Okay – I know, no Taj post yet.  Even worse I haven’t filled out or mailed any of the postcards I bought.  Maybe I will be able to get them done before I leave.  I don’t know though – since I leave in 5 hours!!  Woo hoo!!!

That’s a whole 5 days before I was supposed to go home.  You have no idea how happy this makes me.  Hopefully I can get over a lot of my jet lag before all of our traveling for the holidays.  Plus, I’ll be able to finish the Christmas shopping I wasn’t able to do online.  And just to be home, sleeping in my own bed – wonderfulness.  Oh! I’ll have more than one night to wrap presents and do 6 weeks worth of laundry too.  All good things.

So yeah, those post cards.  Think anyone would notice if they have a Virginia postmark?  I have a 5 hour layover in the New Delhi airport.  I wonder if I can find a place to mail them from there….

Man, I wish I would have had this hotel in New Delhi.

The hallway I am staying in all rooms for women traveling alone – which is nice.  You have to have a key to even get into my hallway, and there’s a female guard outside the door to the hallway.  The bathroom has things like nail polish remover, facial toner (this scares me a little), pumice stones, and a pink comb.  It’s very girly.

It’s obviously very safe – which is fantastic – plus the room is bigger.  I have a little couch and a coffee table.  The bed is super comfortable.  I can’t wait until Saturday when I get to sleep in.

Maybe Saturday you’ll get your Taj post too…..maybe.  It’s way better for me to be halfway around the world and posting about things I found in the bathroom, don’t you think?

Right now though, it’s almost 9 pm and I think I’m going to do my ironing for tomorrow and go read in that big comfy bed.

Well, I haven’t been great about updating this while I’ve been here.  Okay, I’ve been really bad about updating.  To be fair, I’ve also been really busy.  My boss sent two people here to do a four person (or more job).  So as a result I’ve been a very busy  bee.  We’ve been working a lot of long days and a lot of weekends too – lucky me.

It doesn’t look like I’m in for a break when I get to Hyderabad either.  I’m going to be really busy while I’m there.  Thankfully, exactly two weeks from right now I will be on a plane home!!!  The good thing is that working so hard has really made the time pass quickly – so that’s a plus.

Anyway, in case you’re wondering what the weather is like here.  Here’s the current report:

I think the forecast has called for “smoke” each day I’ve been here – not fog, mist, or haze – but smoke.  Here is the view from my window right now, see that smoke in the background.

You probably don’t want to know what causes it.  I’ll probably tell you anyway.  It’s caused by the dung fires that people burn to keep warm and cook their food.  Yup, dung fires.  Awesome.

And as proof that Dave and I really did go to the Taj Mahal, here we are in front of it.

Eventually I will have the time/engery to write the full story up and include more photos.  I promise.

Dave just left for the airport to head home.

I’ve still got another 20 days here.

Ugh.

In the middle of our tour on Sunday our guide had the driver stop at a shop with the “most beautiful carpets in India”.  We got a demonstration on how the rugs are made (all by hand, and the strings are all individually knotted) and how durable they are – I was afraid to walk on them.

It turns out that Dave and I have very similar taste when it comes to these rugs.  Which is good, because we both loved the same two rugs right off the bat, and bad because we ended up buying them both.  The first one I posted is 4×6 feet, and the second one is 3×5 feet. 

Now we just need to redo our house with hardwood floors – or move.

Dave’s heading home Wednesday night (boo), I’ll share all our fun tour pictures once he leaves and I have more time. So you’ll all be a little behind, but that’s okay.