Wow, our trip has ended and we have been back home for over a month.  Re-entry was ameliorated by a lovely three week trip to Europe.  Most of you know my sister Melinda and her family live in Switzerland.  The girls and I  left Chennai on March 24, had a last meal of chapati and Dal in Mumbai, and made our way to Amsterdam.  I will never forget how  a simple, airport supermarket meal of fresh milk, three different cheeses, French bread, Dutch cookies, plums, and salami, eaten in  an airport lounge could completely, thoroughly and sublimely thrill Isabel and Clio: it was an epic meal, a meal to remember for the girls who struggled for six months with spice.

We landed up in Geneva, to the warm and welcome embrace (and daffodils) of Melinda, Michael, Marina, Leo and Action Man.  We decompressed on milk fat, beautiful bread, the Swiss country side and spring.  And then, we headed to Corsica: Seven people, gear for a week and a Volvo station wagon.   We sat, too cramped to move and watched the wonder that is Europe pass by our windows.  We saw the Swiss Alps, the French Alps, the Italian Alps.  We ate superb food at a slow food restaurant in Bra, Italy.  (Thank you Michael, that Panna Cotta may never be equaled.)  

Corsica:  I could live there.  A vista that includes the Mediterranean and snow capped mountains is something too wonderful to forget.  And sadly, I fell in love with Columba beer.  I may have to return to Corsica one day.....

Thank you Melinda and Michael for that wonderful three weeks!

February Adventures

In February, we spent several weeks in Madurai at the home of Sheik Dawood and Bathu Begum--parents of Ismail.   The girls enjoyed living in an extended family and delighted in Shahrukh, the youngest grandchild.  I enjoyed the spectacular food cooked by the talented woman of the household.   From Madurai, we took a quick trip to Coimbatore to visit relatives and received a tour of clothing factories from Hasina's nephew.  (see Isabel's blog entry)

The girls and I went to a village temple festival with anthropologist Sara Dickey and her family.   The excitement and energy of the festival trumped the oppressive heat and provided me with many photographic opportunities.   The girls were not thrilled to find themselves even more of a spectacle than usual but they did get to see a village.  (Not all field trips have to be fun do they?)  The photo album "Madurai and More" contains many portraits from our trip to the village.  You will notice babies and children with black smudges on their faces.  The smudges serve to mar the perfection of the children and protect them from the consequences of envy or admiration.  

Catherine

P.S. Clio's birthday was celebrated back in Chennai.  We spend the day south of Chennai at the Crocodile Bank.  Despite the heat, it was enjoyable.  After viewing the crocs, we visited the puppies we had met three weeks earlier at our stay at the Tamil Nadu Hotel. (see Clio's blog entry) 

 P.P.S.  The girls and I leave Chennai on March 24 for Switzerland to see Melinda and family.  We will all travel together to Corsica.  We will arrive stateside on April 14th. 

To view pictures from our latest adventures, click on the slideshow entitled, "Madurai and More".

 

Our Trip to Coimbatore

     We got up early to go to Coimbatore with three other people: Hasina, Nida, and Babu.  We drove for five hours, during which we were quite cramped and uncomfortable.  We visited the house of Hasina’s nephew, who owned garment factories.  We went up the stairs of his house, to see the clothes catalog containing the pictures of clothes that were to be exported to stores in the United States and Europe.  Upstairs we also saw a fish.  It was huge, gold colored, and it moved in crazy jerks and glides, all over its tank.  It was an Arowana.

       We went to three factories that day.  The first factory we went to had twenty machines in one room, ten to each side, with an isle in between.  One side was embroidering ten, black and yellow New York T-shirts.  The other side was starting a complicated, gold embroidery pattern on a white T-shirt.  At the end of each of the rows of machines, there was a computer.  The computer counted the number of stitches, and stopped when one of the machines made a mistake.  When a machine made a mistake, all the other machines halted, waiting for the mistake to be resolved by the machine or by one of the workers.  Most of the time, though, the machine would automatically fix itself and then resume work with all the others.  All of the machines did everything in perfect unison.  The machines were moving so fast, you couldn’t see them, but you could see the designs growing. 

     We left that room and went to another, where two people were working with a fusing machine.  They straitened out two huge pieces of cloth as they entered the machine. At the end, the cloth was fused together to form one piece.  Next to the fusing machine was a person with an extremely sharp razor, cutting out the logo for one of the New York T-shirts.  

We left the factory, and went to another.  This one was a huge workroom where some of the people were taking the embroidered cloth and assembling clothes. Then, some of the clothes were stamped and approved, while others were put in a stack to be taken apart and redone.  The approved clothes were put on hangers, ironed, and then folded into boxes, ready to be shipped.  We were generously given some approved clothing from the pile.  It was near the end of the day, so we headed home quickly, so we could get some sleep.  It was a very educational trip, and we all enjoyed it.

Isabel

Puppies at a Hotel

 

     We were at a hotel when Isabel and I saw a dog and we could tell that she had puppies so we followed her until we found them.  There were six, four-week-old puppies and they were all female. They lived under a stout bush.

 

    We played with the puppies all weekend. When we went on a walk to see a big, dead puffer fish their mother followed me.   We fed the puppies some egg and they liked it and ate it ravenously.

 

    Yesterday, for my birthday we went and visited the puppies again. One puppy had been adopted and two were missing.  I went looking for the missing ones and found one behind a tree root far away from her siblings.  I found the other one, after a long time, hiding behind a refrigerator.  Their bush had been chopped down so they now live under a huge stack of chairs.  I look forward to seeing the puppies again.

 

Clio

Ants in the Kitchen

Ants in the Kitchen
by Isabel

    The ants in our house used to invade the kitchen and the surrounding areas. My mom did not like this and wanted to put out poison. I started putting out dishes filled with sugar water, bread soaked in honey, grape juice, and anything I could find that I thought the ants would like. Soon we noticed that the ants stopped getting into our food. They did not need to forage anymore because I was putting food right near their nest.
    There are several things I have noticed that the ants do when they collect food: If it is a liquid, they will hold on to the lip of the dish with their back legs, and drink the sweet substance. The three armor-like plates on their abdomen swell as the ants drink. There are transparent folds of skin-like material in between the plates. (You can see this in the picture.)
     The ants that have been collecting food will feed newcomers some of whatever they have collected. I think this is so the newcomer can see the type of food she is supposed to collect. I don’t know this for sure, but it seems like the ant will go directly to the dish that contains whatever she has been given, and no other.
     There is a predator for the ants, the pallis. They are little geckos that come out at night and eat bugs. The pallis have found the spot where the ants come to get fed. You rarely see pallis beyond three inches but pallis that eat our ants are five or six inches. They are being fed ants that are large already but are made even larger by the sweet nourishment they are bringing back to the nest. The food these pallis eat are both nutritious and and filling.  Pallis eat as much as they can and the ants are so consumed with their work that they don't even realize that the pallis are there.  The pallis are able to eat quite a bit, and they get really big. 

    I have created a predator-prey situation that is quite effective in keeping the ants under control.  Some people put out poison, and this kills off the both the pests and the predators. Then the pests come back and there is nothing to keep them under control except poison which you have to put out all the time.

    The ants in our house no longer invade the kitchen, and we did not have to use the poison my mom was thinking about getting.  This is an all-win situation, even for the ants, because they get most of the food back to their nest.  This is a strategy that is better for the environment, the ants, the geckos, and us.

Our Trip with Noah

Our Trip with Noah

by Clio

  Noah came to India for Christmas vacation.  We went on many exciting adventures while he was here.  Here are three of them:

                     Horn Bill Camp

We went to a state called Kerala.  In Kerala we went into the mountains to a camp site called Horn Bill Camp.  We went kayaking three times. Once, my kayak almost tipped over.  Another time, it bumped into a big stand of bamboo. 

    One night at camp, we heard elephants eating bamboo and trumpeting. One morning we went birding  and saw:  a Black Buza , a Cormorant, a Snake Darter, a Horn Bill, Haring Tree Pies , Frog mouth, Oriental Robin,  Paradise Fly Catcher,  Red Bellied Ground Thrush, and a bird called the Seven Sisters.  (We saw more birds but I can’t remember them.)  At Horn Bill we also went on an exciting bike ride and saw a half-sunken canoe and a dog that looked like a sausage.

   The Cardamom Club

    Next, we went to a plantation called the Cardamom Club .  At the Cardamom club, there was a tree house and a big yard where Isabel and I liked to play.  We went on a big walk and saw  woodpeckers ( it was the Common Golden Backed Woodpecker )  and we saw a Gaur (wild bison) and her calf.

         The House Boat

   Then, we spent a night on a house boat; it was terrifically fun.  Isabel and I went fishing and caught fish.  They were grayish-brown, pretty fish with two, big, red spots above their tails.  We let them go because they were too small to eat.  Besides the fish, we were told there were water monitors in the water but we did not see any.  

On the house boat, we ate delicious, bony fish with yummy, fat, Kerala rice. 

                  

Here we are waiting for the train after our trip.  Noah and Isabel are playing backgammon and I am reading The Little Prince

Isabel Has Been Drawing Too

Barn Owls Outside our Windows

photo and drawing by Clio

     I was the one that saw the owls first. I saw owls in a tree outside my parents' window.   The owls that we've seen are barn owls.  The first time I saw them I thought they were grass owls but later I found out that the owls couldn't be grass owls, because grass owls nest in tall grass, and these owls live in the side of a building.  There are six owls.  There are three owlets and three grownups.  Yesterday I saw four in a tree: one owlet and three grownups.  
                                                    by Clio

  Besides becoming avid owl spotters,  what else have we been up to?  We went on  a fabulous five day trip with Eric Worby, wife Gul Rukh and daughter Sharoda.  We made a nice circuit starting from Chennai, to Mahabalipuram, to Pondicherry, to Traquebar, to Thanjavur, back to Pondicherry and home to Chennai.  We saw, we ate, we traveled.  It was great fun to have old friends to share the adventure with.  Sharoda, at age 17, is the girl of every parent's dream.  She lovingly and patiently shared her interests in drawing, writing and books with the similarly interested Isabel.  Isabel was in heaven and is still recovering from their departure. 

   If Barney were writing this, he'd give you wonderful historical facts and impressions about the ancient and fantastic sites we saw.  I offer images:    

   http://www.world-heritage-tour.org/asia/south-asia/india/chola-temples/thanjavur/brithisvara-s-temple-nandi-s-pavilion/spere-quicktime.html

  The above link gives you a 360 degree video of one of the temples we visited.  At this temple, a group of school girls were smitten with Isabel and after many false starts, approached her and took her by the hands to escort her around.  

  My photos from the trip can be seen on my Picasa site.  The easiest way to get there is to click on a  slide show.  If you enter the slide show at the end of the cycle, you may miss some photos so select "view all" to get the thumbnails.  Then,  once you are in Picasa, enter the slide show mode because the colors are richer and more true --it may take a bit for them to load but once they are loaded, you can cycle through easily.  Also, once you are in Picasa, you can access any of the photos by selecting  "My Photos" directly to the left of any album title.

Catherine

P.S.  Noah will be here in a few days and we will be traveling for the the better part of his month long stay.  We will be out of Internet contact for much of that time.  We are looking forward to a quiet, simple Christmas in the mountains.  

Announcing Clio's Dog Album

   For those of you who know Clio, you know that she loves animals.  I remember, with astonishment, having arrived in India and driving home from the airport. We were jet- lagged and seeing India for the first time.  Clio sat in the car oohing and ahhing over the dogs.  She'd remark about how some dog was adorable, so I'd look out the window at the object of her attention.  All I could see was a skinny, mangy, pathetic dog lying in the street.

    Clio has continued to be enamored by the dogs she sees.  Her enthusiasm is contagious:  we have all come to see the beauty in these dogs.  They have great ears, long necks, and because they live mostly on the street, aggressive dogs don't last, so by and large,  they are docile.  In fact, we'd love nothing better than to bring one home.  (Barney has dubbed them, "The Perfect Dog".)   Meerkat Dog (see album) is the one of the most beautiful creatures I've ever seen. 

   Please follow the link on the slide show to see Clio's pictures of dogs.  I also have a new album posted:  "In Our Neighborhood".  Please vet the album before sharing it with children: there is a dog with a tumor, a woman with leprosy, and a very sad, sick dog.  

Catherine

The girls had henna applied to their hands in Madurai.

Hulk

Hulk is a gray and black Great Dane puppy.  She is six months old.  She is not trained very well so she jumps up on people.  She is very fun to play with.  When we went to Nagercoil, we bought her a squeaky chew toy because she didn't have anything to chew.  At first, Hulk did not know how to make her toy squeak until I showed her how to.  

Clio

All Catherine's recent photos can be viewed at:

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/muanddu

Madurai >Thekkady> Madurai> Nagercoil >Madurai

A tea estate

We spent  October 18th through the 31th traveling in South India.  We took the night train to Madurai, the city Noah had his first several birthdays.  I hadn't been to Madurai in over 15 years and the girls met their Indian family (Ismail's clan) for the first time. From Madurai, we took two side trips: one to Periyar Tiger Sanctuary and the other to Nagercoil.  We took several trains, watched a feast for 700+ being prepared, learned how to check for leaches, saw rice being harvested, got sick, saw elephants in the wild, and received many hugs.

  

Catherine

How to Cook for 700

Isabel here:

I am on a two-week vacation, which is half over.  On the first day of the vacation, we traveled on a night train to Madurai, where my father’s teacher’s wife lives.  We stayed for two nights: on the second night, the power went out and I got 222 mosquito bites because the fan and the insect repellent went out, as they are generated by electricity.  The mosquitoes kept buzzing in my ear every three seconds, even when I covered up my face.  After a while, it was too much, so I woke up my mom and she got out a mosquito net.  We took the mosquito net outside, and tried to sleep under it.  About an hour later, when no one fell asleep, we went inside and managed to get some sleep for the last hour or two before morning.  That is the story of my 222 mosquito bites.

The next morning, we left for the mountains and went on a boat ride to see wild animals.  Near our cabin there was a nice restaurant.  I was delighted to see that our cabin had a mosquito net and repellent.  They kept away mosquitoes for the whole night so we could get some sleep.  When we woke up, we went on a jeep safari, and saw many animals.  On our second jeep safari, we saw two elephants.  When we came back, I felt sick.  I was sick the whole night, and couldn’t go on the last safari, (a walking one), so my mom stayed with me.  Afterwards, my dad said he could have stayed behind, because it rained.  Then we went back to Madurai.

My Trip to the Mountains

by Clio

I went to the mountains on Tuesday, October 21st 2008.  There were a lot of leaches.  (Isabel wanted us to call the leaches "spaghetti" because she couldn't even stand to hear their name.)  I got three and Isabel got two leaches.  

We went o a jeep safari and we saw two elephants eating, some Sambar deer, buffalo, monkeys, wild boar and a peacock.  We had a lot of fun riding through the jungle in the jeep.

In the lobby of the lodge we were staying at, there were a lot of nature books and there was a TV and I watched Animal Planet.

I was sad when we had to leave.

Go here to see more pictures from the Madurai portion of our trip:

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/muanddu/MaduraiIndia#

Go here to see more pictures from Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary:

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/muanddu/PeriyarTigerPreserve#

Photos by Catherine

The Roof

 I love the roof.  It is a large space on top of the apartments.  People hang their laundry on ropes tied around water towers made of concrete.  The roof is much larger than it appears in the picture, the water towers you see father away are also part of the roof.  My sister my mom and I, go up there for the breeze during the daily power outage at 3:00, lasting until about 4:30.  It is so hot inside, that we need to go up to the roof to escape the heat. Sometimes, the power goes out a lot earlier, like today-- 11:00.  During the power outage, we can't even get the Internet.  The roof is really big, and it is very high up, so it escapes most of the heat.  Of course, you have to wear shoes on the roof or else your feet will burn.  I find that in India, it is better to test any metal that has been in the sun for a long time before touching it.  It is the same for the floor of the roof.  The roof is really fun and I go there whenever I can.

Isabel 

10/17/08

The Breezy Beach

The Breezy Beach
     The beach that at the end of our street is part of the Bay of Bengal. The Bay of Bengal connects to the Indian Ocean.  Our beach is called Breezy Beach.  The name tells the truth; it is fantastically windy.   
     Every evening I go to the beach with my dad and my sister. Sometimes my mom comes but mostly she does not come. I sometimes go in the water. The waves are pretty big.  Other times, I build sand castles and find clams and call one Mr. K and the other one Mrs. Q.  Mrs. Q and Mr. K try to get away when you put them in water and you see their foot.  The clams are longer, more brightly colored, thinner and smoother, than the ones that are found in Connecticut.  
     The crabs here look a little strange. Their eyes are directly one top of their head.  The crabs are sand-colored and they dig holes in the sand.  They are everywhere.  I like to run on the beach and chase the really big crabs.  They run away into the water.  They are super fast.  
     People throw plastic garbage bags of flowers into the ocean.  My dad thinks it's a funeral ritual but we're not quite sure.  
      Breezy Beach is connected to a walkway that is called the Breezy Beach Walkway. There are puppies on the walkway but mostly we see people on the Breezy Beach Walkway.  They are running, sitting, walking, bicycling and doing yoga. There are lots of street dogs on the Breezy Beach Walkway.  They look like they are exercising too except the dogs are not bicycling or doing yoga.  
     There are always interesting things happening on Breezy Beach and its walkway.  

Clio 

10/17/08

    

We live in an apartment in Chennai that has a living room, a dining room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a balcony.  In the living room there are two red chairs and a red couch.  In the dining room there is a dining table, and a table for the electronics.  There are step-down plugs and adapter plugs so we can charge our things.  My sister and I share a bedroom, and my mom and dad share another.  The balcony is level with the treetops, and you can often see little tree squirrels that look like chipmunks with long, fluffy, striped squirrel tails.
    Every morning, my mom wakes me up at 6:00 to go on a walk on the beach with her, my dad, and my sister.  There are lots of people stretching and jogging on the beach at that time of day because that is the only time it is cool enough to walk.  There are fishing boats on the shore and they are all painted in bright colors.  There are also boats made of logs tied together.
Isabel 22/9/08


 MY FIRST DAYS IN INDIAby Clio
I went to India on September 15th and got there two days later. I was so tired.  The apartment we rented is nice.  When we went on a walk.  We saw monkeys and their babies.  They were really cute.  There are lots of dogs on the streets.  Mom wakes us up at five in the morning to go on an exercise walk. It's very tiring. We do home schooling every morning.  So far it's been fun.

Coyote Stompers: Wimberley, Texas

1st photo: Cousins Clio, Marina, Isabel and Leo
Wimberley, Texas -note the ever present Action Man

My grandparents took my cousins, mom, sister, and I, to see some donkeys. Their names are: Jenny, (she is the mother) Jack, (he is the father) and Jackson, (he is the baby). We got to feed Jack and Jenny. My grandparents are being giving Jackson because they have deer and the coyotes eat the deer. They need to
protect the deer so they will get Jackson.

Clio 9/08

2nd photo: (Future coyote- stomper) Jackson with his mother Jenny (supreme varmint killer).

The Blue Hole, Wimberley, Texas

In August, I went to the Blue Hole with my cousins. The Blue Hole is in Wimberley, Texas. I climbed a big, forty-five foot cypress tree with only knots for the first forty feet. I wanted to swing from the tree on a rope swing with a wooden bar. I had to pull the swing up using a rope attached to the swing. I had to take the rope off and step off the tree. I bear climbed to get the rope and it felt like I was going to be pulled off the tree. Then I stepped off and I fell a little, then the swing caught me.

It was scarier then last year, because there was no one there to help me and I didn’t have to get the rope myself because they handed it to me. Another reason it was scarier was because no one else was doing it. Last year I was able to do it five times. This year I was only able to do it once and I felt tired afterwards. The Blue Hole was really fun.

Isabel

Whale Watching off Provincetown, Cape Cod, July 12, 2008

At 9AM on July 12th, C, B, I and C, accompanied by our old friend Tara Perry, boarded the Blue Dolphin VIII, a whale watching ship out of Provincetown, MA. After a brief trip out of the harbor, the ship headed north along the tip of Cape Cod into an area the ship's captain and naturalist had seen whales the previous few days. The area is rich with plankton, the base of the ocean's food chain, and therefore the fish which humpback, fin, minke and the other whales that frequent these waters in the summer feed on.

Sure enough, just a few minutes after clearing the Cape people began shouting out that they saw whales, humpback whales. We could see them one or two miles away surfacing to breathe, humping back into the water, sometimes with their tales - flukes - high in the air.

The ship began to move closer to one whale named Reflection. The naturalist, Mike Bertoldi, and the captain see the same whales every year and can identify many of them by the markings on the underside of each whale's fluke. The dorsal (or back) fin is also differently shaped from animal to animal. Professional whale watchers and scientists keep logs of the animals they encounter and share them with each other, so there is a detailed record of the whales that frequent these waters year after year. We followed Reflection who came close enough for us to see her dive and come up for air several times before she moved off.

We had some fairly close encounters, including one which went almost directly under the bow of our ship. It was so close we could see its face, the light color of its side - or pectoral - fins, and tubercles, the bumps on the whale's head. We even got wet with a whale's spray! Mike Bertoldi joked that we had just gotten rained on by whale's snot - but we didn't mind. In the picture below, the white line under the whale is one of its pectoral fins.

Perhaps the most amazing thing we saw was whales feeding. First they slap the water with their flukes and dive down below. Then they create something called a bubble net underneath a school of fish. Blowing bubbles deep in the water they swim in a circle which scares the fish upward and inward, trapped in a tube of bubbles. Then the whales come straight up with their mouths open wide and catch fish at the surface of the water. Sometimes they do this in pairs, as in the picture at the top of this entry.

Catherine knew where to aim her camera to get this amazing picture because you can see the bubble net forming as the dark green water turns light - almost florescent - green in a circle just before the whales come up to the surface. The seagulls know where to go, too, and there are lots of them flying around just above the bubble net hoping to snatch a fish. We could see the gulls flock about the heads of the whales, very close to their mouths. Mike the naturalist told us that he has seen birds get caught in whales' mouths; the whale's throat is only the size of a grapefruit, so it has to surface again to spit the bird out. "The birds never look happy," he said.

Other than these close encounters with twelve or so whales, we were in sight of some two dozen more between one and three miles away. There were moments when we could see whales coming to the surface to breathe, feed, or on one occasion, breach, wherever we looked. They were all around us. It was amazing. We were seeing whales.

That said, the naturalist told us that there are only about 80,000 humpback whales in all the world's oceans. That's not many, perhaps only one tenth their numbers before whaling. Scientists have only been studying whales seriously for about thirty years; naturalists on board the old whaling ships had made drawings of their bodies, inside and out, but we only recently started studying them in the wild.

It struck me that we would be a much wiser people if everyone got a chance to see wild whales at least once. BB