Cheese Naan in Paradise

Well, we are in paradise here. It is amazingly beautiful where we live now, and I feel like the luckiest person in the world. The Arabian Sea is the perfect temperature to be refreshing any time from morning to night. We are only 8 degrees off of the equator, so it is always warm and the sea has huge, exhilarating waves, gorgeous, peaceful beaches for swimming, awesome views from the lighthouse of fishing villiages all around here, and much more. It looks like I owe you about 13 pictures of the day, so I better get started. I am going to try to put a new picture almost every day. The past two weeks have flown by with moving and all. Turns out we can't get internet at our house, so we are using internet cafes at the beach, which may be sufficient. Otherwise we'll check into getting dial up. So let the pictures begin:


First up is sweet Arjun. This is him on his one-week birthday. He is the first-born of Vinesh and Suni, our friends from when we first arrived. They are now neighbors of ours! Sunday morning we will go to the official baby-welcoming ceremony at their house, and then we will all go down to the beach.

This is Suni's house. It is a little complicated to explain. You know how a lot of Indians live with their parents? Generally after a couple is married they move in with the man's parents. So Vinesh and Suni live with his parents. But after the baby is born, for three months, Suni and the baby move back to live with her parents. They cook and clean for her and take care of her like they did when she was a child so that she can focus on the baby and learning the ropes of being a new mom. Vinesh and his family live just around the corner, so they visit every day. So these pictures were taken at Suni's house.

Here is Mark sitting on our balcony where we often sit in the morning or afternoon. It is perfectly situated to feel private even as you watch the neighborhood activity all around you. A great little keyhole to view the lives of the people here through.

And this is the footpath from the main road to our house. It goes past about ten houses on either side on the way to ours and then on down the hill we live on. The path winds about 200 meters from the main road to our house, which is a short walk along the main road to the beach. Along that lane just two houses down from ours is the home and studio of Babu Xavier, the white house behind me in this picture. This is a coincidence, since Babu and Mark new of one another through our friend Justin who represents Babu Xavier at art shows in the U.S.

Here is me on our balcony soaking up some of the beauty.

This is the double bed (two beds put together that was furnished as part of the house. That's our skeeter net over it.

Here's the main room that the balcony is off of. The bed we had bought is now our couch.

Here is the study and the kitchen.

The house is smaller than our last one, and is really cozy. We are so happy with the location and everything about it.

I had these pictures resized and saved to CD so I could bring them down here and post them. The next batch has lots of good shots of our surroundings, so check back soon!

I'll leave you with a picture I took of Mark soaking wet on our move over here. The truck was loaded up and covered with a tarp, and Mark and I rode seperately on the scooter with his laptop in my backpack. Sure enough a huge rain came and it got to the point where I could not protect the computer; we had to stop and get out of the rain. I took this shot while we waited for it to subside. You can see how wet we were. After we got going again, we came up to an intersection that was completely flooded. As we crossed, we kept getting deeper and deeper. The lake went on and on. I'll just say that when Mark looked down all he could see was his hands on the steering column which plunged straight into water. We were just flooring it, trying to get through. Miraculously our scooter did not stall out and made it through at least a whole city block of being up to our butts in water. It was awesome! Just one of those moments when all you can do is go for it, and what a rush actually making it through! That's all for now. I will post more soon. Lots of love, -Asenath