Hi Everyone!

It's been a busy week in Pune. I was only home on Tuesday! Monday I went grocery shopping and to the market and then went out to lunch with friends. We spent only 100 rupees each ($2.50) for a huge lunch with dessert. Wednesday we went out for our weekly outing and we had a new John Deere wife with us. She has 2 small children (9 months and 4 years) and got a babysitter for them. We went to an appliance store after and I got Doug a small food chopper. He was very excited! I can't even remember what I did on Thursday. Friday Doug had off work, so we had to go do something. He went to find some electrical widgets, and then we got invited to see at fort in town, so we toured that (very old -- 18th century) and we went to the Tulsi-baug market. Doug had never been there. It has really changed since they took all the small shops down and now the only shops are in the buildings. The walk way is a small street width rather than just 2 people wide. I got Ella-marie some bangles to go with her new outfit.

We went out to eat that night with some other new friends (he works for GM) and we went to an Iranian restaurant (which serves chicken, lamb, and beef!) with hooka facilities. Hooka is like smoking apple, orange, coconut, etc. in a huge water pipe. Very strange and very weird! Our dinner took so long to come, there was no time to smoke -- what a relief! We did find a piano store right next to this restaurant though. We were told there were no pianos in Pune at all, but they were wrong.

Doug was also off work on Saturday. We went shopping for things for his Indian meal he was going to prepare (now that he has his small chopper). He just had to try out his two new Indian cookbooks. He made Indian rice, a chicken dish, and fried okra. The fried okra was a bit sketchy, but the other was good. We had it at our home group pot luck on Sunday. Our driver is Muslim and they just finished Ramzan so he asked for Sunday and Monday off. It has been a long month of fasting for them. Since we didn't want to drive to Mumbai with a different driver, we decided to stay here and have church, so all our Pune members came to our house. We watched Saturday afternoon General Conference and had pot luck. It was nice to visit.

I have 23 baby blankets done, and I need to get more flannel. I got some crochet thread here in town and it's variegated, so that has been fun on solid colors. I'm almost half way done with my goal of 50!

Our trip to Thailand is coming into shape. We have all our plane, hotel, jungle tour, sleeper train, and beach resort reservations. It's less than 3 weeks away!

Hannah just finished her first quarter exams this week. The French teacher finally showed up to give a test that the kids hadn't had any instruction for. What a way to do things!

We are all well and fine here. The rain is about over -- only occasional showers. It is hot in the day, however, when the sun is shining. It will cool down in Nov. and Dec. That will be nice!

Have a great week!
Love, Lucinda