May 13, 2008

Update: Dear Friends and Family, We are in the here, in the circled area

Our parents stayed at our house while Angela got to spend 5 weeks with Steven in Kochi. The pictures on the previous blogs says it all. Angela flew back to the U.S. March 7th to relieve her parents so they could go back home in Indiana and to find another house sitter. After spending much time on video skype with Steven, Steven got to come back to the U.S. April 15th to renew his visa. In that time, we found a couple who were interested in living in our house until January. They accepted our house sitting contract and moved in Tuesday May 6th. I'm sure things will go much better this time and we are confident our house and cats will be taken good care of. On the same day our house sitters moved in, we flew to Singapore. We arrived in Singapore Thursday, May 8th at 5:10 A.M. We accepted our friends Nancy and Jim's offer and stayed at their condo. Steven and I had a wonderful time visiting with old friends and eating chili crab in Clark Quay. The time had to end much to early as we had to leave Singapore Friday at 6:00 P.M. to catch our flight to Kochi getting us in Kochi at 10:30 P.M.

We were picked up by a driver from Steven's work and had no idea where he was taking us since Steven moved out of our last apartment before leaving the U.S. The driver finally stopped at the hotel Gokulam Park located in the main town of Ernakulam. The rooms are just okay, rated a 4 star in India standards but would be maybe a 2 in the U.S. The positive things about staying here is the beautiful pool area including the sauna/steam room, gym, the good food at the restaurant and the location. The bad side is the noise of honking traffic at all hours, roasters and a close-by Mosque that sends out loud messages from a speaker throughout the day starting at 4:45 A.M. I guess we will get use to it. According to Steven's location advisor, we will be staying here for 2 weeks until they find us a place. We just got internet yesterday, so please keep in touch. We would love to hear from you.