As I prepare to leave for home...

As I prepare to leave for home, I am, of course, excited to be returning back to family and friends, and to a certain degree, to familiarity.

However, I am also sad to be leaving here... this country in which I have enjoyed being a guest for the past two weeks, seeing many sights, enjoying the food, taking in the culture... in short, experiencing India. Mostly, though, there is a sadness because I'm leaving my co-workers who live and work here, who I have just spent the better part of two weeks with or went on a day trip to Mysore with. I will miss them. Of course, I will be in contact with them, several of them probably pretty much daily during the work week, though even with e-mail, IM, phone calls and video conferences, nothing can match being together or communicating together in person.

I am thankful for the opportunity I have had to visit India and build relationships with my co-workers here.

Now, for about 26 hours of travel... Home, here I come...

(Comments are encouraged and appreciated any time.)

Mysore

Saturday, I went sightseeing with a co-worker from my office and three from the Bangalore office. We drove almost 3 hours to the city of Mysore, where we visited a number of picturesque and historical sites. Among them, one of the highlights was the Mysore Palace, seen in the first picture below. (There are some great pictures online of this place lit up at night by small white lights attached all over the exterior, though we weren't there at the right time for that.) The second picture is on the palace grounds, though the structure was not part of the palace, itself. Part of the experience included paying for them to store both our cameras and shoes, separately, for a small fee while we toured the inside of the palace.

These next two pictures were taken outside of a temple we saw. We decided not to (pay the fee to) go inside this one, but we walked (barefoot, again) through a much larger one earlier in the day.

Food, Sights

Here's some more pictures from my trip. I haven't gotten out much, really. I've either been at the office or at the hotel, which is about 2 mintues away. And, though there is a cafeteria at the office, today I got to go out with a few people for lunch, so I was able to see a little more of the area and take some pictures.

Breakfast at the hotel this morning.

Not sure what this is called, but there's a lot of them.

Just snapped this as he rode by.

Roadside stand.

Arrived in India

I've made it, after many hours and little sleep. I exchanged 50 dollars in the airport for 1850 rupees. It's about 2:30 AM, here, so I'm going to try to get some sleep before heading in to the office.

Our California Vacation

We went on a family vacation to California from February 29 to March 13. We stayed in Twentynine Palms with some friends for a couple nights, and went to Joshua Tree National Park with them. We then visited some other friends in the Indio/Palm Springs area. We went to Disneyland and LegoLand with them, and also made a trip to San Felipe, Mexico (in the Mexican state of Baja California) together. On our own, we visited Hollywood, San Diego, and drove up the coast back to Los Angeles where we departed from Burbank. (Three weeks and a couple days after returning, the airline we traveled on, SkyBus, went out of business.) Here's a few pictures from the trip.

Going to India for work

I will be going to Bangalore, India to my company's office there to help train several people. My trip will be from April 12 - 26. I hope to post occasional updates, including photos.