I know I felt something

Greetings all...my bout with dysentery is obviously nothing compared with the tsunamis that has devastated the south east Indian coast, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and the rest. Our news here is focused on the results of the tsunami but little about the actual earthquake…which, by the way, I believe I felt. I’ve spent a lot of the past few days in and out of fever-y but dreamless sleep and at some point I felt the earth shake and nearly woke Frank to confirm. Strange.

Anyway, we do have a TV in our house but haven’t turned it on yet…Indians are way more into gore than we are accustomed to and if the pictures in the paper are any indication of what we’d see on TV, I don’t want those images floating around in my brain for the next ten years.

Cool to have the internet at home even though it has been down more than up since installation. When it is down, we give Airtel a call and some guys ride up on motorcycles or scooters 30 minutes to 2 hours later, come in to the house and try to fix the problem. Usually it is a case of a broken cable somewhere up the line and having seen plenty of line installation work in our short time in India it is no wonder. If you are having something like phone or internet line installed it is underground…cool, except that means a team of ancient, barefoot villagers arrive at your house with picks, small shovels, and iron pry bars. And these impossibly old, seemingly frail men proceed to break through concrete and asphalt and tree roots and clay to get to the wires or lay the wires…and they do this in front of your house and your neighbor’s house and all the way down the street if that is what it takes to connect to the last place someone has a telephone line. We were worried about pissing off our neighbors (since they now couldn’t use their own driveways) and called resident Mysore expert Kevin Kimple…don’t worry said Kevin that is just the way it’s done.

So, now we have the internet available at home…sometimes. And we have a scooter to motor around on and I have dysentery (or something similar). India has many gifts to offer us.

Merry Christmas

Love, Rebecca