Hi Everyone --

Sorry I missed last week! Either I was too ornery to write or someone was hogging the computer all day. Either way, it wasn't pretty!

We've had an exciting couple of weeks. Last week we had some friends come from Mumbai and stay the weekend and attend church then go back. It was fun to have them. We treated them to a walk in the Osho park, shopping on Center Street, MG Road, Sizzlers, and the movie Outsourced. Hopefully, they had a relaxing and out of the ordinary weekend.

Hannah finished painting in her bedroom. We have the "before" and "after" pictures on the blog. We got an elephant wall hanging at the street market on North Main Road. While we were there looking and bargaining, the guys started packing things up and putting things away. We asked what was going on and he said that the police were coming. We were probably his only sale of the day, because as we went past a couple more times that day, they were still not selling. We have some pictures of that street market -- very colorful and exciting!

I finally got the telephone hooked up! The day I went in to pay my phone/internet bill, I asked how I could get it fixed. They told me to go to the corporate office. We went there and there was a service rep who didn't talk to me much, but he seemed very helpful. As he was explaining to someone on the phone that it needed to be fixed, he looked at my bill and wanted the phone number. He flipped to page 7 and read the number off there. I told him to wait -- that wasn't the number, the number was on page one, right below the name, address, etc. He said that wasn't the right number. I asked what that number was -- he said that was the auxiliary number. My real phone number was on page 7 and I had been giving the wrong number all this time. The wrong number was the same as the real number, except one digit was different. Well, he arranged for someone to come out, but they didn't. I called a week later, gave the right numbers and they came the next day. The guy fixed it and it's working fine now. Who would have thought the right number would be on page 7 not right under the name and address!

We got to go out to dinner with a John Deere guy this week. It's fun to talk with Americans and interact with those that are like us. I also got to take a JD gal from Germany shopping on Saturday. We had a fun time exploring all the "Indian" places, instead of the malls and such. She had a good time and is looking forward to coming back in September. She asked if I wanted anything from Europe, or the United States. That was really sweet.

This week we also found out that the Hard Rock Cafe has opened in Pune. It's about 1 1/2 km. away from our house. We went to lunch one day and then Hannah wanted to go to a concert for Goldspot on Friday night. Doug was the lucky winnner there!

We are still working on our China trip. We're trying to stay within budget, have it be relaxing, and exciting. We're about on plan XY. Hopefully this week we can get that finished up. The cheapest way to Bejing from Mumbai is through Dubai. If you look on a map, you'll see that that's totally in the wrong direction. I guess that's another country on our list of "visits."

We hope all is well and that spring is around the corner!
Love, Lucinda