Good Bye 2013, Hello 2014!

I thought I’d do a recap in pictures of our 2013 before we get too far into 2014. So here it goes:

January: Paul and I started the year in the non-immigrant visa section in Consular, interviewing people who want to travel to the U.S. for business or pleasure. Max started school at a small daycare on the compound and loved it from day one. We spent a long weekend in Amritsar and finally saw the Golden Temple. Definitely worth the trip!  

While in Amritsar, we went hand-made camel-leather shoe shopping – good stuff at good prices!

February: Paul and I went to the Surajkund Mela, just outside Delhi and had a lovely day looking at arts and crafts from around India. Can’t wait to do it again in a month.

Max turned turned two and fell flat on his face right before the small celebration we had for him:

We went to Mumbai for a long weekend, did the sights, visited Dhobi Ghat (a washermen’s community) and a couple of Bollywood studios.

March: I went on a two-week assignment in our consulate in Hyderabad. Paul and the kids came to visit me on the weekend and we did some sight-seeing.

I came home in time to celebrate Holi (a very colorful Indian spring holiday)…

 

… and Easter.

April: After a year on the visa line, Paul moved to the Consular Information Unit, where he was in charge of responding to inquiries from U.S. and Indian customers as well as from Congress. He also did outreach to the Indian business and student communities. I worked on a large and complicated project in Consular which kept me busy most of the month. We took one trip out of town and it was to Takshashila Gurukulam (a school for poor children in rural Uttar Pradesh), where Nia made a donation (she had collected money from her friends instead of birthday gifts and we matched the total amount).

May, June and most of July: These three months were pretty much a blur. Paul and I were extremely busy as this is our peak season in Consular as well as transfer season, so a lot our experienced colleagues left post and were replaced with new ones. I was now training new colleagues on the visa line, which seemed crazy at the time. We also both worked on Secretary Kerry’s visit to India, and helped organize the Ambassador’s 4th of July reception, which meant we were late a lot. Plus, Delhi is hotter than hell at that time of the year but as much as we wanted to get out of town and relax a little, it was simply out of the question.

May was also when I got my second assignment, GSO in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I was excited at the prospect of serving in my cone but also nervous about whether Paul would be able to get a job there. As it turns out, he was not able to find a job there and is still unassigned, which is not good. All the jobs in Addis are now gone and we really don’t want to separate but are not sure what we can do at this point, other than hope for a miracle.

We didn’t take a lot of pictures during that period but here are couple: Paul and the kids heading to the 4th of July Party on the compound.

A rangoli (flower and rice decoration) design at the Ambassador’s 4th of July reception – one of my responsibilities for the event and an opportunity to learn how these beautiful decorations are made.

And one from when Nia got head lice and Max was imitating me nitpicking with the help of a head light (awesome, I know – and if you’ve seen her hair, you’ll understand the hell I was in trying to get them out on top of everything else we had going on at work).

But in the end of July, I went to DC for a week-long training class, while Paul and the kids went to Chicago to visit his family as his Mom was not well.

 

On the way back, we stopped in Bulgaria for a week to visit my folks.

August: Both kids went back to school and I started a new rotation in the Fraud Prevention Unit of the Consular Section. I am still in this job and it is challenging but also very interesting as New Delhi is a high-fraud post. There were two  Indian holidays in August within a couple of days of each other, so we managed to sneak  a 5-day trip to Bangkok, Thailand which was awesome! This is us at the Temple of the Reclining Budha.

September: For Labor Day we took a train trip to Udaipur, Rajasthan. The overnight train ride was a bit scary overwhelming but once we got there we had a terrific time. The picture below is of me and the kids at the Monsoon Palace, overlooking the Aravali mountains.

October: Paul’s brother Greg and his family visited us and we took them to Agra, where we got rained on at the Taj…

… and Jaipur, where we visited palaces, saw monkeys and rode elephants.

Nia was in a musical.

The kids got to trick-or-treat multiple times and Max got addicted to lollypops.

November: We celebrated Diwali (Indian Festival of lights), with a party at work, at which I danced in a saree, no less!

Paul and I went to the annual Marine Ball and wore Indian attire.

Nia turned 10 and we celebrated the occasion with a sleepover for her and her besties at our house.

 

We also went to the Camel Fair in Pushkar, Rajasthan, where we saw lots of camels and got to go on a sunrise camel safari in the desert.

That’s Max and I at the back of our camel cart.

 

Paul and I went on separate work-related trips to Punjab but to different parts of the state – I went to a bunch of small villages,

while Paul went to Amritsar (again) and Chandigarh.

We celebrated a couple of colleagues getting married, Indian style.

December: My parents and my cousin Hristo came to visit us and I took them to Agra (you see the theme here?)

and Jaipur (again).

Less than a week after my parents and cousin got to India, Paul’s Mom passed away after a prolonged illness. We are all heartbroken for she was a wonderful spirit and will forever be missed. Paul flew to Chicago for the wake and funeral. I stayed behind with the kids and my parents and cousin. I couldn’t quite leave them alone in a strange country after just having gotten here but I feel horrible that I was unable to say my goodbye to Paul’s Mom, who had been like a second mother to me.

We spent Christmas and New Years quietly at home in Delhi.

So, this was our 2013. Here’s hoping your 2013 was a good year and looking forward to a happy and prosperous 2014!

Neemrana

Before I go into this cool adventure we went on today, let me quickly address my absence from the blog world in the last several months. My excuses are not very good but they are all I’ve got, so they’ll have to do.

The main reason for my silence is life. I didn’t intend to stop blogging and it didn’t happen because of a lack of blogworthy events. On the contrary, there’s been probably too much blog fodder and it’s been difficult for me to focus on any one thing before the next one hit. Before I knew it, four very eventful months had flown by and I hadn’t blogged about any of it. But as any blogger knows, the longer you spend without blogging, the harder it is to get back to it.

And let me just say for the record – blogging when you work full-time and try to be a halfway decent parent and an OK host to visitors and have some semblance of a social life is a challenge. Being a blogging diplomat is also tricky. The job is very interesting and I want to talk about it on this here blog but I really can’t because there are a lot of sensitivities around most of what we do and that’s hard. I am the kind of person, who likes to talk through things. So, if I had my druthers, I’d be spilling it all out here. But then I’d lose my job and we wouldn’t want that, would we? So I have to curb my enthusiasm for spirited work-related story-telling.

But enough excuses… Back to my story.

So today we went to Neemrana, which is a small town about 2.5 hours from Delhi in Rajasthan. The main attraction there as far as we were concerned was the Neemrana Fort and the Flying Fox (a zip line). We heard about Neemrana soon after we arrived in India and have wanted to go ever since but we wanted to zipline and we wanted to do it with Nia (Max is way too young). Unfortunately, you are not allowed to zipline unless you are 10, so until recently, Nia simply couldn’t do it (which also means that she had a birthday and her horrible mother didn’t blog about it – shame on her mother!)

But now that’s she’s 10 and we are all in town, we decided to do it. And it was well worth it. The fort is built on the side of a hill and the ziplining course consists of 5 lines, that look like this:

 

You have to walk up a steepish hill to get to the beginning of the course but then you get to zip above this really cool fort – 5 times! It’s awesome. I have to admit I was a little skittish at first but within a couple of seconds I was having a blast and so was the rest of the gang – Nia, Paul and my Mom. Yes, even my 68-year old Mom did it and loved it, though the hike up to the beginning of the zip line course was a bit too much for her. My Dad chose not to zipline because he’s a cancer survivor and breathes through a hole in his throat, so he was worried that he would not be able to breathe because of the rushing air. He watched us from the fort.

Here’s a brief (38-second) video of us going down the shortest line. Doesn’t it look awesome?

It was a lot of fun and I highly recommend it to anyone over 10.  At $35 for adults and $30 for children, it is not exactly cheap but it’s not something we do every day, so we decided to splurge. You can get about $5 off, if you book online but we were a little nervous about sharing our credit card number with an unknown company, so we ended up paying cash. We paid an extra $12 for the staff to take the above (and more) videos of us too. They turned out alright, except they had a smudge on their camera lens, which is annoying but what are you gonna do?

After we were done ziplining, we took a nice walk around the fort, which is a heritage hotel, so you can stay there. Each room/suite is unique and has a veranda or a turret with a spectacular view and a lovely pool, so if we go back, perhaps we’ll stay at the hotel too. We had several friends, who had gone there and had gotten food poisoning, so we packed sandwiches but whatever was wrong with the food when our friends visited, may well be fixed by now, so don’t let that stop you.

I am going to leave you with a few pictures from the fort.

Happy Holidays!

 

I know I certainly have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do on this blog but I can’t do it now. Hopefully, soon.

I just wanted to let you know that we are all well and to wish you wonderful holidays and a terrific new year!!!

Love,

The Swiders and the Yonovi (my parents)

P.S. A big thank you goes to Dani from The Hot Pot Blog for taking the picture and to Summer from Summertime Designs for the Christmas card idea.

Maxisms

It seems just yesterday we were concerned about Max not talking and all of a sudden he’s become quite the chatterbox. He is talking all the time these days. I thought I’d share some of the cute/funny things he says here:

(early in the morning) Wake up, Mommy! Wake up, Daddy! Wake up, Nia! Wake up, Me!

(while putting on on my sunglasses) I (am) going to work. Bye-bye! Have fun!

(in an airplane, right after landing) Thank you, airplane!

Me (imitating one of his favorite bedtime stories while tucking him in): It’s time to sleep, little Max, little Max!

Max: It’s time to sleep little Mommy, little Mommy!

(to his Nanny after I put him in timeout): Geetanjali, I (am) stuck!

He has a hard time with L and R sounds, so he says:

I yuv you (I love you).

Yook (Look).

I yunning. (I am running).

Yaining (raining or lion – those two sound almost the same).

Sometimes he also confuses the A and I sounds, so he says happo, instead of hippo and pallow, instead of pillow.

He is learning his numbers but selectively. Some numbers are just not worth his while at this point, so he skips them and counts like this: one, two, five, ten, oneteen,twoteen, threeteen, fiveteen, nineteen...

He likes to add a T sound after an F, as in “I can do it myselfT!” or “Turn it offT!” and “I wanna take a bafT (bath)!”

For the longest time he couldn’t quite say his name, so he called himself Mice but just a week ago he figured out his first name. The last one is still a challenge though, so right now he is Max Fighter.

Summer Recap

This summer just flew by. Before we knew it, Labor Day came and I realized, I have hardly blogged at all this summer. So I thought, I’d do a little recap.

One of the first things which happened this summer was that I got my next assignment. I was assigned to (drum roll please) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. My position is General Services Officer (a.k.a GSO), which means I will be dealing with things like buildings, vehicles, housing, furniture etc. It is in my cone (Management), so I am happy but my happiness is not complete because we still don’t know where Paul will be posted next. Second tour bidding is tricky no matter what but add to that tandemhood and you have a real pickle. I am the more junior between the two of us, so I had to bid first. In order to increase our chances of being posted together, we perused something called the projected vacancies list, according to which there was no more/no less than one place in the entire world where we could be together and each of us in our cones, ha! We somehow thought that between large posts and countries with multiple posts like China and Brazil we will have multiple options of being together and in our cones but we were wrong. Addis was it this time around. Everywhere else, if one of us was in cone, the other one wasn’t. So while my assignment to Addis is very good news, the drama continues as Paul is now in the middle of bidding and there are exactly two positions he can bid on in Addis, which work for us timing-wise. One is in his cone (Public Diplomacy) but is a double stretch (two levels above his current grade), so it will be very hard to get. The second one is an international organizations position with our African Union mission in Addis (at his grade). Both positions seem neat and we would be happy with either. Anything else would mean separation or breaking my assignment (which seems to be frowned upon in State) and starting from scratch (which may be a blessing or a curse).  We are trying not to think about those possibilities right now. We’ll cross those bridges if/when we have to…

Otherwise, our summer wasn’t bad. It started out crazy busy and stressful  but got a lot better by the end. We had a couple of high profile visits to Delhi (Secretary Kerry and VP Biden), which made our already short-staffed section even more people-strapped but we survived and learned a thing or two in the process, so we can chalk it up to experience now. I have to admit I was a little bit in the doldrums in late June, early July. For a while it felt like we had more work to do than we had live bodies or hours in the day and there seemed to be no end in sight. We tried to take our R&R (Rest & Recuperation) trip in June but were unable to due to the Secretary’s visit and the high season for consular. So we didn’t leave Delhi for about 4 months, which was hard because traveling outside of your post is how many of us keep our sanity in this lifestyle.

We finally took our R&R in late July. It was a very short one for me because I hadn’t been with State a full year yet plus, I had to go to D.C. for training for a week. I switched jobs (which is another way to keep your sanity) and my new position could benefit from a training class. When I say switched jobs, I mean I am in a different position within Consular. Delhi is a large and busy post and one thing that’s nice about it is that we get to rotate between several functions within Consular. After 8 months on the non-immigrant visa line, I am now in the fraud prevention unit, which is different and very interesting. The training in D.C. was very useful but it was also awesome to be back in the US even for a week – I ate and shopped myself silly, I hung out with friends and just enjoyed all the things people in the US take for granted like drinkable tap water, produce that you don’t have to bleach before eating, driving without pulling your hair out and the likes. While I was in D.C., Paul took the kids to Chicago to visit his parents and sister. They too had a wonderful week, although one of the main reasons for their visit to Chicago was Paul’s Mom’s deteriorating health, which saddens all of us.

On the way back from the US, we stopped in Bulgaria for 6 days, which was entirely not enough time but such is life. We didn’t do anything special really – just hung out with my parents, relatives and friends, took a couple of day-trips and ate as much Bulgarian food as our tummies could fit. We thoroughly enjoyed fresh fruit and veggies from my parent’s garden as well as unlimited quantities of meat, which can be tricky to find here in India. The kids loved running around the yard and splashing in the inflatable pool.

We came home the first week of August and things picked up again. Nia’s back in school. She’s a 5th grader – can you believe it??!!! Max is also in school – he goes to daycare on the Embassy compound and seems to enjoy it a lot. The weather is starting to cool off a little bit as the rainy season is coming to an end.

I am leaving you with a few pictures from our summer but will be back soon with more pictures and posts about our trips to Thailand and Udaipur, so stay tuned.

Rangoli

I recently worked the official 4th of July event at the Ambassador’s residence. I was the program and décor chairperson and part of my responsibilities (among many others) included coordinating the creation of Rangoli decorations at the entrance to the Ambassador’s residence. Rangoli are colorful designs, made usually of flowers and colored rice but other mediums can be used as well such as colored sand, paper, glass beads, etc. Rangoli designs are especially popular around Diwali (the largest Hindu festival in the country) but they grace the entrances of Indian homes for other special occasions such as the arrival of guests. They are meant to be sacred welcoming areas for the Hindu gods.

In any case, we often have Rangoli designs for special occasions at the Embassy too and the official 4th of July Reception was no exception. Luckily, I work with some very talented local staff in Consular and they helped me design and create the Rangoli for the Ambassador’s 4th of July reception. Here is a picture of my team and the Rangoli designs we created for the event. I had a lot more pictures of the process of creation but we had forgotten to remove our ID badges while we were working on the Rangoli and as a result I can’t post them. Oh well. But this one was approved, so I am using it.

The Rangoli for the event were made from rose petals, white carnation petals, blue-colored rice and white paper stars. Ah, yes a lot of creativity and sweat too. Did I mention it was very hot? When we first started brainstorming on the design, my team was ready to go all out. They were thinking about making the Statue of Liberty and an eagle and I have no doubt they would have done a marvelous job because I have seen them create some amazing designs out of flower petals and rice but we presented our ideas to the Ambassador and she decided to go with something very simple this year, so we did exactly that.  I found the process absolutely fascinating and was determined to use my new skillz as soon as an opportunity presented itself, which happened sooner than I expected. I also thought it would be an awesome bonding project to work on with Nia.

We are the social sponsors of our friends, the Pratts. Adrian is also a blogger, and a damn good one, I might add. He has several blogs but currently writes over at Passages from India. Adrian arrived in Delhi about a month ago but his family was about to arrive, so we decided to put up a Welcome Rangoli for them. An Indian colleague hooked us up with flower petals and then I met with my team – Nia, Gitanjali (our Nanny) and Jim (our Driver, who took most of the pictures). Paul was responsible for keeping Chutney as far away from the Rangoli as possible because that boy has some rad Shiva skills. (Shiva is the Hindu god of creative destruction.) This was our first Rangoli, so I wanted to go simple. I decided on a round shape with a white elephant in the middle and a scalloped edge around. We used chalk and a string anchored in the middle of the design to draw a perfect circle and then with Gitanjali’s help drew a basic elephant shape. It’s nice if you can get draw your design perfectly but if you have to make a few corrections here and there, it’s not the end of the world because your “oopsies” will be covered by flowers (or whatever other medium you decide to use).

We filled the elephant shape with white carnation petals.

Then we filled the circle with rose petals. Both the carnations and the roses smelled really good.

We rimmed the circle with an inch yellow marigold border. Finally, we drew a scalloped edge around the circle using a plastic plate as a guide and filled the scallops with orange marigold petals. You really can’t tell the difference between the yellow border and the scallops but those were the colors we had.  We ended up with leftover petals and created a smaller Rangoli in front of our house but it’s not as nice because we had limited quantities/colors at our disposal.

Here is the completed Rangoli. It turned out pretty nice, no? The Pratts seemed to like it too.