Hi Everyone --

It has been another interesting week. We had a very hard rainstorm on Tuesday. I happened to be out shopping/lunching in it. By the time I got home, the whole yard was flooded. The water was pouring down the steps inside the house from the terrace. Apparently, a tarp to keep the rain out of the master bath had blown into the corner where the drain was and blocked the drain. So after there was 5-6" of rain pooled up there, it had no choice but to go under the door and down the steps. Luckily, that was discovered and fixed. The front yard was flooded too. It seems that the water was coming so hard that it backed up the sewer as well and that was in the yard. The water was probably 8-10" deep. There is a drain, but I felt sure it was clogged with dirt and vegetation debris. The next day, the gardner looked into it and decided the drain pipe was probably clogged or broken, so he dug up the ground just beyond the drain. Lo and behold, there was NO drain pipe. There was only a drain with a grate on it, and no where for it to go. Doug just laughed. Ridiculous!

My floor cleaner wrote a nice letter in Marati to the Pune Municipal Corporation to have them come and clean out the sewer. The driver delivered the letter and they said they would be here in the afternoon to take care of it. No such luck! No one ever came. They probably will never come!

A friend from the US (Debi, her husband works for GM), and I went on a discovery trip this week. We were looking for beef. We took my housekeeper, Mary, along with us. At the first place we stopped, the lady had quit 2 months earlier and was moving into a flat where she couldn't slaughter beef any more. Our next stop was a shop we had been by many times on the main road. They had beef, chicken, and pork. I bought bacon and minced beef. We had BLT (without the L) and my friend made spaghetti. She said the meat stayed pink and she was certain she cooked it very thoroughly. We used our minced beef today to make lasagna. We haven't eaten yet, so we'll see how it is. I don't think I could handle a bright pink hamburger! Better to mix it with some strongly flavored sauce and not look at it.

We had church at our house today. We had attendance of 6. That's pretty good. We only have 8 people here in Pune, and one was out of the country. It was nice not to drive to Mumbai. We do miss everyone there, however.

We sent a cute outfit to Ella-marie -- just for fun. The pictures will be on the blog.

We are still working out our trip to Thailand. A lot of things are coming together. We'll let you know about the fun things we have planned when we get to that point. Don't forget, we did invite anyone that wanted to come to join along. The dates are Nov. 3-10.

The Ganesh festival they are having here right now it not as bad as I thought it would be. They have cut back this year on the loud speakers blaring loud music and chanting. The roads haven't been bad when I've been out. They did built all those stages and platforms in the middle of the roads, though. We'll see if they fill in the holes when they take everything down.

I guess that's all for this week. My friend Linda is back from the US (finally!)
Have a good week! We love you!
Lucinda