Indian Princesses: We are THANKFUL!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and colleagues!

It’s officially Thursday here in India, and although you guys are not quite there yet, I am in the spirit. I am generally a thankful person by nature, which is why I love November, because so many others are consciously thankful as well. I believe we all have as much as we need as long as we focus on the haves as opposed to the have-nots. This is relative to every part of our life – personal, material, professional, etc. If we are intent to see what is missing, it will always be missing. If we are intent to have a grateful heart and attitude, our bounty will be plentiful. Savannah and I are very blessed and thankful this Thanksgiving. I knew coming around the corner to the holiday season would lend the opportunity to be a little pitiful and with my first few months here being pouty, I had to take action and make a plan to keep myself busy and not focus on what I /we are missing, but on what we have. We have our health. We have technology that keeps us in touch with you all. We have my job and her school to keep us busy and entertained. We have each other to laugh with, count on, get annoyed with, and lean on. We have met lots of new and interesting people and made new friends. We are blessed, indeed.

Although we are not at home with my parents, brother and his wife, their girls and whoever else in the family might decide to drop by, we are very thankful to have each other and will continue our American tradition right here in Chennai. We invited my American colleague, Tom (his wife is still stateside so I figured he needed a good meal as well!), to join us for dinner at a local hotel’s dining room that is offering “ a deliciously crafted spread from our chef highlighting the true spirit of thanksgiving. Savour the traditional turkey to the sumptuous roasts.” So we will give this a whirl and either wind up with a really great meal or a whole lot of laughs… maybe both if we are lucky. It was already amusing just trying to plan and coordinate. As I've said, I need to have help communicating with our driver if we are going somewhere out of the normal Grant girl pattern. And Thanksgiving dinner falls into that category. So I enlisted the help of Super Saint Gideon (as usual) to get our driver onboard. But first we had to have the plan. So after two e mails (one might or might not have been the length of a small novel), and a half an hour IM conversation between Gideon and me and, in tandem, Tom and me, we wrapped it up with:

Grant, Nikki [9:33 PM]:

ok sounds like a done deal

whew i am exhausted from all the planning!

haha

Gideon [9:33 PM]:

u r good at that

after coming to india i guess

Grant, Nikki [9:33 PM]:

lol i need a plan for sure

Gideon [9:33 PM]:

India is too uncertain correct

Grant, Nikki [9:34 PM]:

i think I require too much information up front. i am working on that :)

Gideon [9:35 PM]:

yes but in one year u'll guide me and other expats into india

Grant, Nikki [9:35 PM]:

HAHAHAHA don't think i am not making notes every step of the way

This made me laugh, because Shreevidya (Shree) from the HR team told me she's never received so many IM's or e mails from an expat until she met me. I do not think I realized I was such a planner until my Indian counterparts started pointing it out. And I really think I was not this much of a planner back in the US, but at home I had a car and could "go and do" as I needed or wanted. Here it's different. I wonder if this new planning mode will stick once my assignment here is over? Something to think about...

Speaking of plans, we have ours in place to be back in the US on December 13 and, while we are feeling much more settled here these days, it cannot come soon enough – mostly because we miss you guys so much. And a little because we miss Mexican food so much. :) We have used some of the special deliveries that my parents brought, but sparingly (Savannah does not appreciate my rationing now, but she will when we are not out for a while…), including southwest spices and Velveeta. We have used this “delicacy” (did you EVER thing someone would refer to a processed cheese as a delicacy??) to make such terrific things as grilled cheese sandwiches with HAM (yes, a friend and coworker was nice enough to take me to a butcher his family has been using for years where we bought ham, bacon, pork loin and beef tips!), and queso with homemade salsa (I impressed the heck out of myself last weekend between dinner and salsa – just call me Betty Crocker! Haha!) to go along with a somewhat Tex-Mex dinner. Yum! – Savannah joked with her friends at school here that they will not recognize her when she comes back because she won’t be the “white girl,” but she will be the “fat white girl” because she is looking so forward to eating for three weeks. LOL Like mother, like daughter. We will just have to hit the gym a little extra in January to lose those extra holiday pounds we put on. We’ve been going together in the afternoons when she gets home from school for a few weeks, which has been a nice way to shed some stress and get our blood pumping.

We took our first auto ride two Sundays ago. Quite an experience, for sure. Dad wanted to do this while they were here, but by the time we made time for it the weather was uncooperative. Savannah and I decided we will be pros by the time they come back. We went a few kilometers away to the local movie theatre to see the James Bond Skyfall flick. I don’t know if we were feeling especially happy, proud and confident to have handled an outing completely on our own, or if it was really that good, but we enjoyed it. And I really enjoyed the fact that we both got to see it, enjoy popcorn, soda and a bottle of water for 500 rupees. About 10 bucks! Because in the US that would have been triple the cost! And then we enjoyed a nice dinner at the restaurant near our complex. We didn’t even get the FST/WGS (Fair Skin Tax/White Girl Surcharge) from any of the auto drivers we used. Excellent day, all the way around. I think as we continue to explore a little and get more confident in our abilities to safely get ourselves around and get things done you guys will get to read more exciting stories. I am seriously considering a long weekend trip after we return in January, which will surely lead to some adventures and laughs. Stay tuned, the Nikki & Savannah show, coming soon to a town near Chennai.

If you are not American and, therefore, not celebrating Thanksgiving, I urge you to think of all you have been blessed with – family, friends, a home, technology of some sort to read this crazy blog on, health, food, music, love, - surely the list could go on – and be thankful.