The heat is back. The highs this week were 98-100 degrees every day and the lows were 75-77 each night. Hmmm…and they are telling us May is much worse. It could be an interesting last couple of months for us.

This weekend was nice, most of the same old thing, Walden on Friday night, ICRISAT on Saturday. We went to a great new Italian restaurant Saturday night, called “Little Italy” in Jubilee Hills. Claire was a little turd during dinner, so we headed straight home afterwards, mom and I ended the evening by watching the move “Capote.” Sunday we attended a party at the house of a new friend. Last night we started watching an old Hindi film made in the 70’s that everyone talks about. It’s called Sholay, very interesting we are excited to finish it this weekend.

Clay was approached this week by some young men (20 somethings) that were dressed in drag, out in the street in the middle of the day. He did not know what the deal was so when they approached they got a quick and stern “NO” and then Clay ran off. He asked what the deal was, and one friend said “Get away from them, they are bunches of trouble”. We were retelling to a different friend a few days later and we learned “They are really good luck, people have them come over and bless new babies and new marriages, it is very auspicious.” Clay decided he is going to keep avoiding them, but it was cool to learn about/see one more layer to this complex society.

Mom has had a horrible cold/fever this week, so it’s been pretty low key. Not a lot going on other than day dreaming about our trip to Goa in 3 weeks.

Thursday was a holiday for the office, the holiday is called Ugadi (the first day of the new year for the Telugu culture in Andra Pradesh). On this holiday you eat a special sweet that tastes sweet then bitter, they say that this is a replica of how life is, bitter and sweet. I also heard some people say that based on how it first tastes when you bite into it, that’s how your life will be for the next year (it tasted sweet to me at first, thank goodness). Clay, Claire, and I went swimming yesterday on the day off, we had a blast and Claire even went in the “big pool” this time. We did lots of “ring the rosey” (that’s Claire speak for ring around the rosey) in the pool. It really wore the little one down so she had a good nights sleep last night.


Sincerely,
Julianna Ehlers

This week was pretty slow, it’s heating up here more and more every day so it was really weird for us to imagine the 18 inches of snow that is sitting at home in Nebraska. We had our a/c on at night almost every day this week.

We received confirmation that we will be having another guest from Nebraska visiting us at the end of May/early June. She’s one of mom’s colleagues at Wesleyan (and a member of our church in Lincoln). We can’t wait to host another guest from home. Remember, we are here for 3 more months the door is open to anyone who wants to come!

Week Recap-
Claire's school is partnered with an organization called ICRISAT (a water conservation organization), and every Saturday families from the school go out there for some soccer, swimming, socializing, etc. They have a great campus outside of town, lots of greenery. We haven't taken advantage of it much, but went last weekend and had a great time, met some new people. We’ll probably go again tomorrow.
Saturday night we went to dinner at a friend’s house and she taught mom and Clay how to make dosas (another type of really thin, flat bread), which was a great experience. She even sent some dosa batter home for mom to practice:) While we were there the power went out, so our hosts lit some candles. The first thing Claire said when she saw the candles was, "cake!" then she started signing the happy birthday song. I guess to her candles=cake=birthday party. Only 1 month to go for Claire's 2nd birthday party, mental note...don't forget the candles.

Sunday we went to the Taj Krishna (a hotel in town) for their Sunday brunch. Remember me mentioning the defacement of the dolphins a couple of weeks ago? Well, thankfully the crayola has all been removed from the dolphins, we are clear.

Thursday Claire’s teacher asked us to stop putting barrettes in Claire’s hair when she comes to school (she had been hinting at this all week, but we weren’t taking the hint). Claire has some sort of a fascination with pulling barrettes out of her hair and putting them in her mouth. We’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to get her to kick the habit, but now it’s gone a step further. Evidently the other kids in school see her doing this and they have started taking their own barrettes out and putting them in their mouths. To top it off, they are also taking Claire’s barrette, after it’s been in her mouth, and putting it in their mouth. Claire germs for everyone!

Claire Funnies-
Claire has gotten into the habit of calling out for specific people when she wakes up in the morning or from a nap. She’ll lay there and say, “Mommy (Daddy or Grandma), where are you? ¿Donde estás?” It’s pretty cute.
She’s really getting into Spanish words, the most common that she says are, “La Luna, El Sol, Corre (run), Brinka (jump), Estrellas, Empuje (push), and Abre (open) (the last two are courtesy of Dora).” She’s definitely going to need to spend some quality time with Tía Martha and Primo Mark to expand her vocabulary when we get home.

Also, we received new cell numbers recently, I forgot to send this earlier. Here they are in case you need to reach us:
Julianna Cell- 91-994-935-8820
Clay Cell- 91-994-935-8819
Joyce Cell- 91-994-935-8821

That’s all for now! Have a great weekend!


Sincerely,
Julianna Ehlers

Been thinking about a couple of things, just random thoughts.
I really want to go to Around the Bend and get the big steak for 2.

I am super intrigued by the new Ultra Mobile PC things that I have seen news on recently. Look it up, just Google "Origami".

I need to start working out again. I sit and eat. Need to add a little activity.

Claire is getting big and I feel guilty about not having her in NE for the family to see, but am very proud of the changes I see every day.

OK, not that I have written these down, I can move on and think about something else. Like lunch.

Hey all, wish I was home to help move snow. Guess I will head to the pool instead.

Had a funny email come in today. Here at the office the correct steps in getting something done are as important as doing the work at all. So when we have issues with our computers, or chairs, or need to ask for something to be purchased, we put in "Tickets" with our ops team or IT team depending on the issue.

That being said, about 2 weeks ago I put in a ticket because one of the urinals in the men's room was out of service (had been for a week) and it was beginning to stink pretty bad. Did not hear anything back, but the urinal was fixed about a week ago. Then today I got this update on the ticket:

-----Original Message-----
From: Operations
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 1:05 AM
To: Ehlers, Clay
Subject: Ticket esclated to vendor

cehlers created a ticket : Bathroom facilities in ATC
Description :

We escalated this ticket to Microsoft
Once we get response from Microsoft , we will update you.




That made me laugh a bit.

Smoggy day in HYD. Just looking out the window to a big hill that I can normally see in Secunderabad, but it is hard to distinguish from the sky today. No big deal, just kind of a bummer.

Hello Friends and Family! Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Mom and I arrvied home safely Monday night from our trip to Northern India. Overall we had a great experience. We arrived Friday mid day and were picked up at the airport by our driver, Tribuvan. Great guy, spoke wonderful English, was very patient with us and was always on time. On the way from the airport to the hotel, we stopped by the travel agent's office to settle our bill. We found the travel agent online, had great interactions with him via email arranging the trip, so it was really interesting to see that his office was a little shady. It's amazing what you can do with a nice website and a customer friendly attitude, I never would have stopped by this place if I just saw it on the street.

From the travel agent's office to our hotel we stopped at the Qutub Minar which is an old minaret in the middle of Delhi. Then we checked into our hotel near Conaught Place in central Delhi. We had some lunch and did some window shopping, most museums close around 5:00, so by the time we had finished a late lunch we didn’t get to visit any museums. That night mom and I were playing a quite game of solitaire while enjoying a beer in the hotel bar. The hotel manager, very discretely, came up to us and said, "A polite request-please discontinue playing cards. We have excise regulations." Mom and I weren't quite sure what that meant, but decided to stop anyway so we didn't cause a brawl. (We were done with that hand anyway.) We didn't try to play cards again in public during our visit.

The next morning we left Delhi at 7:00am and arrived in Jaipur at 11:30am. Jaipur is the capitol of Rajasthan. That day we visited the Amber Fort, City Palace, an ancient observatory, some bazaars, and the Water Palace. Cute story from the Water Palace, I went to the edge of the lake so mom could take a picture, and from the street to where I stood 2 little 6/7 year old boys were following me around saying “1:10” (or at least that’s what I understood), I didn’t know what they wanted so I was kind of trying to ignore them. On my way back to the car they continued to follow me saying “1:10.” I just didn’t get it, so I stopped and said, “it’s not 1:10, it’s 3:40” they just stared at me and said “One pen.” Ahh…I got it then. They were asking for a pen. I dug in my purse and luckily had 2 pens, so I gave each of the boys a pen. They were so excited, which made me really happy, but I didn’t quite understand why they were so excited over a pen. So I asked our guide and driver when I got back to the car, “Why are the kids asking for pens?” He said that it is just so they can go to school the next day and brag to their friends that they got a foreign pen. So cute.

Sunday we left Jaipur at 7:00am and arrived at Fatehpur Sikri at 12:00pm. In route we encountered an interesting experience, the roads between these 2 places are quite bad, but they are trying to do some improvement and widen the roads. At one point we came upon a place in the road where some workers were telling cars to stop. So we did. We didn’t know exactly what was going on, we just saw people working on the side of the road. Our driver got out and asked, evidently they were cutting down a tree that was about to fall in the middle of the road. About 3-4 minutes later, here it came. Once the tree was down I witnessed an amazing example of efficiency, about 20-30 people came from the ditches with axes and knifes and started cutting the tree into little pieces, then clearing it off the road. I would say in about 5 minutes they had the whole thing cleared. It was very cool. Every man woman and child was pitching in.

Fatehpur Sikri was a very cool place, it’s a city that was built by a king, but it wasn’t close enough to water, so it was only inhabited for 4 years. After that they moved to the Agra Fort, which we visited later that day. After the Agra Fort we visited the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal was closed from 3:00-4:00 because the Prime Minister of Finland was visiting. By the time he left, the lines were so long it took us 30 minutes to get through security and another 30-40 minutes to actually get inside the tomb itself.
Monday in route from Agra to Delhi we visited the Lord Krishna’s birthplace in Mathura which is now a temple, then headed back to Delhi for some last minute shopping and the plane ride back to Hyderabad.

Wednesday was a holiday here, Holi day. There is a religious history here (I won’t try to describe it, because I’m sure I’ll get it wrong. If you want to learn more just google “Holi.” To celebrate, people throw colors (sometimes liquid, sometimes dry) all over each other. It looks quite festive. We will post some pictures to the website soon.

Mom had her first dental experience here in India. She had a root canal on Wednesday and will be going back for the follow up work through the end of the week next week. So far, so good. The good news for her is that it’s about ¼ the cost to have the work done here as opposed to the US. The bad news is that she had to have a root canal.

Quick update, our date to return to the US has changed from June 19th to June 20th.

I’ll write more next week.

Sincerely,Julianna Ehlers

In case you were wondering, I'm sending the email today (Thursday), because mom and I head out for our Delhi-Jaipur-Agra trip tomorrow. We are pretty excited, we'll be back Monday night and I'll write more next Friday.

The weather this week has been a bit weird here this week, it rained twice, which is not supposed to happen again until June or July. Clay and I were in the car during one of the deluges the rain was coming at us from every direction pushed on some 40 and 50 mph winds. We saw about a dozen billboards that were destroyed by the wind, one of them was in the road and while dragging it out of the road it blew up and landed partly on our hood. Thankfully it was essentially just a tarp type sign and pretty forgiving. Now, when it has not been raining the temperature has been comfortable, I guess it's the calm before the storm (or in this case, the cool before the heat).

Mom's birthday was Saturday. We went pearl shopping and found some pretty cool Hyderbadi pearls. For dinner we went to a restaurant called The Waterfront which overlooks the Hussein Sagar Lake in the middle of town, it was quite nice. Sunday morning mom and I went for pedicures and manicures, and then the 4 of us went to the Taj Krishna for their Sunday brunch buffet. It was an amazing smorgasbord and there were a ton of kids, so Claire had a fabulous time running around the garden with them.
Unfortunately some of the kids (Claire included) defaced 4 of the cement dolphins in the garden by coloring all over them. They got pretty far before any of the adults noticed. It was really cute and funny to see them all trying to clean the crayon off the dolphins with wet wipes after they realized what they had done was wrong. As you can imagine, that didn't work, but they sure tried. I learned Monday that one of the girls (older than Claire) confessed to her mom on the way home that it was her idea, and that she wanted to apologize to the hotel manager. Pretty noble for a 4 year old.

Tuesday our driver returned the cooking lesson favor to mom. He taught her how to make chapattis. Mmmm….yummy

Claire and Clay are headed to an 11 year old's birthday party Saturday night at one of our oldest Hyderbadi friends house (the guy who gave up his seat on the airplane so that we could sit together on our way here in June). Other than that, they'll probably do a lot of veging, watching movies and eating Mac ‘n cheese.

Claire Funnies:
For some reason recently Claire decided that the word “peacock” is really funny. She’ll randomly say “peacock” then look at one of us and bust out laughing. So we’ve tried turning it into a knock-knock joke to make it be more entertaining to us, but she doesn’t quite get it. We’ll say, knock-knock, and instead of saying, “who’s there,” she’ll say “peacock who.”
She also pulled out the “peacock card” one time when I was trying to discipline her for something. It went something like this:
Mom-“Claire, don’t throw your food on the floor.”
Claire-“Peacock”

Within the last couple of days I’ve heard Claire sing her ABC’s twice, my mission is to catch it on tape, but I haven’t been able to yet. She’s also becoming quite fluent at the twinkle twinkle little star song. She does this cute little Stevie Wonder head movement thing when she sings, it’s so cute.


Sincerely,Julianna Ehlers

Hi all!

Well our fearless US presidential leader is visiting Hyderabad today. He was in Delhi on Wednesday and Thursday and in Hyderabad on Friday (taking a helicopter to get around the city so he doesn’t have to deal with the Hyderabad traffic). We noticed in the news that he is sometimes affectionately (or not so affectionately, depending on the individual) referred to as “Dubya” here in India. There have been a lot of protests due to his arrival that I know of no one has been hurt. Only the cardboard figures of him as they burn. Claire’s school is shut down today for fear of the kids safety. Oh yeah…and it was reported that his food menus during his visit will not include chicken.

There’s not a whole lot to report from this week other than some trip planning that we’ve done for the next couple of months. Mom and I are planning a trip to Delhi-Agra-Jaipur March 10th-13th, for some extreme mother daughter bonding. Clay and Claire will stay in Hyderabad for some even more extreme father daughter bonding. We are also planning a trip to Goa (all 4 of us) for Easter weekend, we’ll leave April 14th and return April 17th. The third trip is tentatively planned to Cochin in Kerala for the weekend of 3/25-3/26, with mom extending her trip for a visit to Trivandrum into the first part of the week to visit an acquaintance from Nebraska.

We also finally booked our final trip back to Nebraska, the magic day is June 19th, it’s a Monday. Mom is leaving June 15th, then we’ll take the weekend to get the apartment packed up and gear up for the way-to-long airplane ride back home.

Claire Funnies:
Mom made a pan of burritos for dinner one night this week. When Claire saw these, she said, “Yummy Chapattis.” She’s an Indian baby now.
(For those of you who don’t know what a chapatti is http://www.beonline.org.uk/opencms/opencms/Community/Our_Culture/Whats_Cookin/Chapattis.html)


Sincerely,
Julianna Ehlers