We have a visitor!

Eric's first rickshaw ride.

Yes, you read that right - we have a visitor!  Jasons brother, Eric is spending his Christmas break with us.  So far, we haven't done much thanks to yet another auto strike.  My friend Gomray, whom you met in a previous post, is even striking for "2 or 3 more days".  Since we just moved hotels, we are no longer in the city nor in walking distance of anything.  Tuesday, in an attempt to keep him awake and switch his schedules, I drug him to the mall.  I know.... it's exactly what he came to India to do - shop with his sister-in-law.  I didn't want to plan too much since he got in around 5am and was pretty tired.  The mall seemed like the only sensible thing (to me).  After lunch and a stop at the grocery store...the only store I made him go in...  we headed back to the hotel for an afternoon by the pool.  One item complete: his first tuk-tuk ride.

The strike started yesterday so you can guess what we did on Wednesday...  lay by the pool.  We were out there pretty much all day.  I kept apologizing and promising that we would actually go do something eventually and that I do more than just sit by the pool everyday.  I'm not sure he was convinced.

Today though we did get out despite the strike.  We took a public bus which was packed and by packed I mean people shoving their way through standing room only.  I showed him around the area by our other hotel and all the shopping on the main road.  He was pretty quiet about all of it - I assume he was just taking it all in.  We also stopped by the travel desk to book our adventure for tomorrow and the weekend and then got lunch while we were out too.  He attempted to order chicken fried rice but I vetoed his suggestion and ordered something (a little) more exotic for him - which he ate so it couldn't have been that bad.  Okay, not really that exotic.. more like Chinese, but not fried rice.

We also stopped by the Taj hotel to get a couple packages that had arrived for us.  One was from my family and had a Christmas tree and lots of goodies.  It was supposed to arrive 2 weeks ago but it's India.  Now I have the tree set up in the window so that when I'm down by the pool I can look up to our room and be reminded that is winter....somewhere.