Merry Christmas!

...If you're into that sort of thing.

Clock just turned to 00:00 here, which means it's 25/12! (It's been tough adjusting to the 31 month 12 day calendar)

We're all moved in at the new place where we'll be spending the rest of our time here, but before we left our old place we had a raging party to celebrate the end of three days of conferences. We had pretty much given up on anyone showing up at 3AM, but then all our new friends beat down the door and we ended up partying until 7AM or so. The guest list consisted half of people from the New York office that we had met during our stopover there and half of people we met during the conference. Everyone was serving themselves, so the "house boy" just sat in a corner looking extremely tired until we insisted that he go sleep in the unused bedroom.

We found the gym today, and it is really nice. There is AC, 3 walls are windows and the other one is a mirror, free weights, a bench to press, a nautilus machine and a partridge in a pear tree! A guard came in while we were working out and asked us our flat number. That's what I eventually understood him to be asking, anyway. Hinglish is about as hard to understand as straight Hindi sometimes, especially when one's brain doesn't know which to listen for. After he left we laughed at the suspicion we imagined him having; a young American couple sneaking into not only the country, not only the secure condo complex, but also the gym! Another guard with both more hat bling and more familiarity with English came in after that and told us where we need to go to get resident cards. We are lucky to have extra passport photos, so we'll be able to get the cards tomorrow.

Christmas exists mostly in hotels here, but we are excited to have been invited to a party tomorrow at one of our new friends' house.

We'll let you know how it goes! Stay tuned for pictures!

What a day....

Today was a day during which the fact that we are in India was driven home. Last night I fell asleep at about 4pm, given the lack of sleep between NY and London. Then, of course, woke up at 4am this morning. Couldn't sleep so we all got up, Tyler Caleb and I, and played video games/checked email/formatted pictures/searched for things to do for about 7 hours. Finally at 11 we got a car to come and take us around for shopping etc. Little did we know that in Gurgaon, aka DLF, (the town we are in South of Delhi) everything is closed on Tuesdays. Of course. :) So making other plans we decide to drive to Delhi to do some shopping there. The drive is about an hour I would guess. On our way there, we hit some traffic where there was a particularly disturbing scene: a man on a motorcycle had been hit by a car or something and was pretty badly hurt. His helmet was on one side of the road, himself on the other...I'm not sure he was alive. I was a little upset by this and a little sick to my stomach, but had little time to think of it because a man at the scene was suddenly getting into our car. Apparently this is not customary :) We had all the doors locked and he couldn't get in, so the driver turned the car off, handed him the key, the guy got in the back where there are two extra seats, handed the key back and off we drove. Our shock lasted for a minute before they told us that this was someone we should know. He happened to be on the road to Delhi...he also happens to work at AdYatra.

Next, we drove to CP...stands for C.... Place. I am having trouble remembering Hindi names. It is essentially the center of Delhi, and nearby is the India Gate. We weren't terribly interested in sightseeing so we didn't stop there, but maybe sometime in the next three months we'll go back. We ate lunch at TGIFridays! Not very adventurous I know, but it's only day 2. We visited Palika Bazaar also, which is an underground market. Busy and exhausting to say the least.

The drive back was as uneventful as driving in Delhi could be, I'll post a video later of the traffic so you can see for yourself. Lines between lanes? What lines? We are still at the office now, it's about 2:45am. Not sure when we'll be working yet, day or night, but there are conferences coming up that will be from early afternoon until 2am so we're trying to get on that schedule now.

Check out our photos on the slideshow below. We'll post more later today. Sorry the writing is horrendous tonight...I'm still a little jetlagged. Hope you're doing well, thanks for checking in!

T

We made it!

I'm sitting in our apartment in India!

Caleb had already set up access to the Internet, so I am able to say we just got here. We did order some pizza before I sat down. It's time to see if Papa John's can survive translation.

We have a lot more pictures to upload, but those will have to wait.

Thanks for stopping by!

To New York....and New York

We finished packing! I thought it would never happen. My mom got us a hotel by the airport so we could get there conveniently. We used the timer on our camera for the first time and drank in the scenery outside our window before Tyler slept for one hour and I slept for three.

New York!!

Here's what it looked like when I left. Now, I'm assuming this must also have been what it looked like in Newark because although I was able to get on a standby flight from Seattle directly to Newark, the flight was delayed by two hours. So was Tyler's, though he was able to make it to Denver and hang out with Caleb for a while. But I made it to the airport, and somehow, with 120 pounds of luggage, made it from Newark to 52nd and 10th in NYC! Much better view there.

Moving to India

In the future, we will move to India. Let's say it's December 10th. Then we'll move to India. In that future. We'll let you know how it goes. :)