictures.

Every so often we go to a nearby handicraft store to pick up some hand made souvenirs and enjoy chatting with the family who owns the store.  They recognize our car and wave when we pass on our way to other places during the week.  We stopped by last weekend and had Thumper with us for the first time.  The three of us were pursuing the items on the first floor when Thumper and I caught a glimpse of a backroom full of beautiful jewelry.  We wandered back and the gentleman working at the counter invited Thumper to sit on the glass case and play with a calculator.  Thumper was having a blast and the man told me I could go upstairs to shop if I'd like and he and another gentleman would watch Thumper.  Since Pancho was in eyesight I agreed, told Pancho I was headed upstairs, and went to go look at all of the gorgeous scarves, embroidered fabric, and carpets.  Upstairs, I met a man who had questions about travel to the United States and I happily provided information about the visa application process and requirements for non-immigrant travel to the U.S.  Not more than 15 minutes had passed before I returned back downstairs to a smiling face covered in chocolate.  I asked Pancho what happened and he nonchalantly told me they had give Thumper some chocolate.  Okay, fine, I thought.  Thumper has had chocolate before and he often gets a treat after dinner.  A treat the size of one jelly candy, or half of a banana muffin, two bites of ice cream...you get the gist.  I went to go wipe off his face and he said, "mama, chocolate all done!  More!!" just as the second gentleman returned with a full size chocolate bar from the store next door.  I realized that my not yet two year old son had just been given an entire adult-sized chocolate bar, consumed it in 15 minutes, and been offered a second approximately 20 minutes before nap time.  One of those moments that's funny, but only for a few hours, it's not funny anymore when nap time doesn't happen and you have dinner plans!

This weekend Thumper is off chocolate and convinced that fresh fruit is a treat.  I think we've made progress.  This morning the three of us were sitting in the living room waking up, Pancho and I with a little coffee, Thumper with a little milk.  Thumper was riding his bike all around talking about how he wants to name his baby brother or sister, "Orange," while Pancho and I were talking about life.  Pancho blurted out a "holy shit" in response to something I said and all of a sudden, just two weeks before his second birthday, our little sponge continues his bike ride yelling, "holy shiiiiit, holy shiiiiit, holy COW, holy shiiiit mama hahahahaha!"  So, of course we started laughing which only made him do it more.  We had our first talk about bad words and how daddy should have said "holy cow" and it appears as though he's forgotten the curse word for now.  Or he's just waiting to use it again :-)

Now, unrelated to parenting (mostly), I will leave you with a picture of what it looks like after two guys with shop vacs stroll through the courtyards of a building on their weekly mission to keep the bugs away.  This happens at restaurants, through the streets at times, and with less fog it happens on the airplane upon landing.  At least we feel more protected against Malaria and Dengue?

Singapore Part 2

A few funny highlights from Legs...

Our flight left Hyderabad at 11PM and arrived in Singapore at 6:15AM the next day...we both thought Thumper would sleep the whole way but he sure didn't!  During take off and landing he yelled, "Pilots driving TOO fast!"

Thank goodness the hotel let us check in early and we all crashed until the afternoon.  Like Pancho mentioned, we had our fair share of Starbucks, and with a good nap and some caffeine we set off to the Botanic Gardens.  We waited for green crossing lights, saw no burning trash, weren't concerned about being hit by a car, auto rickshaw, motorcycle, or cow, and headed straight for a big lake with lots of fish and turtles (see pictures from Pancho's post).  Pancho left out my favorite picture of an intersection in Singapore...note the differences.

Singapore

Hyderabad

We got to the lake and Thumper couldn't take his eyes off all the kids throwing bread to the fish and turtles.  Except I don't think he understood that they were throwing bread and he immediately took off his sunglasses and threw them in the lake.  They sank to the bottom and he frowned and said, "mama, glasses?"  But, losing his glasses did not deter him and at the next lake he promptly threw in his plastic construction toy; however, this item floated and Pancho did some crazy acrobatics to retrieve it from the pond.

The purpose of our trip was for medical care and to quote the Zac Brown Band, "There's no dollar sign on a piece of mind, this I've come to know."  The facility was clean, the doctor was amazing, people listened to me and didn't just talk to Pancho, I had all of my questions answered, it wasn't invasive, and we got to see our little baby moving around on the ultrasound screen as a whole family.  The doctor even printed Thumper his own picture of the baby which he immediately put up to my stomach and said, "mama, baby sister!" To be clear, we don't know the gender yet but Thumper keeps saying "girl" and "baby sister" whenever we ask him what he thinks :-)

We returned to India refreshed on so many different levels.  Pancho speaks for the both of us about the new perspective we gained from this experience.  Singapore made us realize that the world is a big place...some places we will like, some we won't, but they aren't all good and they aren't all bad.  The great thing about this job is that you get to try something new every two years.  We have learned so much about ourselves and our family through this experience in India and we look forward to taking all of those lessons to heart when we bid for our next post.  I'm sure at our next post we will continue to learn and ultimately that's why we joined the Foreign Service...to learn about ourselves and to learn about others.

There are hard times when we miss family and familiarity of Western culture.  I broke down in tears the last time I left the doctor's office here after I had been walked in on twice while getting blood drawn...It wasn't that I didn't have privacy, it was that the other patients came in just to stare at me and they didn't leave until they were forcefully asked to do so.  Combined with everything else that had happened at the doctor visit I left with tears streaming.  I got to the car and our driver asked me what happened.  He listened and reassured me.  When we got out of the car he said, "You know you can ALWAYS take me with you to any appointment, you are not alone here...you are my sister."  I have never felt so comforted by someone I've known for such little time.  He is one of our best friends here and he is the reason why we chose this life.

Singapore

We had the most unbelievably amazing trip to Singapore.  Originally it was only going to be Legs to have a 12-week ultrasound, but at the last minute we bought tickets for Thumper and I too.  We are so incredibly happy that we all decided to go, because that one trip renewed our excitement for travelling the world, and Legs, Thumper, and I were able to see our new little person and hear their heartbeat for the first time together.

In the past few months Legs and I have really contemplated whether or not the Foreign Service lifestyle is right for us.  It would be an understatement to say that India is not what we anticipated.  It has been a very difficult adjustment for us here, and we constantly wonder whether living in India is a good experience for our family as a whole, a bad experience, or somewhere in between.

Travelling to new places is one of the things that brought Legs and I together in the first place, but after this post we've both started to wonder if maybe we're getting older and less capable of adapting to foreign environments.  Perhaps having a child has changed our mindset, and we just want things to be the way that's familiar.  Could we have been lulled into a false sense of enjoyment on our previous journeys because they were all relatively short-term?  Sometimes being a tourist in a new city gives you just the right amount of time to find all of the positives, and conveniently gloss over all of the negatives.

Singapore seemed to completely wash away those fears about whether or not we want to try another post.  I guess it may depend on where that next post is, but, nonetheless, we certainly want to find out.  Stepping off the plane was like stepping into a different dimension.  There was beautiful greenery everywhere, it was almost deafening how quite the streets were without all of the honking, I felt as free as a bird walking down the sidewalk without being pushed and yelled at to buy something, I felt safe in a city where there were rules like no littering or jaywalking and people obeyed them, I felt adventurous drinking tap water for the first time in 4 months, and I probably drank 10+ shots of Starbucks espresso in the three days we were there.

All of the things I just mentioned could just be 'developed country' things that we've been missing, but there were also many cultural things about Singapore that made our stay that much more amazing.  The city was extremely diverse and we regularly heard languages from all over the world, the people were some of the friendliest I've ever encountered, there was tons of natural green space interspersed throughout the city, and Singapore is innovative and efficient with it's public resources.  There were tons of things that we would have loved to do while we were there, like a night safari, a trip to the aquarium, or take a ride in the Singapore Flyer, but all we managed to do was a night cruise through Marina Bay and a beautiful walk through the Singapore Botanic Gardens.

It's hard to say what our impression of Singapore would have been had we traveled there directly from the U.S., but, what I can say is, it was a wonderful modern city reprieve from life in Hyderabad.  I'm still convinced that we would have loved Singapore either way, and I would absolutely recommend visiting if you're ever in the area.  Thank you for a delightful trip Singapore!

Here are some pictures from our trip:

Happy Travels!

Pancho

There's Babies in Them There Trees!

It's been awhile, and I've got some stuff to talk about.  We're having another baby, I seem to be doing pretty well at golf, I saved an injured street dog named Banjara, I'm learning a bit of Hindi, and the locals are beginning to love us for all of our American candy, thanks to Grandpa Harvest.

Of course the biggest and most exciting news of all is that we're having another baby.  Legs and I are totally stoked, and Thumper seems pretty happy about it too.  Bambi knows all too well what happens when we bring another member into the pack, so I think he's a little worried about moving down another notch on the totem pole, but he's being his naturally weird self and sleeping on Legs' belly every chance he gets.  We might as well quit using pregnancy tests, and just ask Bambi, or Thumper for that matter.  Before we found out about the pregnancy, Legs was putting Thumper to bed one night and he lifted up her shirt, put his hand on her stomach, and said, "Baby."  Who knows how he figured that one out!?  I'll just leave it at, he's a genius.

My weekly golf game has become one of my favorite pastimes.  I, and two other 'trailing spouses', go golfing once per week, and we have a blast.  It's pretty crazy golfing in the insanely hot weather here, but, nonetheless, we still manage to enjoy ourselves.  Today it was 109 degrees when I got home.  We can't really make it past nine holes now, but maybe in the rainy season we'll get through the entire course.  Last week we were playing the last hole, and I was about to tee off before my caddy said, "Sir, play left.  Baby."  I didn't exactly understand what he was saying until we realized that he was pointing at a baby hanging from a tree roughly 150 yards away, sleeping in a sort-of hammock.  I couldn't help but take a picture to share with everyone, all that is India...

Can you see it yet?

Yup, that's a baby in the tree.

A few days ago I was walking Bambi around the block in the morning, and as we were strolling past some burning trash I saw a dog laying on the side of the street, not even flinching as cars and people passed.  I could see the dog's chest rising and falling as it breathed, so I knew it was alive.  I tried to check it out as best I could with Bambi going crazy on the leash, and saw that it suffered a pretty bad head wound, most likely from a car.  I took Bambi home, and decided to just go with my inner animal-lover and took Bambi's crate down to the dog so I could take it to a vet.

At first the dog didn't really react as I tried to pick it up, but then, to my amazement, it got up and ran about 15 feet around a corner to get away from me.  I think that was the last little bit of strength she had because when I followed her and tried again, she didn't even budge.  I tried to get a man walking past to help me, but he looked at the dog, shook his hand, and said, "Bah!"

I carried the crate and dog, who I started calling Banjara, home as fast as I could because Legs needed to leave for work.  She just smiled and tried to look supportive, but I know deep down she was scared shitless that I was going to want to keep Banjara.  I can't wait until Thumper tries that one!

I took the dog to our local vet and when I explained what happened they all looked at me like I was crazy, but they started treating her anyway.  She had a pretty severe wound on her head and eye, so bad that you could actually see part of her skull.  They gave her some pain medicine, lots of fluids, and cleaned her up, and that night I was able to take her home.  I found an animal shelter that also provides free veterinary care, so I arranged to take Banjara there the next day.  She stayed the night with us, sleeping in the crate the whole time before I dropped her off.  Even though everyone looked at me like I had lost my mind, I thought it was completely worth it to see the dog start to recover, and also to see Thumper learn about caring for all living things.  The whole time Banjara was here, Thumper would say, "See dog!  Dog sad.  Dog happy!  Dog hurt.  Dog happy!"  In case you're wondering, Banjara means nomad in Hindi.

Here's Banjara recovering with her IV fluids and muzzle.

Hindi class is going quite well.  I have a long ways to go before I can actually have a conversation with someone in Hindi, but I'm able to use more and more words when communicating around town, and people usually get a kick out it if I say anything at all in Hindi.  The caddies at the golf course love it when I say the colors of the flags.  I think I made my Hindi teacher's day when I was able to write and pronounce the whole Hindi alphabet on my own.  Small steps to big gains  :-)

We received some care packages recently, and Legs actually had to arrange a different ride home because there were too many boxes to fit in the car she was sharing.  It sure was nice to get so many goodies, but we now have enough candy to stop hunger in India.  We've been "improving India-US relations" by giving lots of it out to the guards, kids, and Legs' co-workers.  It's tough work being a diplomat, but someone's got to do it.  Maybe we should have just sent a bunch of gummy bears and salt water taffy to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.  Who can do anything but smile with a mouthful of gummy bears?

Happy Travels!

Pancho

Summertime in India

It's been far too long since our last post, and we're sorry for our brief hiatus.  We are still adjusting to India and our new lives here.  Thumper is thoroughly enjoying his new school, and I'm having a blast attending it with him.  Legs is extremely busy at work, but is taking great pleasure in her job.  Her occupation doesn't require much work outside of business hours, so the evenings and weekends tend to be our time as a family. Bambi is, well, Bambi.

We feel like we really lucked out with Thumper's school here.  It's somewhat structured, in that they have different rooms dedicated to different activities, like drama, music, art, and dance.  He loves to play with the other kids in his class, and he's become very comfortable leaving me in the lobby while he builds his reputation.  His teachers are absolutely phenomenal with all of the kids; they are extremely patient, joyful, and caring.

Thumper's vocabulary is growing like crazy, and he's started to string together 2, 3, and 4 word sentences.  Along with his expanding vocabulary, he's becoming quite independent and stubborn in his ways, and he's mastered the art of the limp, screaming tantrum.  I feel like watching him change as he grows is an absolute joy, and I can't help but smile when his eyes well up with tears, his lips begin to quiver, and there's a slight stillness before his body goes limp and he screams with all his might because he wanted another treat, or he wanted to put the brush on the floor instead of on the table, or he wanted Mama to sit in this chair instead of that chair.  I'm sure the complexity of the problems will change with time, but he'll always be this special and perfect little person to me.

Leg's is working like crazy with the busy season for students traveling to the U.S. and also parents traveling to visit their children who are graduating from universities all across America.  She is constantly moved by some of the happy stories she hears, and also saddened by some of the more unfortunate tales.  Our laws for  traveling to the United States are what they are, and it's Leg's job to uphold those laws regardless of her personal feelings toward the situation.  Overall, I think this is a deeply fulfilling career for Legs, and I'm proud of the work that she has put into her profession to give us the opportunity to travel the world and experience different cultures in a way that we never really thought possible.

Bambi seems to be adjusting quite nicely to India.  He lounges around on the couches and tile floors enjoying a sliver of sunshine through the window if he's cold, or the cool breeze from one of the AC's if he's hot.  We try to stay away from all of the trash-dogs, because I don't think Bambi would fare to well in a fight.  During the day, it's all he can do to make it around the block in the heat, but I think he's happy just relaxing in our house most of the time.

I've managed to fill my time with some fun activities.  I'm still taking Hindi classes at the consulate; however, it's only for 2 hours per week and everyone else has dropped out.  Basically I get to meet with the teacher for one-on-one sessions to practice the lessons from the textbook.  Slowly, but surely, I'm learning more each week.  I've also been golfing once per week with another stay-at-home dad at the consulate.  We're both pretty much equally horrible at golf, so it makes for some fun outings.  It's really nice to get outdoors away from all of the traffic and noise in the city.

Overall, we're beginning to find routines that work for us here, and that's a tremendous help in adjusting to our new lives.  We are still very homesick though, and can't wait until we get the opportunity to come home for a visit.  It's just been too long since we've seen all of our family, and I can't even believe that the last time most people saw Thumper he wasn't even crawling!

Happy Travels!

Pancho