Last week in Goa

Okay, so since I have last posted we have moved to another place to stay.  You can see Jason’s blog for reasons why (rats).  We are staying at an Indian resort, and things are going much better since we moved.  In India, the word “resort” after or before a name does not mean what you might think.  It still has many of the defining characteristics of an Indian lodging - marble everywhere, hard beds and pillows, scratchy sheets, shower/toilet combo (which I absolutely don’t get by the way), power goes out all throughout the day.  But it does have a pool - which is a luxery - and Rowan and I have been using it daily.

Just so you don’t think we are living it up in some westerner travel lodge - I think we are the only westerners staying here.   This is a “resort” that Indians come to on vacation.   What does that mean?  Groups of men openly stare at me.  I try to move through quickly to get to my room.  They leave their hotel doors open and televisions on full blast and talk at high volume all the time.  It is like being on an Indian street but in a resort.  Everyone calls out to Rowan “Hey baby” and wants to take her picture on their cell phone.  No matter what it says they have on the menu in the restaurant they only have about half of it.  For example - last night we called to get some food, “Can we get the paneer tika?”  “Not possible” was the response.  We asked for a few other things and they were not possible.  So then we just ask what they have, they tell us, we take it.  That is the way it works

Other than our new digs, not much else has been going on.  We go to yoga, eat breakfast for hours :), go back to the room and nap or swim, eat lunch, ride around a bit, do internet maybe, eat dinner, go to bed.  There is alot of talk about what we are eating, when, and where to get it.

More later.  We have to go and get the kid from her last day at her nursery school.  We only have 2 more days in Goa, then we go to Mumbai for 1 1/2 days, and then home!  Yeah!

Things I don’t hate about Goa

I haven’t posted in a bit because I have not felt the muse strike since I have been too busy feeling sorry for myself and plotting my escapt to Thailand for the rest of my trip.   However, I thought it might be a good exercise to try and not think so much about what I hate about Goa and instead write some about the things I almost like.

Well, we can start with the food.  I am not a huge fan of Indian food on the whole.  I like a good Indian meal occasionally, but in Mysore I was so tired of thali meals that I couldn’t wait until the  Pizza Hut opened which it finally did three days before I left.  Goa, on the other hand, has variety.  There are so many nationalities that vacation here that there is a cafe/restaurant just waiting to cater to them.   My favorite is the French Bakery because they have the best croissants I have ever tasted.    We also eat at Bean Me Up alot - they have good salads and yummy tofu dishes.  The Saturday Night Market has a food court to rival any and I saw everthing you could imagine there - even sushi!

I also really like Rowan’s preschool - the Yellow School House.  It is run by a very nice British lady and all the teachers are these amazing Indian women.  The school has a great play yard and the classrooms inside have so much to offer.  They take kids for as little as a week and then there are also kids there that live in Goa.  It is a bit pricey though.  In Mysore Rowan went to a preschool Mon - Fri from 9am - 12pm and we paid TWELVE DOLLARS A MONTH.  I paid $100 for a month in Goa from Mon, Wed, and Fri from 9am - 1pm.

I also like that some restaurants/ cafes have catered to families by offering kids activities.  At Bean Me Up they have a “kids corner” with a box of toys and a television that plays cartoons from the Indian version of Cartoon Network.  At the French Bakery they also have a kids toy box and a great place to hang out and chill upstairs.   In Little Vagatore there is a trampoline on the beach in front of on beach restaurant where all the kids gather and jump while the parents sip cocktails in peace while watching the sunset :)  The other night we went to an Italian restaurant in Chaporra and they were projecting some Mickey Mouse cartoons on the wall and about 8 kids were all sitting watching - again so parents could eat and talk :).

I like Rolf and Marci and doing yoga with them.

 Okay, and that ends my feel good post.

For pictures check this out…

For some colorful pics and even more colorful language you can check out Jason’s blog at:

www.leapinglanka.blogspot.com

Still here…

So we have been here for over a week now and settling in.  I am enjoying practicing with Rolf and Marci a lot, but could honestly do without Goa :)  I would much rather be in Thailand right now. 

Rowan is doing good.  She is dirty constantly and is loving her nightly bucket baths.  Note to parents who have kids with curly hair - it dreads easily when not brushed for days at a time.  I have had to cut out two so far because they could not be salvaged.  I don’t know where she gets the curly hair from since we don’t have it, but it is interesting to deal with here.  The humidity makes it even curlier and she hates to have it brushed - therefore tight curls and no brushing for days makes dreads - who knew!

She has not been sick at all, but I was very sick this weekend - like Exorcist sick.  Projectile.  Not pretty.  Jason was on daddy duty all day Saturday as I lay motionless on the bed.  It passed though, thankfully, but I am still not convinced I want much to eat but bread and water

What else?  I hear it will be very crowded soon at Rolf’s as the Mysore crowd migrates over once the shala closes.  It will be nice to see some friends we hope.  There is not much mingling of the students here so far - which is a shame - not at all like the social banaza of Mysore.

Still no pics because we have not found a good place to load them from our laptop.  Soon I hope.

Goa - where all the old hippies come to die

Okay, we have been here for almost a week now and here are some obervations of Goa:

There is alot of dirt.

It is really, really hot right now.

What else?  Oh, the white man has definitely made himself home here.  There are foreigners everywhere!  It is like Panama City Beach, FL with Indians and dirt.   Except instead of pasty southerners you have pasty Brits, Germans, etc. - and there are the hippies.  This is the mother land if you are a hippie looking for others like yourself.  Jason calls them “krusty hippies”.  Let your imagination wander…

Also, there is a ton of stuff catered to all these foreigners.  Internet cafes, restaurants, etc.  all catering to my needs.  I haven’t actually eaten any Indian food yet.  I have had falafel and hummus, salads (you can eat the veggies at some places), croissants (yummy), crepes, etc. 

Yoga is good.  Rolf and Marci are great.  Very authentic in their relationship to the practice in a way I always admired about Tim.   The room is full and I think Jason and I are one of only a few Americans.   There are two shifts and Jason takes the first one and I come later around 8am to practice and we switch off with the kid.  We haven’t found anyone to watch her yet so we can practice together. 

Rowan started  preschool at the Little Yellow House Preschool this week. She goes Mon, Wed, and Fri from 9am - 1pm.  It is run by a British Lady and they probably have about 30 - 40 kids there - all foreigners.  Rowan loves it and it gives us a nice break

 We met another lady practicing with Rolf from the Canary Islands who is traveling with her two daughters alone - the girls are 4 and 2.   We watched them for her this week for a few hours so she could have some time to herself (she needed a break - if you can imagine being alone with 2 kids for 3 weeks in a strange land).  They all had fun playing together even though the girls do not speak English - only Spanish.  Rowan couldn’t figure out why they didn’t talk like her but she sure kept trying

Pictures to come later.

We have arrived

First - 5.5 hour flight from Portland to JFK leaving at 6am

Second - 7 hour layer at JFK - we took the train to the city, walked around, got lunch/dinner, went to a book store, took the train back to airport.  3 hours travel on the trains…

Third - 14 hour flight to Mumbai from JFK arriving at 11pm

Fourth - 1.5 hour delay searching for a hotel in Mumbai.  Someone, not me, decided it would be a good idea to not book a hotel before we arrived but instead try and just “wing it”.  From now on we are not going to “wing it” - we will book in advance.  Also note that when you try and “wing it” you get charged way over price for a dumpy Indian hotel in the middle of god-knows-where.   Note some more that so called hotel is in sketchy part of town and there is nothing to walk to which means we are sort of trapped in so-called dumpy hotel until noon the next day watching Indian cable until I feel like I am going crazy!!!!

Fifth - leave for airport at noon for our1 hour flight from Mumbai to Goa. 

Sixth - 45 minute cab ride to our apartment.

Total time elapsed from the time we left our house in Portland until the time we “arrived” - 42 hours

Number of meltdowns on my part along the way - 2

Number of meltdowns from the kid - at least 20.  These are mainly from jet-lag and being tired and in unfamiliar surroundings.  Oh, and bug bites of which she has many and is profoundly disturbed by :)  We are having to put soothing lotion on them at least 15 times a day so she doesn’t meltdown…

More later when I have showered (from a bucket) and had a good nights sleep…

Life is too short to wait for your kids to grow up before you can take trips again

It is much easier than you think to travel abroad with small children and especially babies.  Okay, I take that back.  If you are the parent who cannot leave the house without a HUGE diaper bag of crap just to go to the market then perhaps you should stay home :)  But all you other parents listen up to Tara’s Top Reasons to Travel with Small Children:

1) Before the age of 2 you get MAJOR discounts on airfares.  If you are working on a budget like us this makes a big difference.  For our first trip to India when Rowan was 1 we paid about $300 for her ticket or a 30% discount on full fare.  Now she is three and even though you still get a wee discount, about 75%, we ended up paying about $1000 for her ticket.   I know, I still can’t believe it.

If you need to practice traveling abroad with a baby before you can work up the nerve to go abroad then do it.  Children under 2 travel for FREE within the states.  FREE.  I like that word.  I flew with Rowan her first time when she was 5 weeks old from California to Florida.  Her first year she probably logged more miles than most people do their whole lives.

2)   If you travel abroad with babies or small children you interact more with local people.   You know what they say about the best way to meet women if you are a single guy - you take a baby or dog with you?  It works with foreigners too.    Everyone loves kids - mostly - and children are non-threatening and soften the interactions people have with you.

3)  It is a bonding experience with your family.   ’nuff said.

Reasons you should not travel abroad with your small children:

1)  You enjoy vacations where you sleep till noon, lazily roll out of bed and stroll to the nearest cafe and sip espresso and munch on a croissant while you read the morning paper.   THESE TYPES OF VACATIONS DO NOT HAPPEN ONCE YOU HAVE KIDS unless you bring a nanny and have them in a seperate suite than yours.

2)  You freak out when your kids eat dirt or get a boo-boo.  It happens.  Rowan had a pacifier in India and it probably dropped hundreds of times in the dirt and she would pick it up and put it right back in her mouth.  I know it is gross, but you can’t clean it every time

3)  You cannot break out of your routine and/or improvise.  We have met many parents when we travel who do this thing where they trade off watching their kid because if they all went out and did something it might disrupt the kids schedule and then armageddon would happen.  Then what happens is the parents have 2 seperate vacations because they are never together.  One parent is out at lunch with friends and the other is home with the kid,  or any other activity for that matter.  I am all for schedules with kids, but sometimes it is okay to do something different.  Really.   And they are pretty adaptable so even though you think they will NEVER be able to handle a different type of situation it probably is you that cannot handle it.

Barbies doing yoga

Rowan had an impromptu yoga class with all of her Barbies in my room today. I was working on the computer, half tuning in and out of her conversations, and before I realized it she had a whole yoga class going and all of her Barbies doing backbends…

It’s been a long time…

Well, here we are again about to embark on a trip half way around the world with our daughter.

The last time I had a blog was 2 years ago when we decided to take our 1 year old with us to Mysore for 4 months. Now we are going back to India in a few weeks and I thought people, mainly yogi parents or yogi’s thinking of being parents, would like to see how our trip goes with a wee one.  I will probably only continue the blog through our trip and our immediate return.  Beyond that I cannot say for sure…

This will be a short trip - only 4 weeks - and we are going to Goa - not Mysore - mainly because we really wanted to spend some time practicing with Rolf and Marci. I know it seems like we should at least make an attempt at going to Mysore since we will be so close, but really I don’t want to practice with 300 other people right now. Plus we don’t have that much time for our trip this time around and practicing with Rolf was a bigger priority right now.

Our daughter is now 3 and although she has no real concept of what it means to go to India she is excited and keeps asking when we are going. As people who know her are aware, she is an uber girl - loves pink, girly things, dresses, basically anything girly-girly she loves - so she told us that as long as there were other little girls in India to play with she was all for it. So we shall see…

As a side note, anyone who has any questions about traveling there with little ones is more than welcome to email me with questions.