PuneXpat

For me, the 12 days of Christmas began yesterday. Twelve days of counting down until I leave India. I literally can't wait and I am yearning for it with every fibre of my being. Now, my darling husband is going to be reading this and internally cringeing.  He will be feeling a crushing guilt and will be trying, right about now, to formulate a plan to 'fix' things.  That's him, and one of the many reasons I love him.  However, what he perhaps doesn't fully appreciate is that my current, somewhat negative, frame of mind is perfectly normal.  In fact, it is even documented and has a name. And I have been there before. I am undoubtedly experiencing true culture shock right now. Being a teacher, I love a good visual aid, so I put together my own version of what this is like in a graph. Stage 1 - Preparation Getting our visas, packing up our home, parties & celebrations, saying goodbyes... this phase was a rollercoaster of emotions.  For...

The ever present choking haze has locals wearing scarves across their faces while out and about. [Photo credit: Anna Quinlan] To put what I was talking about into context, here is some data from a few places for comparison (data from the World Air Quality Index www.aqicn.org). I picked places we have lived over the years so you can see what I mean and the snapshots were taken today. It's no wonder that Delhi has declared a health crisis this week... and this is lower than I have seen it in the last few days! Pune is not looking good today. We are in southwest Pune, in a district called Hadapsar - marginally better but still not great. The view from my kitchen in the morning... you can see the smoky haze above the slum as they burn fires to keep warm.  It is winter now in India, and overnight temperatures of 18'C (65'F) are considered very chilly to the locals. Houston may be a big city, but it's air quality is ...

Only a few days after Dad & Claire returned to England, our next round of visitors arrived... this time, Clem's mum, sister and nieces!  Unfortunately, they were only visiting for a week and came with a list as long as your arm of things they wanted to see and do whilst in India.  Surprisingly we managed to squeeze most of what they wanted to do into the week ... a busy but fun-filled adventure!  As you will see from some of the pictures, we visited some of the same places as we did with Dad & Claire (the Aga Khan Palace, Kasba Peth, Tambat Ali, and the Lohagad fort) but we also tried some new places as well, such as the Shivaji Market.  Brilliantly, they all came with me and volunteered with the girls in the village school that I have been teaching at ... a busy, but very worthwhile day. We also had a great time celebrating together... first of all Danie's birthday, but also Halloween with costumes and Trick or Treating! Aga Khan Palace Clem and hi...