Easter/Holi/Eid Weekend

This past weekend was jam-packed of Holidays! Sunday of course was Easter (Happy Easter, everyone!!), making Friday "Good Friday." Well over here, Friday was also "Eid" for Muslims and "Holi" for Hindus. Thus, everything was closed all weekend.

The 'secular' or 'non-religious' part of Holi, which marks the beginning of Summer, is a time to see your neighbors outside, as it's finally warm again. It's celebrated by applying colors to your neighbors, friends, family, or anyone who dares to go outside during Holi. This can be through paint-loaded squirt guns, colored powder, buckets of colored water, or any other way one can think of. Our landlord invited us out to the driveway where we had a grand-ol' time! This was after I had gone out on a walk around the block, coming home dark blue!! Here are the pics..

Kai thought the squirt gun of color was HILLARIOUS, whether he or someone else was getting squirted. He also laughed every time he saw a bucket poured on anyone.

After trying to clean up and clean off, we went inside, and Kai & I played some Easter songs on the guitar ("Christ the Lord is Risen Today," "Celebrate Jesus! Celebrate!" etc.) and Amanda got some pictures of us!

Seven Months Old Today!

Kai's seven months old now.

This month he's mastered the crawl, inhaling Amanda's bananas, eating dirt, and even tried standing for the first time!

Kai riding around on Amanda
Check out the mohawk. Kai's WAY too cool to be a baby!
Riding in the dump truck at Luke and Elijah's house.

Here's Kai napping with "Aunty Selma-ji," who plays with him while we take Hindi lessons! ...and me in the traditional Indian Kurta.

Rickshaws and Mint Chips

Here are the pictures we promised of the Rickshaws - our most common form of getting around here.

Also a new cultural experience that we had today - Lay's "Mint Mischief" chips. Yes, they are mint chips. I think we like them.
Hope you're all well, and have a great day!

Hello from Tarzan baby!

We had to put this one up for the Aldrich's after they got us the Tarzan-baby NobleBunz diaper for Kai's baby shower! Thanks, it fits great!!
Us at the Sangam (convergence of the rivers)
One method of transportation, the one I usually use if it's only me going somewhere like grocery shopping or the internet cafe. We'll try to get a picture of the rickshaws soon - our usual method of transport, a rickshaw is a 3-wheeled bike that pulls a cart that we sit in. The picture will explain it better. The bike's actually faster, but that's because I'm only pulling my own weight, not that of 2.5 others. :)

One more cultural note...

We've mentioned that the bathrooms here have one of two options, but it's easier to show this in pictures. One option is the "Western-style" toilet (which we have at our place). The other is this, the "Indian-style" toilet, still porcelin, not just a hole, but as seen above. Note the grooved footrests on either side for ease in, well, I'll stop there. The trains actually have 2 options too...there really is one stall labeled "Western Style," and one labeled "Indian Style."

Tune in soon for the next edition of Micaiah's Travel blog, which may feature such exciting shots as a rickshaw ride, or naptime, or whatever other adventure is in for him tomorrow! Good night!

Banana Day!!!

Micaiah was VERY excited to try his first food today!! (16 Feb 08)

Unfortunately, it seems he does not like bananas.

He LOVED mishing it around on the table, though!
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We had a video to place here, but it's too big to load at the internet cafe's in the amount of time that we've had. Sometime when we have 2 or 3 hours to spend we'll try again uploading the shorter video. When this happens it'll be a new post, so you won't have to keep checking backwards to see if it's here yet. :)

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A nice relaxing nap under the pomegranite tree after a big morning

Continuing yesterday's pictoral view of our apartment, here's the study...

...and the bathroom!!! Yaaay!

Hello out there!

नमस्ते !

Hello! Just leaving a quick post for now so that y'all don't think we dropped off of the face of the planet. No, it's going well here...as you can see from Kai's response to being here below:

We also got to move into our new place! Here's Mike in the kitchen...

...and Kai on his playmat!

Gotta run for now, but we'll have more pictures soon, we promise. :)

Especially since he'll be six months, and thus Kai tries mashed bananas soon...