Why Plan B? and more....

I wanted to get here before I tell everyone why I did not leave Jan 18. I didn't want to jinx my second attempt, because changing flight dates costs $$$!!

Early Sunday morning, around 2am, I got icky sick. Sadly, it just got worse throughout the night, and by 7am my parents found me lying on a half inflated air mattress 2 feet outside of the upstairs bathroom at my parents' house. By 8:30am, my body had decided it had gotten rid of the offending bacteria..?.., and I began my 'recovery'. I haven't been that sick since childhood, the experience was quite miserable.

I like to go on overseas flights with 'full' command of my bodily functions, and since I recently had 'no' command over them, I decided against flying that evening, to the relief and overwhelming joy of the passengers of that flight---well, they would have felt those things had they been made aware of any of this...

So, Navjot's grandmother and I flew out Sat, Jan 24th. We felt great, everything went smoothly, and since we got wheelchair service for Nav's grandmother, we got to whizz around the airport in Frankfurt, Germany in those transport vehicles, which was kinda fun. Another funny thing in Frankfurt was that the coffee/beer stand next to our gate kept playing the hair band 80s songs we all listened to back in the day.....Journey, WHITESNAKE, hahaha, Bon Jovi...you get the idea.

I enjoyed my first few hours in India more this time because Nav made the trip along with Uncle (who we call 'fufferji', which literally means Dad's sister's husband, and 'ji' is added to 'fuffer' automatically to give respect.) However, after flying for 14 hours, and sitting in Frankfurt for 5 hours, we did have to ride in a car for 6 hours to reach Chandigarh. Zero visibility due to heavy fog, very poor road conditions, and a decent amount of traffic made travel slow for the first 4 hours. We were scooting by nicely if we were going 50kms per hour. The last two hours of our drive saw much better roads, less traffic, and less fog, and we were able to go 60-80kms/hr, still not fast, but it felt more like driving on a highway in the US. Grandma and I were very happy to pull our aching bodies out of the car at our Aunt's (Bhuji's) and fufferji's home in Chandigarh.

I already miss you all!
More to come!
-Jamie

The Pictures in this Blog

Greetings!!
Before I am off, let me open this blog by telling you about the photos. The title photo is the view from the balcony of the house I will be living in, looking behind, into a backyard, except this property is nice enough to have just a courtyard on its premises. Backyards do not really exist here. Through the haze you can faintly make out some of the skylines of Jalandhar City.
The picture at the bottom of the page is the view of from the balcony, looking forward. Across the street is a park. We are rewarded with the greenery because this is one of the more well-to-do neighborhoods in the city. As I recall my last stay in India, concrete, dust, and small courtyard walls landscaped homes much more so than any grass or trees, so I will believe these pictures when I see it.
Send questions!! I love to answer them!! Stay warm!