I landed in India from Utah at 0200h. I was exhausted and felt gross after 24 hours of long flights. The plan was to drop off my bags and then get on another plane at 0600h to meet Lady Hiva and the two Muggles in southern India where Lucky Dragon was swimming for his school at an international swim competition. I realized as I was picking up my bags that Lady Hiva was already gone and I did not have a key to get into out apartment!
That turned into a round of texts hoping that any neighbors would be awake to allow me to keep some bags in their home while I went to Chennai. I had brought a whole bunch of perishables with me! After not hearing back I had the idea to book a hotel and leave my stuff at a hotel. But when I arrived, they told me that they did not have rooms (even though I had just booked it online). About 30 minutes later I was again lugging my bags into a car and now calling neighbors. I was so grateful one of them woke up. I dropped off my bags and headed back to the airport to sleep on a bench for a few hours.
By the time I arrived at the swim meet I felt SO GROSS! I was so happy to shower.
We spent the next three days cheering for Lucky Dragon. He did amazing. He swam so hard. As the very youngest qualifier, he was swimming against guys that were far larger than him. But he did so well. He did not quit and swam so many races. I was proud of him.
There are so many rewarding feelings to watch your child do something hard and see their face happy when they know they have succeeded!
This little girl was such a trooper the whole experience. She cheered. She colored. She played on the Monkey bars for three days and did not complain once.
Right after we got back to Mumbai it was time to celebrate Diwali--the celebration of light. It is celebrated with lights and color to signify light overcoming darkness. The kids made rangoli. I made one too. It is art made of sand. Never done one before but it was so fun.
Lucky Dragon was selected to teach kids how to code and make a video game at a STEM Saturday! We were proud of him for stepping up and being a leader!
While Lucky Dragon coached others, Koala Bear and I went to try out all the STEM projects. She had so much fun.
They both liked building cities with Virtual Reality. It was a hit.
They asked Lucky Dragon to be in a video for a school promotion.
As with lift in the Foreign Service, Thanksgiving was interesting too. A good interesting, but still interesting. We had several families over to our house on Sunday and we had a delicious meal together. It was fun to have people over to enjoy the day. Then for Thanksgiving itself, we went to the hotel nearby and had a big meal with several other families. It was fun to be together. The hotel made a turkey and that was delicious. They also tried to do Thanksgiving sides...they did not quite get it right, but they tried.
I had several people from work come over and we made bread together. We made bread loaves, banana bread, bread sticks, pani-popo, and cinnamon rolls. They were all delicious. It was fun to see them work hard to make bread for the first time. We brought it all back to the office to share. Everyone loved it.
