Living in India

We live in a neighborhood called Vasant Vihar. It's a quiet neighborhood with both Delhi-ites and many ex-pats and embassies as well. It's about a 15-20 minute drive from the school, and we use Uber to get around. Here are some images of our neighborhood and our classrooms!

              Thanksgiving weekend, we flew to Udaipur with another couple from work named Megan and Michael. Udaipur is known as the "City of Lakes" and located in a state nearby called Rajasthan. We started off our trip with an early morning bike tour around the city and got a beautiful view of the lakes, countryside, and farms. We went to a palace there and ate along the lakes throughout the entire trip. We also took a boat ride through Lake Pichola on our last day. It was a beautiful city and also quite touristy.

        We went to Madurai, a city in South India in a state called Tamil Nadu, for a friend's wedding. My friend Swati had come to Delhi to look for wedding outfits and we met up. She invited us to her wedding since it was going to be a big extravaganza, and we decided that we would go! Madurai is called "The City of Temples" and said to have more temples than homes. We went to the famous and ancient temple called the Meenakshi Temple that is from the 1200s! It was stunning and huge and simply unbelievable that it was that old. We ate everything on a banana leaf the entire time we were there, and we were never given utensils. This is typical in the South and with some foods in the North, but it was new to us to not have a type of bread to scoop things like rice with sambar or chutney. Jake's hands got prune-y from just eating his meals a few times! The wedding was stunning and bursting with tradition. We missed it, but there was an elephant in the...

                Trinca's Restaurant and Bar We went to Kolkata, India's capital during British rule and a major city in the state of West Bengal, right after Diwali over our Diwali Break. What an experience! It was our first domestic flight in India, and my first time in the city of my ancestry. We were really in awe of how different the city felt from Delhi with old colonial architecture, different sunset times, and even a little hotter. The feel reminded us quite a bit of Cuba. Kolkata is much more walkable than the Delhi that we've experienced so far, so we walked everywhere. We saw all the main attractions and ate the most delicious food we've had since being in India! Debika Mashi's aunt treated us to a traditional Bengali meal at a restaurant called 6 Ballygunge Place, and it was incredible! Bengali cuisine is completely different from North Indian food, which we find in Delhi. It is more mustard based and more fish based with di...