What ever happened to chalking the tires, or putting a boot on the tire?

You definitely don't want to park illegally here!

Some observations about India..

• It's been said that many of the diseases found in India come from poor sanitation and lack of proper sewage disposal...So why do you have to pay to go to the bathroom in the proper place?

• While hiring young barefoot boys to work at the hotel might be economical, cleanliness is not apparently one of their strong qualities. 

• You never have to worry about saying, "keep the change" because they will.  In fact businesses always round up.  This also becomes a problem when you are trying to find change so that you can tip.  Maybe they think to themselves if there isn't any change to be given, he will just tip me the whole bill...wrong.  No change, no tip.  

• Have you ever noticed the Indian head bobble?  Apparently, this is some kind of signaling system.  Funny thing is, I found myself bobbling back to them.

Everywhere we go Veta finds an audience

You can't see her, but guess who is in the middle of this group of people!

This was at the Taj.  Even the people on the balcony were interested.

Mom, I thought you said I had to be 15 before I could wear eye makeup? -Veta

I'm glad everyone else is enjoying this photo! -Veta

Um, Dad...who are these random guys snapping pictures of me? -Veta

"Obama Land"

Ugh!

The last thing I wanted to hear the heckling street-side sellers is that all the American tourists were form Obama Land. 

My Stomach feels like Mt. Vesuvius, ready to blow

I never thought that Pepcid or Tums would appear on my cravings list, but it has!  They have some spicy food over here.  Even the chicken BigMac from McDonalds had some heat.

Watch the motorcyclist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hopefully I caught your attention with the title of this post.
Today was a crazy day to say the least!!!

None of us have been feeling well the last couple of days. Stephanie and Veta both have a cold and Veta has been running a high grade temperature.  I thought I was having a heart-attack last night, but it turned out to be BAD heartburn and diarrhea.  For those of you who know Pap, I slept with my head elevated last night.  I'm not quite sure that all those years of him sleeping with the bed elevated like a roller coaster did anything to help his heartburn.

We decided to take Veta to the doctor today since she still wasn't able to shake her temperature.  The clinic that we were trying to go to was apparently right down the street.  When we asked the motorized rickshaw driver if he knew where it was, he said yes.  What should have been a five minute drive turned into 20 minutes and we ended up at a hospital (short trips taking longer than expected is becoming a common occurrence for us).

After taking a self-guided tour of the hospital, we decided that we needed to go find the clinic.  We hailed another motorized rickshaw.  When the driver took off from the light he didn't see a motorcycle that  had run the red light.  BAM! We smacked right into them!  We hit them so hard that the lady riding on the back of the motorcycle lost her helmet and it rolled into the middle of the street.  The crazy thing was that they didn't loose their balance, and they just kept going.  Stephanie and I could not believe what just happened.  Our driver just yelled and blamed them for running the red light and took off.

Another crazy adventure to add to the books...

This is the view outside our balcony...it kind of gives you an idea of our rickshaw and how bad the traffic is.

Honk if you've got one...

This post is coming to you from the honking capital of the world- New Delhi, India.  We are here for my modular courses.  These people honk more in a couple hours than I've honked in my entire 15 years of driving!

Our trip started in Turkey and what could have been a 25-minute drive to the airport took 2 hours because of the traffic.  From there we flew into Doha, Qatar and laid over for a couple of hours.  Folks, there is no inkling that this part of the world is apart of the worldwide recession going on.  People were spending crazy money in the "Duty-Free" shops.  Sitting in the middle of one of the shops was a Audi A8 and MB AMG that you could win.  I taught Veta how to people-watch and we enjoyed all the different kinds of people that this airport welcomed. 

We got into India about 7:45 in the morning and found our way to the guest house. We ended up paying about 200 rupees more than what we were told it might cost for the taxi ride.  I told the taxi driver and he said whoever told us was wrong, so what are you going to do... The weather is much warmer than where we were, but not quite like Florida weather yet.

There are plenty of people, motorcycles, rickshaws, and cars EVERYWHERE!

Please be lifting up our family since this is our 2nd international travel in a little more than a week and another (more extreme) time change.