OK, had a bit of an adventure today coming to work. I got on the wrong bus. Twice.

So instead of having a 30 min ride a bit of a nap, I jumped on and off of 2 buses and one auto and got to see a new part of town.

I already know your questions: Do they have signs as to the route they are on?
Do they follow the routes?
Do they tell you if you are headed in the wrong way?

Yes - but I usually can't read them, expecially at 6:00 am when it is dark. It has never mattered because evey bus I have gotten on so far headed in the right way.

Yes - mostly, but sometimes will leave their route if the traffic is bad and they think they can cause gridlock somewhere else.

Kind of, you tell them where you want to go, and they tell you the stop you should get off before they head in the wrong way. I just thought I was smarter than that guy, turns out I am not.

Have a great day,
Clay

We got some clarification on the “purple dinosaur” in the center of the Indian flag from Claire’s school.

The purple ink pad that was used to stamp the flags had a sticker on the cover, of a purple dinosaur. A week later, and Claire still points at the purple wheel and says dinosaur.

We don’t have much of an update this week, so the majority of this email is about Claire!

Friday night we headed out to the Alankrata resorts for Kenexa India's New Year's party. We knew the night was going to be great when it started off with a 15 minute drive across town (this usually takes about 45 minutes). For those of you who know Hyderabad, I'm talking from past Hi tech city (Kothaguda) all the way through Secunderabad, in 15 minutes, wow! You want to know how? We were right in front of a political person's caravan. In Hyderabad (I'm assuming in other cities also) they block traffic for any "important" person driving through town. I don't know at what level you have to be to get this kind of service, our driver tells us it's the equivalent of a mayor and above. We have gotten stopped by this in the negative direction several times, but this time we felt like kings driving in front of them (it was us, a military jeep, police jeep, then the SUV caravan). What they do is post a police officer about every 100 feet along the path where the dignitary will drive. Then they radio ahead saying the person is coming. From there the police stop every car from getting in their way. Sweet.

Anyway, back to the New Year's bash. So we arrive and after a few minutes several individuals start organizing some games. They played "dumbcharades" which to us is charades. They also played a game called cavardi (sp?) where you have 2 teams with a line in between. Each team takes turns sending a member to the other side, this individual must repeat the word "cavardi" over and over while touching a member of the opposite team and return to his or her original side without being tackled. They also played a bit of tug of war, 2 boys only and 1 girl’s only game. I attached a picture of Clay doing a mighty fine job of officiating the tug of war competition.

Some of the girls in the office performed a dance to Hindi music on the stage that was really cool. Then another co-worker (Sumit) sang 2 songs acapella (sp?), very cool also. During Sumit’s second song, Claire ran up the aisle, up the stairs to the stage, turned around and started dancing. It was hilarious. This was totally unprompted; I actually had just told her to come with me so we could put some mosquito repellant on. Of course she ran the other way and ended up on stage. She made the best of it. I thought she would get up there, turn around and see 200 people staring at her then get down. I underestimated her willingness to perform, evidently. We video taped the excitement and will show it to interested parties upon our return.

The rest of the evening was full of eating and dancing. It was certainly a night to remember.

Wednesday night we went to a grand opening for a much needed coffee shop near the office.

Thursday was India’s Republic Day which is a national holiday. Claire made a cool Indian flag in school on Wednesday which we have proudly hanging in our apartment. She keeps pointing to the middle of the flag and saying, “purple dinosaur.” We have absolutely no idea where that is coming from, but I’m sure it makes sense to her. On the ride home from school that day, she called Clay and said, “Daddy pag!” Meaning, daddy, I made a flag in school today (I had to translate that part for him).

Speaking of Claire funnies….

Conversations with Claire:
Mom-"Claire, how old are you going to be in April?"
Claire-"Five" (no hesitation)

Mom-"Claire, did you meet any new friends at school today?"
Claire-"Yep"
Mom-"What were their names?"
Claire-"Um...Claire"
The next day I asked the same question, this was her response:
“Um…Simba”
I think someone has The Lion King on their mind!

On the way up to our apartment after school this week, Claire noticed a broom sitting on the floor outside the elevator. Of course, she couldn’t resist picking it up. So she started sweeping, and sweeping, and sweeping. Then, out of no where, some random guy comes up, takes the broom away and says, “No, no, bad, bad.” I sure hope that she doesn’t remember that experience when we get home and we hand her a broom to sweep the kitchen floor.

Grandma Joyce is on her way to India next week, yeah!!!

Today is Republic day here in India. So far it seems to be a bigger deal than Independence day back in Aug. Below is a nice overview of why it is celebrated and what it signifies.

About Republic Day
26th January 1950 is one of the most important days in Indian history as it was on this day the constitution of India came into force and India became a truly sovereign state. In this day India became a totally republican unit. The country finally realized the dream of Mahatma Gandhi and the numerous freedom fighters who, fought for and sacrificed their lives for the Independence of their country. So, the 26th of January was decreed a national holiday and has been recognized and celebrated as the Republic Day of India, ever since.
Today, the Republic Day is celebrated with much enthusiasm all over the country and especially in the capital, New Delhi where the celebrations start with the Presidential to the nation. The beginning of the occasion is always a solemn reminder of the sacrifice of the martyrs who died for the country in the freedom movement and the succeeding wars for the defense of sovereignty of their country. Then, the President comes forward to award the medals of bravery to the people from the armed forces for their exceptional courage in the field and also the civilians, who have distinguished themselves by their different acts of valour in different situations.
To mark the importance of this occasion, every year a grand parade is held in the capital, from the Rajghat, along the Vijaypath. The different regiments of the army, the Navy and the Air force march past in all their finery and official decorations even the horses of the cavalry are attractively caparisoned to suit the occasion. The crème of N.C.C cadets, selected from all over the country consider it an honour to participate in this event, as do the school children from various schools in the capital. They spend many days preparing for the event and no expense is spared to see that every detail is taken care of, from their practice for the drills, the essential props and their uniforms.
The parade is followed by a pageant of spectacular displays from the different states of the country. These moving exhibits depict scenes of activities of people in those states and the music and songs of that particular state accompany each display. Each display brings out the diversity and richness of the culture of India and the whole show lends a festive air to the occasion. The parade and the ensuing pageantry is telecast by the National Television and is watched by millions of viewers in every corner of the country.
The patriotic fervor of the people on this day brings the whole country together even in her essential diversity. Every part of the country is represented in occasion, which makes the Republic Day the most popular of all the national holidays of India.

Hello Friends and Family! Happy New Year!

Sorry it’s been so long since we have sent an update, the last month and a half has been a whirlwind. It was great catching up with all of you during our visit home in December. Unfortunately we were greeted with some nasty cold weather upon arrival, but it was definitely worth it to see everyone again. Even all of the weight we gained by eating all of our favorite foods at home was worth itJ
Claire had a great time with her grandparents, great grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. Lots of spoiling went on, but she doesn’t seem too damaged by itJ

We arrived back in India on December 30th (with 4 of our 6 suitcases, we are not having good luck with arriving in India with all of our luggage) just in enough time to celebrate the New Year here. We went to another expat couple’s house (well he’s Indian, she’s from France…awesome house). Lot’s of fun and good food.
We were pleasantly surprised with how easily we fell back into our lives here.

Saturday, January 7th we hopped on another plane (I know, we’re crazy) bound for Thailand. We spent the weekend with our friends Lora and Pat (Auntie Lora and Uncle Pato to Claire) in Bangkok, then headed to Chiang Mai Monday-Wednesday, and back to Bangkok just with just enough time to catch the first day of our friends Evan and Maggie’s (Uncle Buvey and Aunti Maggie to Claire) 2 week stay before we headed back to India on the 14th.
Overall Clay and I were very impressed with Thailand, it’s very clean, traffic seems to flow well, and they have great public transportation system. Claire had a great time on the choo-choo (the sky train). We got some really great video of the “bye bye choo-choo” wave that she gave the train every time we got off.
The food was fabulous, we definitely got our Pad Thai fix for the year. We also had excellent Japanese and Lebanese food there.
Our time in Chiang Mai was very memorable, we went to a non profit elephant nature park where we spent the whole day with elephants, feeding and bathing them in the river. It was very educational and tons of fun. It was amazing having the elephants take food right out of our hands and actually getting in the river with them and scrubbing them down.
We also did a bit of shopping in Chiang Mai, but I think our favorite purchase from Thailand were these tennis racquet shaped bug zappers. They are so cool, it’s like having an outdoor bug zapper on a stick. You should see Clay and I on our patio at night chasing after them, it’s pretty funny. I guess that’s what you do for entertainment when you have 70 Telugu and Hindi TV channels to watchJ (I’m exaggerating, we have a few English channels too)
Most of all it was great spending time with very old friends, it’s crazy having a Nebraska gang reunion half way across the world.

Now it’s back to life as usual, with the exception of a crazy work schedule until grandma Joyce arrives to take care of Claire.

Claire stuff:
She started “school” this week at the International School of Hyderabad. I think she is really going to like it. It’s basically a toddler program M-F from 9:30-11:30 in the morning. There are about 20 kids in her class with 2 teachers and 1 assistant. It’s very structured, every day they play in the park for 30 minutes, then clean up and have a snack. After that they read, then move to some sort of craft activity. Most of the kids in her class are Indian whose parents have returned after living abroad. There are only 2 foreign kids. I think this is really going to beneficial for her to start interacting with kids again.

New words/sentences: (there’s no way I can remember them all, but here are a few)
Thong Lo Soi Baad (this is the street we stayed on in Bangkok)
Bindu (our maid’s name, we learned recently that we have been calling her by the wrong name, so we are slowly but surely correctly ourselves)
Tah nap (Shah, drive faster, I need to get home to take a nap)
Big girl bed (we bought a blow up mattress with sides for her to sleep in instead of the pack n play, she’s loving it)
Big girl pants (we are trying out the potty training thing, not going so well)
Hybad (Hyderabad)
Cool (School)

Whenever you ask her a question, she does this very adult thing, she says, “Umm…” then her response. For example, “Claire do you want to eat lunch?” “Umm….no,” like she really has to think about her response. It probably doesn’t translate well over email, but it’s quite funny.

I promise the emails will start coming more often again.

We added some Thailand pics to the photo website, check them out when you have a chance. www.clubphoto.com search for claytman@excite.com

Sincerely,Julianna Ehlers