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...