Saturday, July 31, 2010

Despite my self-induced level of stress regarding traveling, all went smoothly on the longest leg of our journey. Karen and I arrived in Mumbai late last night. We met up with Chris Beach, president of IYNAUS in Newark. It was entirely a coincidence that he was on the same flight from Newark to Mumbai. A bigger coincidence was that his seat on the flight was the center seat between Karen and me! We were astounded. Karen, Chris and I had a fairly pleasant 15 hour flight and all of us managed to sleep pretty well.


We drove through crazy traffic from the airport to the hotel. Our driver to the Leela hotel told us that they are undergoing a massive expansion at the airport – building a brand new departures building so that the arrivals and departures will be in separate buildings.

Arrival at the Leela Hotel was interesting. We had to go through a airport like scanner and our luggage was x-rayed for security purposes. The hotel lobby is beautiful, and smelled strongly of incense. It was Karen’s birthday and the hotel had flowers and a chocolate cake waiting for her. We ate the cake at 11:30a at night and it hit the spot!

It is morning now in Mumbai and rainy and gloomy. Our of our hotel window we can see the beginnings of an elevated train track. They have built the elevated concrete supports in pieces for some reason, leaving large gaps of 200 feet.

We are packing up now for our four hour ride to Pune.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

almost ready to launch

Last minute details are falling into place. As always, I have to give up on my ambitious plans for my last day home. Mow the lawn? Drive downtown to have lunch with my son? Harvest the garlic? Not all of these are going to happen! I did manage to get everything squared away at the yoga center and my bags are packed and ready.
I had hoped I would be less stressed out by my impending departure this time around, but I was wrong. I have managed to give myself a tension headache. My youngest son has suggested that it is "my day". He made me lunch (peanut butter sandwich, a giant bowl of raspberries and a popsicle) and declared that we should watch The Lord of the Rings. We settled on the first movie and happily joined Middle Earth for a few hours.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Here we go again

I leave for my second trip to Pune in just over 2 weeks! Writing a blog and reading your comments was very therapeutic for me so I have decided to keep a blog again. Look for more posts soon.