Hello family and friends, lots to share this week! 8/19/05

All in all Saturday was a pretty lazy day. We went out for lunch with the family of a co-worker. It was an awesome restaurant called "4 Seasons" we gorged ourselves on Lebanese food. I'm still day dreaming about it. Saturday night we rented a movie, Mr & Mrs Smith. I don't know if I have mentioned this in any of my emails home yet, but all of the movies that we have rented so far are pirated copies. It's quite obvious when you can hear the audience laughing while they taped it in the theater with a camcorder. Most of the movies are understandable and ok to see, but we have rented a couple where we were constantly stopping the movie to check with each other on what we thought just happened. We even turn on the English subtitles occasionally, but they are so off most of the time that it takes away from the movie. We are going to start taking note of the “translations” they are so funny, one I can remember right now was the word “vintage” was translated to “Virginia” you can see how that could distort the meaning.

Sunday we went to Golconda Fort, we had a great time climbing all of the stairs, but more fun coming back down. Ashley took some great pics, check out the website. We also had our picture taken by 3 or 4 groups of Indian visitors. Maybe we will show up in a picture frame on a mantel somewhere in India. Of course, they are mostly interested in Claire, but she was strapped to Clay’s back, so they had no choice but to include Clay in the picture.
Sunday night Clay and I went to the wedding reception for the wedding we attended the week before. It was quite nice, great food! Basically, you walk in and one of the groom's family members is there to great you, then they ask you to sit down in the rows of chairs. The bride and groom are sitting on a stage at the front of the room in two really big chairs. Kind of looks like they come out of Alice and Wonderland, very extravagant. Families, friends go up one by one and give a gift while being video taped, then they pose for the videographer for a moment, then a picture. I learned that typically if you are invited to a wedding from the bride's side you bring a gift to the wedding. If you are invited from the groom's side, you bring a gift to the reception. This isn't mandatory, just a rule of thumb. Needless to say, we did it wrong, we brought our gift to the wedding. Oh well, we can just give our "confused foreigner" shoulder shrug and move on.

Monday was India's Independence Day. I couldn't really see a lot going on, but we aren't in the heart of the city, so I'm sure we missed out. I did notice that the gas stations were decorated with red, orange, and green Christmas lights (I'm sure they don't call them Christmas lights here:). We went out for lunch then went to a movie (the new Herbie movie) in a theatre. It was a less than desirable experience, for many reasons. One, it was not very clean, Two, Claire needed a nap so Claire and I left at intermission. We won't be going back there. They have a really great IMAX movie theater here that we want to try, I'm sure it will be much better.

Interesting work experience:
I hired a guy this week and before he could get back to me on which day he would start, he had to check with his parents to find the auspicious day and an auspicious time. He also asked HR to give him his offer letter at another auspicious time. A wee bit different then how we do things back home!

The Ehlers household was in bad shape this week. Clay and I both came down with the flu Tuesday and Wednesday, Claire became sick on Thursday and is still today. Ashley is just now showing some signs.

Today is Raksha Bandhan day. It means “Protect” and “Bond.” This is a special day for brothers and sisters. Sisters give brothers a special bracelet adorned with decorations bonding them to their brothers and brothers give a gift to their sisters showing that they will protect them.
This morning before we left for work, the nanny of the apartment above us came over and gave Clay and me both bracelets, put kum kum on our heads (the red powder) and gave us sweets (we found out later that we were supposed to reciprocate with a gift, we’ll have to fix that tonight). This was our first exposure to the special day, when we arrived at work, 2 other girl co-workers gave Clay Rakhi’s. One of the guys we work with got a special Rakhi from a friend through his girlfriend that kind of reminded me of a furrbee (that stuffed animal that is a big fuzz ball with ears and eyes). She couldn’t give it to him herself since she is his girlfriend, that would be wrong.

We just heard from our friends Pat and Lora Janike that they will be visiting us in Hyderabad in October! We are so excited, they are currently living in Bangkok working as teachers. Can’t wait to see you both!

We’ll write more next week.
Check out the new pictures, note-there is one new album, there are also new pictures in the “India July I” album of our trip to Chennai, scroll to the bottom. Good pics of Claire on the beach and on her first horse ride. www.clubphoto.com search by claytman@excite.com