Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Holiday wishes to everyone!

I am flying to Thailand tonight and likely won't have much in the line of internet service until after I finish my holiday travels on January 3rd. I definitely plan to take lots of pictures though, so you can look forward to seeing them sometime after I get back.

Happy Holidays!
Amanda

Me in a Sari

From Sari

Auto Rickshaw Ride in Cochin

I took this video awhile back when Adam and I rode a rickshaw from our apartment over to Fort Kochi. It still ranks as my worst rickshaw ride ever. This video doesn't really do it any justice. But at least note the complete disregard for lanes and oncoming traffic.

A couple videos

Monkeys at Athirapally Falls in Kerala




Fishing at Agonda Beach in Goa

Shopping!

Monday was a holiday here so Yelena stayed in town to hang out with me and go shopping. We hit up most every jewelry store on M.G. Road and were pretty much overwhelmed by the sheer volume of gold. I found a couple gold rings that I loved though. And we found a silver shop with some cute (and cheap!) silver rings.

Houseboat Trip on the Backwaters of Kerala

This last weekend Yelena, Adrian, and Aaron, a friend of Adrian's from the UK, came down to Cochin to go on an overnight houseboat trip out of Allepey. They flew in Saturday morning, stopped to pick me up on the way, and we headed down to Allepey (south of Cochin about 2 hours). We got on the boat at around noon and didn't get off until around 10 a.m. the next morning. It was a beautiful boat ride, and the boat was beautiful too. It was as nice as a nice hotel, with A/C in the bedrooms and nice furniture. We had a crew of 3, a captain, serviceman, and a chef. The food was excellent (sadly my stomach hadn't yet fully recuperated from food poisoning, so I couldn't eat much, but it was good), and the scenery was amazing!

Goa Pictures

Goa is most definitely on my all time favorite places list now. It was the most relaxing beautiful warm place I've been yet. Yelena, Adrian and I headed there on Friday. We were supposed to arrive at around 6 a.m. after flying all night from Bangalore through Mumbai. But due to the Mumbai attacks, we changed our flights last minute and took a direct flight from Bangalore to Goa at around mid day. It really was a better choice anyways though, as we were able to get a good nights rest the night before and then only had an hour flight to Goa. There's only one airport in Goa, and it's more or less in the middle of the coastline. The beach we had reserved huts at was a 2 and a half hour drive south of the airport at a place called Agonda Beach, just a bit north of Palolem. The drive was scenic... plenty of cows and typical Indian roads (i.e. a major two lane highway in India looks to be about the equivalent of a one lane dirt path in the US). We had a nice A/C van though, so we were comfortable. We pulled up to the huts and were informed that one of the huts we had reserved was still being built, another was still occupied by the previous tenants, and the third was available right away. But not to worry, we were promised all three would be ready for us before bedtime, and they were. So we dropped all our stuff in the one available one, changed into more appropriate beach wear and headed out to go lie on the beach. It was a nice warm cloudy day, the most perfect kind of day to be on a beach in Goa. We were soon inundated with curious local kids who offered us dolphin swims and boat tours and the like. We declined all as politely as possible and then just ignored them. Then we did various stages of nothing, or next to nothing, for the next 48 hours. We checked out beach shack cafes for our meals and evening entertainment. Yelena and I walked the length of the beach at a nice leisurely pace on Saturday. We swam in the ocean (the temperature was like bath water), laid on the sand, slept in our huts, read books, and soaked up the sun. Sunday the sun came out in full force, so I escaped to a beach shack cafe to enjoy the view from the relative protection of shade. It was hot as hell, but idyllically beautiful. Hanging out in beach shacks was totally cliche, as we tried the local beverages and food, avoided the local smokes, and hung out with beach bums from all over, including Tibet and Germany.

Thanksgiving Dinner

One of the nice hotel restaurants nearby was having a Thanksgiving dinner especially for expats, so we trooped over there in the hopes of having some turkey. Turns out we were in luck! It was a terribly expensive 5 course, 5 star meal, but well worth it. I had scallops as an appetizer, asparagus soup, mushroom risotto, turkey, and apple pie for dessert. Then we piled four of us into a rickshaw (sitting on each others laps) to head home.

Sports Day

Thanksgiving isn't a holiday here, but since the states weren't going to be sending much work due to the holiday, the Bangalore office took Thursday off to have a Sports Day. This actually sounded like it could be kind of fun, until we showed up and it was pouring rain and only about 65 degrees. I was supposed to do the long jump and be on a basketball team, but fortunately they let me skip out of the long jump (I didn't really want to have to jump into a mud puddle on purpose), and the basketball team ended up not needing me. Yay!



We skipped out of there at lunch time and went home to curl up and try to get warm. Yelena and I both put our warmest clothes on, crawled into bed, and slept for a couple hours. That finally warmed us up enough.

Henna!

Last week I was up in Bangalore to do some trainings. One evening Yelena and I decided to see if we could find someone who could do henna. It took some searching, but eventually we happened across a place. The lady was really nice and spoke excellent english. Her daughter actually did the henna and was very creative. Here are the before and after photos.



I've been told that the darker the henna is on the palm, the more in love you are... mine was pretty dang dark, even darker than Yelena's got. Hm...

Elephant Bathing, Elephant Riding, Rubber Tree Plantation, and Waterfalls and Monkeys!

A couple of weekends ago... yes, I'm behind on my blogging... Yelena, Rick and I went on a day long adventure. We got up super early to meet our driver (Nazar) at 6 a.m. to head out. We drove up to Kodanad first to visit the elephant training center there. At 8 a.m. we bathed the younger elephants.



After the elephant bathing we got to ride one of the older elephants.



Then Nazar wanted to show us the rubber plantation that he grew up on. His family still lives and works there.



After visiting with his family briefly and exploring the rubber plantation, we drove up to Athirapally to see the waterfalls. It was beautiful and the monkeys were really friendly.



We got back to the apartments at around 6 p.m. It was a lot to pack into 12 hours!

More clothes pics!

I added a couple more clothes pics to my Indian Outfits album. I really need to figure out a better way to take these photos though...

I'm not in Mumbai

Hey everyone - I just want you all to know that I'm not in Mumbai and have no plans of going there any time soon. I am currently in Bangalore, will be in Goa this weekend, and then I'll be back in Kochi on Monday.

Birthday in Bangalore

I know, I'm behind on posting. I've got lots of pictures to post and stories to tell, but I've been too busy traveling and having fun and taking more pictures to get around to actually posting about it! If I get a chance I'll work on it tonight (I'm still at work at the moment, but we're leaving soon). If I don't get to it tonight, then it probably won't happen until after the weekend when I'll have even more pictures to post from our trip to Goa.

Today's my birthday, and the tradition here at the Q-Center is to bring a large bag of chocolates to share. So I made the rounds with my bag of chocolates and was wished a happy birthday by everyone. The traditional way of saying it here is "I wish you many happy returns of the day". It's very sweet and beautiful!

Tomorrow is sports day, and I've somehow been roped into doing the long jump and being on a basketball team, both of which I'm going to fail miserably at, even though they tell me it doesn't matter if I'm bad at it. Jeff made me promise to take pictures, so I'll see what I can do.

Temple & Elephants

Below is a slideshow of today's adventures. We went about 2 hours north of Cochin to a town called Guruvayoor where there is a temple and lots of elephants. We weren't able to enter the temple, but we did see lots of elephants! There were around 70 elephants and it cost around 50 cents to enter with a camera. :)

3 Indian-style Outfits

Here are 3 of the outfits I have purchased and worn so far here in Cochin. I have some others too, but have failed to take pictures of them yet.

Thunderstorm!

Last night there was an amazing thunderstorm! The lightning and thunder lasted for a couple hours at least and there was a torrential downpour right before I went to bed. It was so beautiful standing out on the covered patio and leaning out to catch some of the rain. I actually managed to get rather drenched that way, but it was warm, so it was very nice. :)

Swimming Under the Stars

So I was pretty much completely lazy all day yesterday (Saturday) until the evening. At some point Nikola called to say that he and Adam and a couple girls (Claudia and Lizette) traveling through town were all up on the roof. So I headed up there and we hung out for a little while. Then Nikola went to see the girls off to the train station and Adam and I headed over to the Bubble for some food and drinks. The Bubble is having a special right now on "skillets", which means whatever random type of food you want piled on a piping hot iron skillet and brought steaming to the table. I had a vegetarian one with some sort of veggie patty and vegetables and a potato. Then we got a call from Nikola that the girls had missed the train, so we headed back up to the roof and just relaxed and hung out on the roof all evening until around 2 a.m. Sometime around midnight we went swimming in the pool. It was so beautiful up there and the breeze kept it just cool enough. I'll have to head up there during the day sometime soon and take pictures of the view.

First week in Kochi

Day one - Monday:
I arrived in Kochi at around 8 a.m. and was picked up at the airport by two of the other secondees, Diana and Ron, and our regular driver, Nasa (sp?). They took me to the apartment and helped me haul my bags up, then we went to the Taj Residency hotel next door for breakfast in their restaurant called the Bubble Cafe. It's a pretty nice place, the food was good, and it's super close (right next door), so it's a good place to go when you want something close and easy. Then they headed to work and I stayed home to call a few people, unpack a little, and soak it all in.

Here's some pics of the apartment and the view from the apartment:


Then after everyone got home from work, the other two secondees, Adam and Nikola took me to dinner at a place called Salt & Pepper. It's over in Fort Kochi (I live in Ernakulam on Marine Drive), so we took the ferry over. (Go look at maps.google.com and search for "Fort Kochi, Kerala, India" to see the area.) On the way we stopped at a booth that sold coconuts and enjoyed an appetizer of coconut juice and fresh coconut meat. So good! The food at Salt & Pepper was good, I had some sort of prawn curry and naan, the price was excellent, and the "tea" wasn't too bad either. (Restaurants in Fort Kochi are not allowed to serve any kind of alcohol. So instead some of them will serve "tea" in teapots and mugs. This "tea" is actually Kingfisher beer (pretty much the only beer around), and it's not too bad.) We took a rickshaw back to the apartments as we had missed the last ferry. I don't really remember the ride as I was nodding off the whole way.

Here's me drinking a coconut and Nikola, Adam and I with our "tea":


Day two - Tuesday:
Tuesday morning at around 7:30 the driver arrived to take us to work. Work went well. I met most all of the people who work there and they were happy to get the chocolates I brought. I got to try real local food in the cafeteria. They serve free food in the cafeteria for breakfast and lunch everyday. I'd try to explain the food, but it's nigh impossible. It all looks rather similar and some things I like and others I don't care for. The ones I don't care for are seasoned with some sort of Keralan spice that makes the food taste sort of acidic, not hot, but incredibly strange. The rest of the food tends to be a bit spicy (hot spicy), which is perfectly fine by me. :) Especially as most of the restaurants seem to tone down their spiciness way too much.

After work Diana and I went shopping for clothes. I didn't bring very many clothes with me (most of my clothes are for cooler weather than this), so I needed some new outfits. We first went to a store called FabIndia where they sell beautiful handmade clothing as well as lots of other nice things. I'll definitely be going back there for gifts later on. I found a couple shirts and a wrap around skirt there. Then we went to Jayalakshmi, a huge store with many floors and absurd amounts of clothing and cloth for sarees. First we went to look at the salwar kameez floor, where I found two that I liked. The salwar kameez is a long tunic (kameez) with drawstring pants (salwar) and a scarf. The ones I got weren't technically salwars, as the salwar pants are very baggy and I opted for a much slimmer legged style, which I don't remember the name of. Then we headed to a floor that had some very comfortable loose fitting black pants and then on to a floor full of shirts. There I found a very pretty shirt that Melissa will probably try to steal from me when I get home. *grin* Sadly I haven't taken any pictures of the clothes yet, so you'll have to wait for that.

Day 3 - Wednesday:
Work again until 4 and then we went grocery shopping after work. There are a lot of things you would normally find in the US that you can't find here, like corn chips. There are plenty of potato chips and even parsnip chips, but no corn chips. I managed to find a basketful of food to buy though, including a number of easy things to make. Then Nikola and I made dinner (well, Nikola cooked, I kinda helped him) and ate at home instead of going out. Then I crashed into bed at around 9:30.

Day 4 - Thursday:
Work again until 4 and this time Diana, Ron, Adam, and myself headed pretty much straight to Wellingdon Island and the Taj Malabar. The Taj Malabar is a very fancy hotel, probably the nicest in the area, and they have a spa there, which is where we were headed. Diana had a long list of appointments for the entire afternoon/evening and the rest of us had plans for one or two appointments each. I just got a pedicure, which was amazing and only cost 1200 rupees, or about $24. It was a full spa style pedicure, with lots of soaking and massaging and such. Then I took my book and lounged by the pool while everyone else finished their treatments. Nikola joined the four of us for dinner and we went to Thai Pavilion, which is in the hotel. It is a very fancy Thai cuisine restaurant. The food was good, and the bill wasn't bad, although a bit steeper than I would normally like to pay.

Day 5 - Friday:
Diana left on Friday, so we sent her off to the airport after work and then Adam and I headed over to Fort Kochi to see if we could find a new restaurant to try out. We were going to take the ferry over, but we had just missed one and decided we didn't want to wait around for the next ferry, so we instead found a rickshaw to take us there. Well, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but driving in India is pretty crazy. There are no rules of the road, or if there are, no one pays any attention to them. It's usually not too bad though, and I hadn't been too terribly concerned by any of the driving yet. Until this rickshaw ride. (A rickshaw is essentially a 3-wheeled motorcycle with a frame on top designed to somewhat enclose the driver and 2 or 3 passengers in the back. See "auto rickshaw" on Wikipedia for pictures and a better description.) This rickshaw driver was crazy! He was weaving in and around traffic far more and much faster than most drivers do, and the moment he had any kind of free space he was off as fast as he could go. The traffic was bad to begin with, but he made it seem far worse. And then to top it off, when he got us there, he tried to get us to pay more than we had originally agreed. It was very strange, even for here. But we did make it alive at any rate.

We walked around Fort Kochi for a little bit and then decided to try a restaurant called 1788 at the Old Harbour Hotel. The place looked pretty nice from the outside, and inside it was like an oasis. There was a walled garden with an infinity type pool and tables on the grass. We sat at a table by the pool and enjoyed a prawn appetizer and tandoori style main dishes. The food was excellent and the atmosphere was so calming and relaxing. A two person band played quietly on some sort of recorder/flute type instrument and a traditional looking drum. There was just enough of a breeze to keep the air from feeling too muggy and hot.

After dinner we headed just another block or so down to the Salt & Pepper where Nikola joined us for some "tea" to finish off the night.

Day 6 - Saturday:
Today I slept in and then moved all my stuff into the room Diana had been in. It has a balcony and a view of the Arabian Sea and it's also a bit larger with more storage space. Now I've been sitting here for the last couple hours working on this blog and chatting with friends online. I feel like I should be out exploring, but it's so nice to just relax and not really do anything too. I need to start planning some weekend trips though, as time will disappear fast if I'm not careful.

Flight to India

I made it to India! But before I start ranting about how beautiful and warm and amazing it is here, I first want to talk about the flights.

Overall everything went amazingly smooth and stress-free. There were just a few highlights that I think are worth mentioning.

First, the flight to Seattle was uneventful, but once I got to Seattle I still had to check in and get my boarding passes for my Lufthansa flights, which unfortunately meant I had to go outside of security. So I crossed my fingers and headed out, got checked in and headed right back to the security line... which at that very moment had just been stopped entirely due to some random security threat. Roughly an hour later and I finally made it through, but still with another hour to kill, so it really wasn't a big deal at all. And that was my only layover glitch at all the whole way here.

Business class seats are awesome!!! They have more foot room than I could even reach, the seats lay back entirely flat, which is obviously far more conducive to sleeping, and of course the service was excellent. Between an excellent star rated dinner, more than one glass of italian red wine, and a decent dose of Robitussin PM, I slept like a baby for a good 6 hours straight on the first long-haul flight, and then again for another 4ish hours on the second long flight. Here's a picture of my seat on the second long flight. I was up in the very front of the plane, right up in the nose, in the second row. A perfect location. :)

Flight to India

And the other thing I have to mention is that German men are gorgeous! (Well, any number of them that I happened to see at least. And don't worry Jeff, you're gorgeous too!) I had a hard time keeping myself from just sitting and staring at some of the gorgeous German men in the Frankfurt airport and on the airplane. *sigh* Anyways, enough of my silly weaknesses.

That's pretty much the highlights of the trip. The Bangalore customs and transfer went without a glitch, thankfully, and two of the secondees who have already been here for 3 months came to pick me up at the airport. But this is where I end this blog entry and start a new one to rant about how beautiful and warm and amazing it is here, and whatever else there is to tell.

I'm leaving in 7 hours!

And I should really get some sleep before then...

Anchorage in October - A few weeks prior to leaving

Anchorage