PuneXpat

Queuing, queuing, and more queuing at the Columbia Asia Hospital. We don't like injections! On the bus Setting off from the base village The local food vendors ... it smelled delicious, but we gave it a miss as our tummies are still adjusting to India! Monkey business! Ethan Spot the monkey! So busy! Pretty serious looking gate! Horizontal layers of basalt top the escarpment - I remember learning about the Deccan Traps in college!  Geology nerds can read more here . Ethan My 4 loves! Me and Clemmy! The well at the top of the fort (complete with water snakes!) Shrine View from the top Overlooking the Pavana reservoir. Another panorama. Another monkey! The hilltop extends to a spur with fortications called Vinchukata (Scorpion's tail) "What you lookin' at?" Baby monkey! Another view of the Scorpion's Tail  Aaron ...

Don't look. That's the motto I have adopted when it comes to being driven around Pune.  I have honestly never experienced anything like it... for want of a better phrase it's organised chaos, like a shoal of fish moving in an erratic but mostly coordinated manner.  It's noisy, dangerous, and downright terrifying to newcomers to the country, especially ones who have been trained to obey traffic signals, lane markings, and to use general common sense when it comes to roads.  In less than 2 weeks in Pune we have: reversed into oncoming traffic on a busy dual carriageway road because my driver missed a turning. turned out of a side road into oncoming traffic at every opportunity (this is actually the norm for all vehicles!) had a bicycle carrying two teenage boys collide with the side of the car.  Luckily it happened in very slow moving traffic and they were unhurt. ignored a lifetime of practicing "Clunk, Click, Every Trip".  It's now a novelty to fi...

One of our priorities in moving here is to settle our boys as quickly as possible.  We can't wait for school to start on August 9th, and until then we have been looking for familiar activities to engage in and meet other kids.  Therefore, the boys were delighted to find a Futsal academy near where we are going to be living.  For the uninitiated, Futsal is a variant of soccer/football that is played in small courts with 5 players on a team.  We went for a tryout in our first week, and joined up straight away.  Compared to Sam's soccer fees in the US it was an absolute steal at 7000/Rs per quarter (which works out at $3.00/£2.34 per 90 minute session), especially because that also included a full uniform!  It was also a lot of fun and the boys came away from the first practice feeling really positive. At the weekend, we attended the Saturday session.  At this session, other academies come along for practice games/scrimmages.  Therefore, there w...

It's 3:12 am here in India, and I have finally given up trying to sleep.  I cannot believe just how many things have been conspiring against me getting some shut eye tonight.  I mean, really, you couldn't make this s*** up. Firstly, the hotel bar/restaurant was playing pretty loud music this evening as I was settling down to bed, but as this was still only about 10:30 pm, I was pretty unconcerned.  After all, it is a Saturday night and just because I'm not a party animal at the moment doesn't mean I'm unreasonable!  I must have been on the verge of drifting off to sleep when Clem had another bout of the tummy troubles that have been plaguing him the last few days (which is what will happen if you eat at the work cafeteria against other people's advice!) Anyway, I digress. Clem managed to settle back to sleep pretty easily, but this is when I began to anxiously worry and plan the logistics of our move into the apartment in a week or two.  Tossing and turning...

After recording my update, I realised I had missed a few other things worth noting from this week.  We found a 'skate park' in a mall nearby our hotel. It was a bit weird at first (dark, dingy, and clearly just a corner of a car park), but then we found out that it was closed on weekends and should be a bit more lively on weekdays.  Aaron was delighted to find out that there is a tooth fairy in India, and that 100/Rs is worth about $1.50 (so the Indian fairy is clearly more generous!)   I've discovered that many Indian food suppliers deliver for free.  You open an account and settle up at the end of the month.  So, we've started having nice organic milk delivered as of today. The dairy is called Provilac and it's good stuff! Some people don't take no for an answer!  While we were exploring one of the lanes in Koregaon Park (near the London Muffin store), a man approached us trying to get us to buy some leaves... weird, right?  I think th...