Happy Valentine's Day!

When I was a kid my mom used to bake these huge (think: head sized) cookies for us for Valentine's day. They were chocolate chip, and she'd decorate them with frosting. We didn't have a lot of sweets in our house, and I loved those cookies! They were so decadent and pretty.

When I was in college my grandmother used to send me chocolates from a local chocolatier called Trufflehounds. She sent them to me when I was in grad school too, right up until she moved to a different part of the state and wasn't local to them anymore. One day when we were visiting my parents Robert and I stopped into the shop and bought a few things. They recognized my name from our credit card, and all the years they'd spent shipping chocolates to me all over the US. It was a really sweet (hahah) lesson in dealing with small businesses! And every year since then Robert has had chocolates from there shipped to me (us) for Valentine's Day.

Well, every year but this one. I don't think the chocolates would survive the trip to India in good condition, if you're even allowed to ship chocolates to India. I miss them though! Trufflehounds makes some damn fine chocolate. But I digress.

Last night Robert and I made Valentines for the kids.

Yes, yes. I know. You're overwhelmed by our amazing artistic abilities and fine photo-taking skills! It's normal. We get that reaction all the time.

Actually, we do. From the kids. They loved their Valentines. And since I couldn't bake them gigantic, head sized cookies, we taped a little bar of Cadbury's chocolate into their cards. Again: total delight. They've been slowly eating them, square by square. And they offered to share with us. There are only 8 squares per bar (these are really pretty small chocolate bars)! I feel overwhelmed by the generosity of my children, and also a bit sorry that I've deprived them of chocolate for so long. This is literally the first chocolate either of them have had in 3 months. Did I mention total delight??

Of course the kids made Valentines for each other and for us too. Liel drew herself and Zion as owls on his card.

And drew him a picture besides. That's a bat and a phoenix having cake together.

Zion drew Liel as a unicorn, and himself as a phoenix.

He made one card for me and Robert. It's truly romantic, as you can see- it has a mummy! And a monkey with a sword!

And here are the cards Liel made for us. She and Robert as dragons, she and I as bats.

So, there's my beautiful Valentine's Day! I feel so incredibly blessed (even without Trufflehounds). I hope yours is gorgeous and love filled as well. Know that I'm sending you love!

Sundays

On Sundays, Prakruthi is relatively quiet and uncrowded. It's pleasant to sit in the shade, sipping coffee, eating piles of delicious food and people watching.

Or dog watching. We've named that stray dog we saw being fed cookies a while back "Prakruthi". We've spotted him hanging around the patio pretty often, and there seem to be a few people that he's especially fond of, and will run up to, tail wagging, as soon as he sees them. Naturally, these people all feed him cookies. Most of them do it surreptitiously, under the table, but the kids and I usually spot them because we're constantly on the look out for that dog.

Anyway, we decided a while back that we'd go to Prakruthi for lunch every Sunday. This may not sound particularly thrilling, given that we eat there 5-6 times a week, but trust me. We all love our Sundays there (the kids, it must be admitted, are particularly attached to them because we buy them a sweet on Sunday), and I know I'm going to miss them like crazy when we're back in New York.

Today as we were leaving we saw something new: monkeys at Prakruthi. The kids were particularly charmed by the baby one eating off a plate someone had left. Naturally I took pictures.

Then a much bigger monkey, with either cuts or sores on it face started walking in our direction, so we got out of there sharpish. Early on in our stay here we were warned that monkeys with sores on their faces care a disease that has a 100% fatality rate in humans, so we take that pretty seriously.

We had a lovely walk home through Jubilee Gardens. Eventually the kids walked off ahead of us to talk about Archon (a video game they're currently obsessed with). They looked so cute I could hardly stand it.

And when we got home, Liel drew me a picture of a Yellow Wattled Lapwing mama and baby. The mama is holding a jewel in her claws. These birds live on campus, and she's been reading about them in our zoology of the IISc campus book. We haven't seen any yet, but hopefully we will. Anyway if you follow the link above you can see what these birds look like. I think her ability to re-create what she sees is improving!

Re-create and improve. Liel's birds are delightfully plump and stubby-legged!

Kids' art

Yesterday Liel decided to draw me a picture of her and me as rotund bats. We are flying up in the air enjoying a snack of lemonade and ice cream that magically float in front of us, while below, two human helpers bring us more treats (the one fully in the picture has hot chocolate and cupcakes, while the one entering on the right has limeade). Man, wouldn't it be nice if you could have your food and drink float in front of you at just the right height?? I'm also particularly fond of the stars on the mother bat's tummy!

Not to be outdone, Zion drew me a picture as well. Anyone want to guess what this is a picture of?

I know I'm biased, but I think it's rather excellent!

Museums

Our first day of hiring a car to drive us around went pretty well! The only little snag was that the cab company sent two cars and drivers. Clearly some wires crossed on their end- they even sent us texts about both, but we thought it was because the first driver wasn't going to work out after all. We only discovered that there were two drivers when we got in the first guy's car...and got a call from the second guy saying he was waiting for us. Ooops. Second guy didn't seem too pleased, but he didn't seem too put out, either. He also seemed to speak much more English, but at that point we were in the car so we just went with it. The driver we had got us where we wanted to go and back home pretty efficiently, so no complaints.

Wait, I take that back. One complaint. Due to crazy Bangalore traffic/driving and the fact that I've yet to ride in a car with functioning seat belts in the back, I got to practice a mom-move not seen in the States since I was a kid. I refer, of course, to the "my arm will stop you from flying through the windshield" arm flinging. I had the kids on either side of me, so I got to do it two handed!

At any rate, our driver was only a few minutes late (our address seems to confuse people- the second delivery guy from Big Basket called to tell me he was lost. Which was unfortunate, because not only could I not help him, we couldn't understand each other. Luckily he got here in the end), and we arrived at the Visvesvarya Industrial and Technical Museum about 30 minutes later. Our driver parked in front of the museum to wait for us.

Our first stop was the Dinosaur Corner. It contained one life-size, slightly mechanized dinosaur that roared at regular intervals. Liel did not care for this roaring monstrosity, oh no. But Zion liked it-- in fact, he later told us he thought it was the coolest thing he saw all day.

We went on to the Engine Hall, the Electrotechnic room, the Fun Science room, the Biotechnical Revolution (lots of genetic engineering stuff here) and the Space exhibit. The kids liked the Engine Hall best I think- lots of buttons to push and gears to turn.

Here's a cool, steampunk-y engine.

While we were in the Biotechnical Hall Liel decided she had to pee. This is somewhat unusual for her, as she detests most public bathrooms and can hold it practically forever. But, I took her off to the bathroom. When she saw that it was a hole in the ground (aka squat toilet) she eyed it rather unhappily. But, she did attempt to squat over it (I held her up to make sure she didn't slip). After a few seconds she announced that she couldn't pee and we left, me hoping she could hold it for a couple more hours, and feeling very grateful that our apartment has western style toilets!

There was a pretty sweet environmental conservation poster in the museum too. Here are some of my favorite bits.

After a couple of hours at the science museum we decided to head to the art museum that was close by. Our driver was asleep in the back of his car, so we decided to let him sleep and walk over to the museum, which was quite close.

There was some confusion about tickets and where to buy them, mainly because it turns out that the Venkatappa Art Gallery and the State Archeological Museum share tickets, and the ticket counter is at the State Archeological Museum. We hadn't planned to do all 3 museums in one day, but as it turns out that was an excellent idea, as the art and archeology museums were quite small (especially the art museum, which was really just a gallery of one guy's- Venkatappa- work. I'd read there was another gallery that had other art, but the upstairs was closed so if there was more we didn't see it.

The State Archeological Museum had some really cool art and artifacts, but virtually no information about them. Most are labeled with what the are ("arrowheads", "sword", "veena", "Mysore style"), and some have dates, but that's it. I would have loved more information! I'm sure they'd love to be better funded too. The tickets were less than half the cost of the science and tech museum next door...not sure why that was, other than that the archeology museum was smaller.

The building itself was pretty sweet- awesome red stone.

There was a cool outdoor walking area with some old stone sculptures.

My favorite part inside was a really amazing panel of paintings depicting different scenes from the Ramayana.

Here's Rama and Surpenaka.

And here's Ravana kidnapping Sita.

The museum also had a cool collection of instruments, including sitars and veena. I was especially delighted with the veena, because in Sita Sings the Blues, one of the shadow puppet commentators says that Ravana was so devoted to Shiva that he would play the veena for him with is intestines.

Cool.

They also had some cool Ganesha statues

Laxmi

Tara

The Buddha

And even a plump pegasus!

I didn't take any pictures in the Venkatappa Gallery, but Robert did so you should check out his Facebook pics if you're interested (and friends with him). I did get one of the kids outside the gallery, however.

Don't they look pleased?

All in all, it was a lovely day! And I couldn't believe how cheap the entry fees were. We paid Rs 20 each to get into the science and tech museum, and a total of Rs 12 to get into the archeology museum and the art gallery. For those of you playing along at home, our entry into three museums was less than $2. Total. For all four of us.

The only moment of panic came after we'd been home for about 30 minutes, when Liel looked around and said, "Mama, where's Fluffy??"

I've rarely seen Robert move that fast. He was working in our room and came bolting out with a look of panic on his face (I'm sure there was one on mine, too). Liel was on the verge of tears (a howl had already escaped her lips). Zion looked up from the table where he was writing in his journal and said, "Fluffy is behind you, Mommy!".

Clearly that kind of fright calls for a gin and tonic. And since I now have both of those things (and limes!), I believe I shall have one.  Happy Friday!