Life in India-last 30 days

Hello Dearest Friends and Family,

I'm sitting here looking down at my keyboard and thinking about the last 30 days. And that's when I became astonished and realized how much has happened. It feels like 90 days instead of the last 30 days.

It started with our move and the movers destroying property with our elephants statues. Then the caretakers blocking our hired movers and not letting them move the rest of our belongings because of all of the damage that had incurred. After several phones call asking people to translate and demand they let us in, they gave in. Once we moved in we became frustrated in trying to find help and trying to communicate what we need for example, finding water service, transportation, grocery stores, ironers, repair work at apartment and making appointments, takeout food, mail, internet service, cable service. Also finding faults with our new place with the constant all day power outages, and dealing with all of the noise all day and night from the construction below and in the above flats. Another frustration is talking on the phone here because if they don't understand they just hang up which is most of the time. We miss talking to English speaking people and I miss my yoga class.

Then, finding out our good friend Ted died, we're still dumbstruck and will be for a long time. Later in the month in-between our moving woes we found out Uncle Phil's cancer is back. He has fought long and hard getting rid of the damn thing only 1 year later to find it back! Then after that we got a email from our friend and cat sitter saying she no longer can keep Miss Kitty and to find a new home for her. Trying to find a new temporary home in the U.S. for our cat Miss Kitty was difficult, especially trying to find it from India.
View From Our Balcony of the Mosque

The new month seems promising already!

We're getting excited about Katherine's visit in 5 more days. The day after her arrival I planned local Kerala trips for the following 3 days. Then on June 14th we're off to Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, and a side train trip to Varanasi and the Ganges River. We come back on the 21th and then Katherine and I will fly to Chennai for 2 days. Then she will go back to Orlando on the 28th.

Our good friends came to the rescue in finding a home for Miss Kitty. We feel very fortunate to have good friends. Wow! Miss Kitty is living with one of my best friends, Cherie. Hopefully, they will all get along and I know she will be loved. Some other positive notes, we found out Uncle Phil will go through chemo again unlike what he said before. Hopefully, it will get rid of the cancer cell. My Mother had successful kidney stone removal surgery. We found a good taxi service and have found most of our needs. I met a new friend here named Betty. We're excited about having our first BBQ party here for our friends from Kent Saturday. We're testing the grill tonight to see if we don't smoke out our neighbors in our multistory condo. Ha Ha. We don't want the fire truck to show up at our party. If it's too smoky, we will go to plan B and grill inside. Well, that's about it for now. We would love to hear from you. Love, Angela