The Ambassador

I wanted to get a quick school post in on Oscar's first day, so I neglected a few details of the drive in. First, our driver couldn't come in that day so we hired a private car to take us around. In drives the Ambassador - the car, not the person. Here's a link to a great description of the car that I can't paraphrase and is best to give credit where credit is due - thanks again James and Sarah! http://hellotalalay.blogspot.com/2011/08/car-named-for-thee.html Check out these wheels (sorry for the butt shot Oscar, I thought I took another one...).

Oscar was so excited

Dashboard Hindu God Ganesha (God of knowledge and the remover of obstacles, in short) - photo by Oz

Photos taken from the car window of our views during the drive.
Here are a few murals, and helmetless drivers, that are everywhere throughout the city:

For some great mural shots check out Hello Talalay (thanks again guys! :) : http://hellotalalay.blogspot.com/2011/08/street-side-view-master.html





yes there are garbage trucks, but never enough it seems, and I don't even want to ask where the garbage goes

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It's a little hard to see in these pictures, but in front of both of these houses are chalk designs called kolam. From what I've read, they can be very simple to extremely intricate and are patterns of curved loops around a grid pattern of dots (similar to the indian art of rangoli). They are drawn each morning by women to welcome the Goddess Lakshimi into the house (Hindu goddess of prosperity) and to ward off evil spirits. Traditionally they're drawn in rice flour as a meal for ants and other creatures to symbolize harmony...

And since we're talking about ants, they're everywhere!! Within 2 minutes of dropping something sweet on the floor, or leaving it unattended on the counter you are almost guaranteed to find ants. Some tiny ones even found there way into sealed/prepackaged snacks we shipped here. Thankfully, they only could get into the animal crackers and the cheezits were spared. Today I had ants in my pants, almost literally. A large family of small ants (thankfully not the biting ones) found there way into our car and we're munching on some crumbs in my seat. Needless to say they were all over and I feel like they're still crawling on me. Yet another reason to not eat in the car...