Doing Better

Let's see - I believe I'm back to 100%. Ok, maybe not 100% but doing much better. Thank Goodness that I didn't have it hang on as long as poor Sophia. Now I'm just tired. I guess one of the joys of Tropical Living is tropical illnesses! The best thing I have found to do is refer to your maid or other staff that have lived here all their lives. They usually have the best advice for how to handle things.

Since we are coming into monsoon season (it's early this year if you ask me), we are having quite a bit of rain. Fortunately most of it has fallen during the night and we just wake up to a wet and very green garden. However, yesterday it rained all morning. This put a damper on the coffee I was hosting for someone looking to move to Chennai! First off, it took me 1 1/2hrs to go a distance that usually takes me 30-40min. Oh yeah. Rain does delay things that much! Most of the people here ride motorcycles. They are all trying to dodge the puddles along with all the cars, buses, trucks, and autorickshaws on the road. Let's not forget to mention all of the people walking around. It makes for very interesting travelling. Thank Goodness for iPods! This has been a savior in bogged down traffic.

Because I had to be in the city with the driver, I arranged for an Autorickshaw to take our maid to Sophia's school to pick her up. Sophia had a ball riding in it. She told me they bump, bump, bumped on the road, and Auntie held her tight so she wouldn't fall out. I think we may end up having to take her again.

The big fun now is trying to decide where to go for our next R & R trip. It has been up in the air since we don't know what we want to do. We've narrowed down to going up north to Agra and seeing the Taj Mahal and other palaces or going to the Maldives and relaxing on a beach in our own bungalow. I think the beach and relaxing with doing not much of anything is winning out!

End of the month here also brings salary time for me. This involves getting the salaries together for our maid, gardeners and pool guy. This also brings about - I have been here 1 year so do I get a raise. Hadn't thought about all of that, but to be fair, we get yearly raises therefore so should they. My maid was happy with the increase Rich and I decided on so, I guess we get her for 1 more year. (Thank Goodness!) I don't think she'd go too far though - she is very attached to Sophia and is already saying she wants to come back to the US with us. When we go - this could get interesting, but that is a post for a whole other day and time!