What will be left?

Today we had an email from Shell to tell us they had visited the warehouse where all the personal belongings from all the families are stored. A few weeks ago the rebels looted the warehouse and they have made such a mess of it that they can't even tell what came from which house... Everything that is left will be packed and shipped to The Netherlands as soon as they can organise it, and then we can all come and see if any of our belongings are among it.... Not much hope I am afraid.

We don't even know what was left in the house to be packed. The landlord probably did some shopping in our house and we know some other people got hold of the keys... Then there was no supervision during the packing, so more will have been taken.

I know we should be grateful we left Tripoli just in time and that we are safe. And I know a lot of our Libyan friends have lost family and friends during the war, but I still feel sad and angry. 

Ganeshas

I had lunch at a vegetarian restaurant today. The lady that runs the place had all of her 1200-and-then-some Ganeshas on display.

Some pictures

Adriaan took the boys to the airplane museum last weekend. The museum is close to our house and has several air crafts and rockets on display. All 4 boys loved it. They went to McDonald afterwards. No beef burgers, so no Big Mac, but the chicken burgers were nice too they said.

These are the cute animals that we see around the house here (too many nasties too, like ants in all sizes...). I finally managed to catch a squirrel on photo, while it was in the palm tree next to our front door. The little owls are always sleeping on our neighbours roof during the day.

Tears of joy!

I came across this photo on the Facebook page of one of Adriaan's Libyan colleagues. It brought tears to my eyes.

These guys have been holding the fort while all their expat colleagues were evacuated. I am so happy for them. It is such a huge thing to be able to celebrate your freedom.

Villa Kakelbont

An impression of the furniture we bought.

With a little help from a friend!

I am still working on the blog lay out and in my last entry I said HELP!!! and help I got. Marjan is Adriaan's cousin (her father Johan is my late father in law's brother) and she lives in America. We have never met, other that online, but I read her blog and feel I know her a bit because of that. We are also friends on Facebook and every time I write a new post or change something on my blog, Marjan will comment and give great pointers on how to improve things. So thank you Marjan!!!!

Work in progress.

Hard work!

As you can see, I have been fiddling with the design of this blog. I like it, but the thing that buggs me is that I can't get the photo of me and the boys to fit the box. HELP!

I have loads more photos to upload, but want to do it a bit more fancy than I have so far, so it will take some more time to figure it all out.

Will just put two photos here to show what to me is the ultimate feeling of India so far. I haven't seen 'relaxed' like this anywhere else ;-)

This dog is asleep on the road, with a speed bump as a pillow. Traffice was coming past constantly, how does it stay asleep? Probably too exhausted from barking and fighting all night (keeping us awake...).

This cow was not on the road, but she was facing traffic that came really close to take a left turn.

Snow white

Adriaan has had this wish for a dining table with a marble top for a long time, so when he was at the carpenter shop to have desks, chairs and a dining table made he decided now was the time. He designed a wooden frame and went to pick the marble. The carpenter did a great job and last weekend everything was delivered to our house, except for the marble.

On Tuesday he got a phone call from the shop to say that the table top would be delivered between 12:00 and 14:00 hr. Babu had to laugh and told me it was more likely going to be after 20:00 hr or even the next day. And indeed Babu was right, they came at 20:30hr.

It took 5 men and a lot of huffing and puffing to get the huge marble plate inside, and it fitted perfectly on the frame. So now we have a snow white, huge dining table, that easily sits 10 people.

We have to find some colourful items to tone down the white a bit. And curtains would help too...

Are soap nuts nuts?

Sofie, a French lady from our compound, showed me around the 'neighbourhood' yesterday. We went to 100 feet road and 80 feet road in Indiranagar. Our compound is in Basavanagar, India likes long names ;-).

The driver dropped us of at the beginning of 100 feet road and we walked all the way down, had lunch and walked back along the other side of the street. 80 ft road was done by car, because we were too tired and warm. It was a great day.

At one of the side streets is a fantastic shop called The Ants, Crafting traditions. They sell only products from India, from fabrics to pottery and furniture. But they also sell soap nuts. I had never heard of it, but Sofie has been using them for years already and used to buy them in France. Strangely enough they are hard to find in India. According to the leaflet "soap nuts, or Reetha, are actually not nuts. They are the fruit of the soap nut tree which are harvested and then air dried". The soap nut tree grows in the Himalayas.
I have bought 2 packs, one for my mother in law who is a real 'natural type' and one for myself, because I want to see if it really works. As I am writing this my first load of washing with nuts is in the machine so I will know in about an hour if is a good alternative to washing powder. So soap nuts are not really nuts, but am I nuts for using them? I will keep you posted!

My first attempt

It is a lot harder than I thought to set up a Blog exactly as I had it in mind and I am not happy with the result yet. But I will just start and develop it along the way. Maybe you can give me some helpful pointers in the right direction?

I have been in Bangalore for a month now and it is starting to feel like home. Adriaan found us a beautiful house. It is huge! We have 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms, a large living room and a dining room, a good size kitchen and a garage/laundry area. The garden in tiny but pretty. The compound is relatively small and very green. It has a nice size swimming pool and lots of sports facilities. So we have enough space for visitors!!!

The boys go to the Canadian International School and the school bus picks them up at 7:00 AM at the end of our street. It takes them about 1 hour to get to school. Joshua is in Grade 9 and started his IGCSEs, Ruben is in Grade 7 and Simon in Grade 5.

Adriaan loves his new job, but it is keeping him very busy. He hasn't had much time off this year, so we are planning to go to the Maldives at the end of October, during the Diwali festival.

I am doing fine. So far I am enjoying Bangalore a lot. It takes a while to find my way around town, but we have a great driver, Babu, and he has been a driver to expats for 15 years so he knows where to find everything.

The weather is lovely and the people are friendly. It is sometimes hard to understand the Indian-English and a lot of Indian people tend to talk really fast, so they have to repeat themselves a lot because I don't get what they say. That and the head shaking thing (sort of shaking from left to right with a up and down movement in it too, meaning yes or maybe) so it is very confusing sometimes.

That's it for now. Next time I will write about the Ganesha Festival that took place last week and about all other things that come to mind.