a week in

So our team has been in Delhi for over a week now!

We got to see the Taj Mahal, the India Gate (think Indian version of the Arc de Triomphe), the Red Fort and tour lot of the city and some of the countryside.

The Taj was beautiful! A stark white against the dusty reds and browns. It's perfectly symmetrical and they took into consideration how the eye sees it from far away. There are two narrow towers on either side of it and they actually slant away from the Taj so that when looking at it far away, they appear perfectly straight. Also, there is Arabic writing all around the huge doorways and they actually made the writing thicker at the top so when you look up, it appears to be the same width as all the other writing. This was all done in the 1500s- so that's pretty sweet.

Andrew took me to a European coffee shop yesterday and it was amazing! I had an equivalent of a caramel frappuccino and it was so wonderful! I miss yummy coffee drinks, especially cold ones here. He is so thoughtful. We stayed there for a few hours because it was our off day. We enjoyed walking around without having 10 college students with us all the time. We felt like we got a glimpse of the relief in parenthood when you get a quick break from your kids.

Hubs then took me to Zen, which was a super nice Chinese restaurant for lunch. It was delicious. And it was a welcome break from rice and curry :)

We have been able to meet more people and pick up more Hindi phrases, which has been great. Here are a few below:

• Hello is "Namaste" (pronounced, Naam-aas-tay).
  
• It's a pleasure to meet you is "Aap se milkar kushi hui" (pronounced, Aab say milker koosh-y hooey)
• Counting 1-2-3 is, "ek, do, teen" (eck, doe, teen)

It's been fun to see the surprise on some people's faces when we can speak a little bit of Hindi to them. They kind of light up. And they also start to speak quickly in Hindi so we smile and say we really don't know that much.