The heat is on! It’s amazing the temperature difference we are experiencing now verses when we got back in January. When we got back we were wearing long sleeved shirts and still feeling a bit chilly, now it’s 85 degrees at 9:00 in the morning. Still manageable without a/c, but not for long…

Last Sunday mom and I went to the Ramoji Film City, which is like Universal Studios, but for Hindi and Telugu movies. I actually learned while we were there that there have been several foreign films filmed there as well, from the US, Cuba, Europe, etc. On average there are 10-15 films being made there each day. They created the grounds in “S” shapes so that you can have more than one outside shooting going on in one area and each one not be bothered by the other. It’s really amazing, the gardens are beautiful and they have sets from all over the world, Rome, Japan, India, Thailand, etc. It’s also really cool how they will have one set with 3-4 different facades. For example, on one side it’s the front of a bank, another side will be a county hall, the other a hospital, etc.

Our driver has been asking mom to teach him how to cook banana cake for quite some time now, so finally on Tuesday the lesson started. It went so well that he went on to make a pasta salad, cook eggplant and some cabbage. He took the banana cake home to his family and they loved it.
Claire woke up from her nap and saw Shah cooking, she said, “Shah, no cooking. Shah, driving.” There’s no fooling her.

Evidently the news has spread that Joyce is the banana cake guru in our apartment complex and several people have come to her for the recipe. The secret is out.

Wednesday Claire and mom went to the Salar Jung museum to see the Nizaam’s jewels on display. Apparently it was quite the site.

Thursday Claire went to a birthday party at the blue cross animal shelter in Hyderabad and

Friday she had some friends over to play from school. She is building quite the social calendar.

This week they are on vacation from school, back to the grindstone next week:)

Clay was planning on a road trip with his friend Jagdish, but he had to head out of town unexpectedly. So Clay’s schedule has opened up for the weekend, he is looking forward to having nothing scheduled.

Claire’s new Telugu vocabulary:
Amama- Grandma (mother’s mother)
Tinu- Eat
Akka- Elder Sister

Hindi corrections: In the email last week, I mentioned that Claire said “Chelo” and said that it meant “hurry” it actually means “let’s go.” The word for hurry is “jeldi.” They are often used together, “chelo, jeldi” “let’s go, hurry.”
I'll write more next week!

Sincerely,Julianna Ehlers

OK, 2 different albums on the clubphoto website. One has been updated for our day to day life in Feb --- including the aftermath of the bee battle. The other is a for Shawn and Archie's trip to Hyderabad, including lots of great pics of folks working for the Talent Management team (CE's, QA, developers, and many more).

This week has been very tiring, fun, but tiring. I think I mentioned in the email last week that we had some co-workers coming into town for the week. They had a blast here, they drove our car, drove autos, visited Charminar, bought pearls, ate biriyani, had the whole Hyderbadi experience. They almost packed our whole 6 months worth of adventure into 9 days. Wow. I’m impressed.

Here’s our exciting news for the week:
Yesterday afternoon Grandma was filling up Claire’s baby pool on our upstairs balcony and Claire was playing happily. After they had been out there for about 5 min grandma looked up at the overhang over the patio. There was a mass of bees about 15 or 18 inches across and hanging down nearly 2 feet. A huge living stalactite. They went rushing into the house leaving pool, toys, sippy cup, everything right were they were.

Grandma called down to the maintenance office (after an unsuccessful call to the laundry room) and they let us know that they would be up to take care of the ‘hOneeBees’ between 8 and 10 pm.
Another trip down to the office at 9 pm netted us a visit at about 11 pm. They wanted to wait until most of the people in the apartment building were asleep—makes sense.
3 guys show up at the door at about 11pm, one carrying one of the really big backpack style pump sprayers, and boy did he smell. It was an aroma similar to hanging out in the pesticide section at your local Earl May, plus that camphor smell in urinal cakes (can you tell Clay wrote this part of the email?), plus a bit of diesel fuel. They went right up stairs, turned out all the lights inside and the guy with the backpack went out onto the patio. I hear what sounds like someone holding their finger over a watering hose, and his little pump arm keeping that thing pumped up.

This guy was out on the patio for nearly a minute and by the time he came into the relative safety of the living room the bees bashing themselves against the window sounded like the hardest rain you have ever heard. When he came in about 20 or 30 bees came in with him, no big deal, all things considered.
I, on the instruction of the leader of our bee killing gang, turned on the light above the stairs to draw all the bees together. He asks for a fly swatter, which I grabbed plus our electronic tennis rackets. I start zapping them, so they fall stunned onto the steps, then he smacks them with a swatter. It was awesome.

Through this adventure we did discover where some of our mosquito problem is coming from; the bees were actually able to get under the closed sliding window and into the house. If these monsters can get through, you know the skeeters are getting in that way too.
Another 20 min and the chemicals had taken their effect and it got pretty quiet outside. Done dealing. The backpack guy came back this morning, did one more sweep of the bee fog and cleaned up all of the dead bees. It was a site…I will try and get the pictures of the aftermath up on the photo site this weekend. Not a single survivor.

Claire stuff:
Wednesday night while Claire was taking a bath she was covering her hand in bubbles, then dumping a bucket of water on her hand to rinse it off. That was a lot of fun, so she decided that she needed to do the same thing to mommy’s hand, then mommy’s other hand, that got boring. So she yelled, “daddy, daddy-doo!” No response, so she tried another option, “daddy, chelo!” That means, “Come on daddy, hurry” in Hindi. She finally turned it around on him, Clay always tells Claire, “Chelo” when we are on our way out the door, but she is moving too slowly.


Sincerely,
Julianna Ehlers

Ha ha ha...

Just getting online on this fine Saturday morning. Thought you might be interested in this little tidbit.

Here in Hyderabad it is 26 degrees Celsius. Just say online that in Lincoln it is 26 degrees fahrenheit. I will take mine for now.

Clay

We had a jam packed weekend. Dinner at our regular hang out Friday night (the Walden Club with the expats and foreigners), then out with some friends (Patrick and Maudri (clay wrote on them this week on the blog if you want a bit more of a history). Saturday it was massages, some new friends came over for lunch (Tracy, Michael, and Sandra. They live in our apt complex and are a really neat family. Unfortunately they are set to leave the country in about 2 months, too bad we did not meet them earlier), mom went to the Secunderabad club to meet some friends in the afternoon, and then we went over to another friend’s house (Susan from Australia) for game night. Clay and his teammate swept the table playing pictionary (they got some easy ones like ‘skirt’ but finished with a tough all play ‘Alcatraz”, not too shabby). Sunday it was more of a pampering day with manicures, pedicures, hot oil head massages, and then out to our favorite Lebanese restaurant for hummus (Ashley-are you jealous?) The evening was nice and relaxing, a bit of fighting with our internet provider, then it was “clean out the fridge night” for dinner.

Monday morning we woke up bright and early, 4:00 am, to attend a super bowl party at some friend’s house just across the courtyard at our apartment complex. Clay and I just couldn’t bring ourselves to drink a beer at 4:30am, but other than that it was just like being homeJ They had a scoring pool, buffalo wings, the whole bit. Robyn and Scott were great hosts and made us feel right at home. They are also at the end of their time in Hyderabad so they are starting to liquidate their household appliances, we got a great deal on the most powerful blender on the planet (Clay says that we should convert our house to 240 V when we get back to the U.S., He says “Gives me the power I need”) and a scale in KG’s, nice.

Mom and Claire have been crazy busy all week going to lunches here and there, attending baby club, shopping, rotary club, etc.

Clay and I have some co-workers in town from the US (Shawn and Archie), so we look forward to showing them around this weekend, should be fun. Archie already went for an auto ride with Clay last night. We have a good picture, Clay will get it on the photo site this weekend. I think Shawn is jealous, today he was asking about how he can take one of them for a ride tonight.

Claire Stuff:
Claire’s teacher’s names are Ms. Madhuri and Ms. Nandita. She calls them Ms. Nadi and Ms. Mandita (switching the first initials around). No too bad for someone who’s not even 2 yet.

We’ve been trying to slowly introduce the potty chair/big girl pants thing with Claire. She is TOTALLY not interested, the only thing she likes the potty chair for is to stand in it or turn over and ride it like a horse. We aren’t getting very far.

That’s all for now, will write more next week!

I remembered something else of note from the last couple weeks we have definitely found our hangout and our crowd here in Hyderabad.

There is a watering hole near the Banjara Hills office called the Easy Rider. Pretty typical food and beverage for a gathering point in Hyderabad, but instead of ear splittingly loud techno and trance music there is ear splitting Rock and Roll (mostly classic rock, but it varies a fair bit).

Our normal partners in this outing are a great couple we met about 4 months ago, Patrick and Maudri. He is from the U.S. and she is from India (although she spent a huge chunk of her life in the U.S. where they met). They lived in the U.S. for a couple years after getting married, and decided after the elections in 04' that they would come here to wait out the Bush Regime (their words not mine).

Patrick's history is in IT systems for libraries or something like that, but it has been way more fun hearing his experiences looking for jobs here in Hyderabad. Quite different trying to get hired as a foreigner, but not in the classic expat arrangement.

Maudri is working as a reporter for the Decaan Cronicle, one of the papers here in HYD. I have been a source for her in a couple of articles about expats here in the city and it is kind of fun to here some of the behind the scenes things at the paper.

They have done a really great job of introducing us to other people, some foreigners and some Hyderbadi's, but all pretty open and interesting. We have met, on a social level, Cliare's assistant teacher from the ISH, an cool Indian guy with an Australian accent, guy from a rock band (that personally loves Bryan Adams), another couple from Chicago that quit their jobs to come here and do consulting without really knowing who they were working for before they landed.

We really enjoy getting together with them, sometimes we see each other a couple times a week, other times we will go a month or 2. That is the way things go, and no one gets all worked up if things don't work out.

Patrick has a blog that is worth checking out right now, because he recently added a bunch of pics of the women in his family in their new sari's for a wedding. Very cool. Check it out at http://soids.blogspot.com/


That is all for now. Have a good one, and look for more on Friday.

This is a short one, not a whole lot to share. Hopefully we’ll have more for you next week.

Grandma Joyce arrived Tuesday night, yeah! Claire is having a great time with her and loves her new Dora drinking glass (thanks grandma!)
I’m already feeling my pants tightening as grandma cooked 2 home cooked meals for us on her first day here. Mmm…yummy.

Things are moving right along here, we are finally going to be back to normal schedules with grandma being around. Work is going well, we both still feel like we are making headway with our projects (although, we better kick it up a notch, only 4 months left) and continue to hire new employees. We don’t have a return date yet; we are still working on plane tickets. We’ll keep you posted.

Spelling clarification: In last week’s email I referred to a game we played at the New Year’s party called Cavardi, it is actually Kabbadi (thanks Sudha!) I learned this week, that you could use any word for this game, the point is that you tag someone and return to your side without taking a breath. (I interviewed someone this week that has won awards for playing Kabbadi!)

Do any of you remember us mentioning a girl named Neela when we were searching for a nanny? If you remember, Claire hated her with a passion. We’ll she turned out to be our maid’s sister, so Claire sees her quite a bit when she is playing at the park with Bindu (Bhagya). She absolutely adores her now! She chases her around, and just last night she came to the house to get something from Bindu, Claire saw her and dragged her into the house to play with her. It’s pretty funny how quickly Claire’s attitude can change about a person. Clay was just mentioning to me the other day that when both Bindu and Neela are around, he is in 3rd place when it comes to Claire’s pecking order of favorites.

Clay had quite the bus ride adventure trying to get to work the other day, check out our blog for more detail. The date to look for is Monday January 30th. http://ehlersindia.blogspot.com/

Conversations with Claire:
Mom-“Claire, do you want to eat lunch?”
Claire-“Ney, ney” (No in Hindi)