Our Start to 2011





After our last post we had a very lovely Christmas and then our family ski vacation in Austria. Within days of returning Chris and Lucy headed to Australia with sad times ahead. Chris' Dad passed away almost a week after they arrived so their journey was extended. Ada and I stayed in Germany and packed up our home and our lives, celebrated her 6th birthday, said a sad temporary farewell to Lizzie, our dog, and welcomed back Chris and Lucy just in time to spend two days as tourists in Berlin and then head to London.


London was a full stop on Europe for now and we thoroughly enjoyed showing the girls as much as we could in two days. Of course that included The London Eye, The Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, two trips to Hamleys and one trip to Top Shop for Lucy.


Fast forward and now...this is our 12th day in India and I hope to stop counting soon. All is well and we are settled into the cave (our name for the apartment we are staying in).


Ada loves her new school. Mr and Mrs Brown Ada's teachers are wonderful. Mr Brown was a State Trooper in Texas until he decided to join Mrs Brown and study teaching, aged 45. They have been coaxed out of retirement to come teach a new KG class at the American School of Bombay, a school they taught at 5 years ago. There are 6 children in Ada's class right now with two new children coming soon.

Lucy is taking longer to settle this time around. After all she turned 13 a week into arriving in India. She has connected with a couple of girls in the last few days and is getting used to doing all her class and homework via her new computer tablet. The school is incredibly IT focused. Almost every day there is a session even I could attend. Today's parents session is on using Twitter and on Friday I will go to a "Making the most of your iPad workshop". I have Yoga at school today whilst Ada attends an after school Art class. She has Yoga on Fridays whilst I attend a Masters Swim Group. As you can tell, school is already a big focus for us all. We are lucky to have this oasis in the middle of this crazy, dirty, exciting, confusing, noisy, sad, poverty stricken, friendly city. Who ever thought....

Chris is settling in well to his work. As a man and the MD he has all one needs in an Indian workplace to get service and attention!

Our apartment in Bandra West is being prepared for our container to arrive at the end of the month. It needed a lot of work and that seems to be progressing quite well. I visited the building yesterday, 10th floor of Rose Queen, and was faced with about 10-15 guys working away, eatIng lunch, walking around supervising. It seems one or three may even be living there, or on the staircase outside our front door right now, apparently a normal occurrence.

Day to day life takes a lot of time and patience. We have a driver, of course, as we are not allowed to drive here and frankly who would want to. Crazy in my earlier description relates to Mumbai traffic. No other Asian city prepared me for this place!
I hope a short video I took of sending a parcel to my friend Trish will be easy enough to load onto You Tube or our Blog soon. It took me two days to send and in finally finding a place - known here as a Post Office - I was to experience the joy of watching a man sew the book into a ready 'made' calico bag then proceed to 'help' me send the parcel...Trish I hope it gets to you sometime.
We plan to join a club soon. The two we are looking at vary a lot in price but Lucy has already tagged the one she wants ( the more expensive one) as according to one of her new friends they offer cheap facials! Oh yes my teenage daughter is making her presence felt in many ways!

So that is it in a nutshell for now. Our day to day life is really that. Day to day. Not in a bad way just in a mad mad Mumbai kind of way!

Love to all....Kate

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