Last Week In Review

Our house-helper returned after being gone for a week and a half. I wanted to do kartwheels when I saw her at the door--i wasn't sure when she was coming back. Her daughter had a baby in their hometown so she went for the delivery. Her absence reminded me yet again of the hard work American women daily endure--cleaning their their big houses:D--without the thought of paying someone else to do the heavy load (ok, there are plenty of thoughts but not enough to convince themselves to pay someone else hundreds of dollars a month to do it). So washing the dishes and folding clothes for a few days made me appreciate my house-helper and the luxery of living somewhere where we can afford one. BTW, her daughter is arriving back in Bangalore today, riding the public (overcrowded, i'm sure) train with a 10 day old baby! A little different from doctors orders in the U.S. to keep a baby out of public for 4 weeks!

I have a theory that when husbands are away on business freaky things happen...which I've reported here before...bats flying in the house, E.R. visits, being locked out of the house. So once again, last week as Brian traveled, the "strange" occured. First, it happened not to me but to Brian. He was flying to Kolkata where a cyclone just so happened to be touching down as they tried to land. (I don't think Indian airline companies are into meterology...they obviously didn't check the latest weather reports...or maybe they just didn't care:) So after a sickening bout of violent turbulance they diverted to a nearby city where he spent hours in the airport waiting to see if they would be flown to Kolkata (in the cyclone) or sent back to Bangalore. There was a riot by the passengers and one man arrested. The decision was made, after 15 hours of travel, to fly to Kolkata. They landed safely and amazingly he was able to work. The other freaky things that happened were Haddon falling out of bed onto the hard marble tile on his forehead. (Corban fell out of bed onto his head last time Brian was gone! They never fall out of bed when he's here!) Kai, woke up at 3:30 am, came out of his room and tried to jiggle open my door (over and over), which was locked. This is a first for a child who always sleeps thru the nite. And yes, i freaked out b/c when Brian is gone I'm expecting someone to try to open the door:) (i'm a wuss) so my first thoughts were not that it would be Kai. And last but not least a rickshaw played bumper cars with me and hit the side of my car while driving. He said I hit him but we were both going straight. Who knows, but glad I didn't have to pay off a raging rickshaw driver to let me get by which happens so many times to foreigners.

Last but not least...as you may know an Indian-American won the U.S. National Spelling Bee. She was the 7th Indian-American in the last 11 years to win and the 2nd back to back wanting to be a neurosurgeon! Wow! She turned 13 the week before the spelling bee and didn't celebrate b/c she was too busy preparing. But with $40,000 in prizes I'm sure she is having a great party now:) The documentary "Spellbound" is a insightful movie about the lives of students training for the Nat'l Spelling Bee and features an Indian-American winner.