My Family Moves to India

We're not doing anything exciting, but if you want an update on our lives recently, read on!

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That's my new goal. I'd like to be able to do a family bike trip (several days or a couple of weeks) around Denmark when I turn 40. Shawn says that Denmark has bike roads with stop lights and everything, so it would be very safe and nice to see the country slowly.

With this in mind, I started Jazzercise on Wednesday. WHOOOOPPEEEEEE! I am doing Jazzercise again! I was a regular 9 years ago, exercising 5 hours a week there, but when I got pregnant with J, I had to quit. (Thanks Cris for introducing me to Jazzercise! Then we moved to a smaller city and there was no Jazzercise. I pined for it for about 5 years, until I got sick, when just fixing dinner became exercise. Amazingly, Chennai has the only Jazzercise in India - and it's held right in the gym at the kid's school!

Sometimes, I just can't believe how lucky I am! Although it is kind of funny that I had to move halfway around the world to find a Jazzercise class.

Meanwhile, the week has been good but very busy and eventful. The kids are doing well at school - J likes her new teacher alot, and goes fairly cheerfully even when she has an upset digestive tract. I took her into the doctor on Wednesday because it had been 10 days of on again/off again diarrhea, nausea, and headaches. She got lots of prescriptions - all were for OTC drugs in America - and we have been doing intensive tummy therapy since then. (This involves taking all the medicine on time, striving to keep her hydrated, and getting the lactobacillus capsules into her, so she can build up the good bacteria again.) She is energetic enough and hasn't had a fever for over a week, so the doctor said that she could go to school. J likes her teacher so much, and has made so many new friends, that she was pleased at that.

We will be enrolling her in yoga and art after school, with her best little friend M. That should make school even more fun. So far, she hasn't had any homework other than reading, so I think that a couple of extra curricular activities will not overwhelm her. The birthday parties and playdates have already started - I can see her social calendar is going to be very busy.

L also continues to do well in school. He has not had ANY hitting or kicking incidents at school at all. I can't hardly believe it. His teacher said that he is doing so well that she may not need an aid for him. We are going to keep him at half days for the first semester (40 days) and then gradually build him up to full days. That way, he will be ready for full-day kindergarten here next year. He has entirely stopped napping, so I think that the afternoon session will be good for him; but his teacher, who is an absolute genius, doesn't want to put too much pressure on him. After talking with her I think she is correct. She is very exacting in her behavioural standards, which he needs, but it is a lot of pressure for him to handle. We are continuing to pursue getting his auditory processing evaluated.

S is working, working, working....at the plant all week this week. When he goes to the plant he has a 4-hour roundtrip commute, which doesn't bother him. (Yikes! I would be crazy.) He says he gets tons done - studies his scriptures, e-mails, phone conferences - he even changes in his car. It's too funny, but so like him; he's the only man I know here that doesn't protest about the awful commute. This month he is going back to Russia for a week; I'm not looking forward to that.

And me? Well, I'm just so happy to be back at Jazzercise. I am making lots of new friends at school, volunteering at J's class, doing the primary music, and running the household. As long as I stay rested, I can handle the daily crisises of the "marble manor". Today was a typical day: the stove wouldn't light when I went to fix breakfast, one of the maids burned her arm badly at home and can't come into work, and the milk bill needs paid.

Dealt with the stove: I checked and we were out of gas (it comes in cylinders), again. We shouldn't be, so I had the driver check the connection....and it seems we have a leak. Apparently the night guards smelled gas. Ergo, we need the gas connection repairman to come out. I call the landlord, sic "sir" (hubby) onto the landlord also, and then have Mr. Fixit take a look at the connections. (Note how I am triple-attacking the problem with no less than three options for a solution; this is an important household management skill here.) Then I concoct a back-up plan: meet S for dinner in the city.

The maid: send driver (the one who is not her friend) out to check on her and see if she actually has a burned arm. (Since her toddler also fell and took out his front teeth, and her other child had a bad ear infection, all in the same week, I'm more than a little suspicious.) I hope she doesn't have a bad burn, but if she doesn't, then she is out of a job.

Milk: count out exact change and send driver to pay bill.

So all of this is becoming second nature. We got some more curtains, which comforts me. About half the house now has curtains. Maybe I will just give up on the other half. No, more likely, I will sew them myself and cut out the trips to the city to look at fabric, the long waits, and the bills. I also need some more lights and bookshelves, but all things in good time.

Well, time to check on the gas issue and decide what to do about dinner.

We made it home just fine, and even though Lufthansa didn't put any of our 10 bags on our flight, they delivered them to our house by 10 a.m. the next morning. Amazing service.

The curtain rod men came and put up more curtain rods. I believe that I now have all the rods up; I just need the curtains. Maybe before New Year's. Ha ha.

I got most of the suitcases unpacked and then started to feel sickly....and wound up in bed for a couple of days. Yesterday was particularly awful - one of my "crash" days - I just couldn't wake up. I was running a low fever so I guess something was up. Anyway, I feel alot better today and intend to take it easy for a few days.

The beauty of being sick in India is that you have servants; they create their own problems, but at least when you get out of bed the kitchen is clean and the kids are fed.

Of course life in India is never dull; my car decided to have intermittant breakdowns. At first we thought it was the battery, but it seems the consensus now is that it has an electrical short. After several days of a less-than-reliable vehicle and a trip to the repair shop, our driver, Arul (who is currently stranded beside the road waiting for a tow truck), says that we are going to get a loaner and keep it until the old car runs perfectly at the office (Avis) for a few days. So our car will be used to run tourists around and pick up businessmen while we enjoy the loaner.

We've had a few travelling salesmen stop by this week. In the posh areas of the city, it's common for vendors selling everything from eggs to rugs to stop at your house and do a hard sell; but we hardly ever get them out here. However, this week we've seen two: one man selling giant prawns (fresh, too - they were still moving); and another selling artwork. I wound up buying from both of them. The artist had some lovely hand-died batiks that I couldn't resist, and the prawns are a welcome treat.

We also got our shoe cupboards today. That's a minor miracle. I paid too much for them and waited too long (3 months and counting!), but at least the measurements were correct and they fit the space allocated for them perfectly. Now the clutter inside our front door is contained. Yay!

In my lucid moments I've been having a lot of fun creating a curtain to hide the warped boards in the downstairs bathroom. The boards hide the bottom of the sink - kind of a built-in vanity - but they've gotten wet and warped. I asked the landlord to replace them but he didn't; it wasn't a big enough issue to fight over. So I bought some wild and crazy Jacobean floral fabric to jazz the half bath up, and commenced to sew. I'm proud to say that the sewing machine that I carted home in a suitcase works perfectly here! Yippee!

Well, we got rid of the first painters when they finished the job. Too much hassle with the money, and we got ripped off. I was slightly nervous about firing them because they were related to my driver, but he took it fine, and still shows up for work. Whew.

The new crew we found through a friend of mine, Sandy. Sandy is Chinese married to a Finnish gentleman, and let me tell you, she has this haggling and servant stuff down cold. She is good. I told her that she should open a consulting business for Americans with servant problems here.

So, Sandy's maid's husband is a painter, and he and his crew came out. They are charging us 1/3 of the price of the other guys, and are faster. So far they have painted the kitchen, pantry, puja room (soon to be library), dining room, and the master bedroom and dressing room. I can't tell you how big of a difference it makes to me to have the glaring white paint gone and some soft white or color up. I was thinking about it the other day.....and realized that it reminded me of a surgical suite. The last memory I have previous to all of my surgeries (I'm feeling slightly sick even now as I remember this ) is of the cold, narrow table and the harsh, blinding light on the sharp white walls. So I guess that explains my gut loathing of the whiteness of this place.

Besides which, once the movers were done moving things, there are handprints and such all over the key traffic areas. And they don't come off - the paint is so cheap that the paint comes off, but not the handprints.

So, I have learned a bit about the paints (and painting) here and thought I'd pass it along. Here goes:

The biggest paint store I've found on the south side of Chennai is called

Sri Serman Enterprises
No 161 A, Thiruvalluvar Salai
Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai
Tel: 24411106

I've looked in several other paint stores and this one has, by far, the widest range of paints. They carry three major brands:

Asian Paints
Dulux Paints
Nippon Paints (out of Japan)

You can go to the internet and find out a lot of information about all of these brands, including fancy color-choosing options that allow you to see the hundreds of paint colors. You can also purchase, via the internet, the large color swatch book that the paint stores use. It costs Rs 1000. Or you can just go to the paint store and thumb through their battered copy, but it's hot there. No AC.

I've used both Asian Paints and Dulux, and liked the quality of both. I chose a matte finish for the walls because they are so poorly done (no wallboard here, it's just some sort of plaster over concrete) that the bumps and wiggles would be glaringly obvious with even a satin coat.

For those of you who are true paint enthusiasts, you can still purchase oil-based paints here. (They don't sell them anymore in the US because of health worries.) These would be your gloss paints. I used them inside my cabinets to seal out the mildew and mold spores, because the oil base is a better sealant than the latex (water base). Oil based paint is very smelly, as well as being slightly toxic, so I am using a latex paint for all of the rest of the surfaces. The Dulux Velvet Touch only smells for about 24 hours after they finish, which is really nice because you can move back into the room quickly.

When you purchase paint here they are going to ask you whether it's for metal, wood, or walls. Then they are going to talk to you about liters. 4 liters = approximately 1 gallong. HOWEVER, the painters here dilute the paint with water or turpentine (if it's an oil base), as per the directions on the can. I was surprised at this initially and thought that it was to save money on supplies, but when I read the cans, it's actually in the directions. Don't ask me why. Possibly because they use a brush a lot of times where we wouldn't, and the dilution allows them to paint with a brush and not leave obvious brush strokes. At any rate, you buy less paint here than in the US because they are going to dilute it.

I saved the best for last. I had brought some mold-inhibiting gel from the US, but Nippon paints actually sells a paint here called Medi-Fresh. It is expensive - about twice what you would pay per gallon than regular paint - but it has antifungal, anti-algae, anti-bacterial, and anti-mold additives. So I am using that in my bathrooms and on my ceilings upstairs (where there is mold and mildew residue from previous water damage.) I'm very excited by this because I trust the Japanese to do what they say - after living in their country, I know they are cleanliness freaks, like me. So hopefully, this will cut down on our environmental allergens.

BTW, there is little to no spray paint here. I have seen one display of it at Sri Serman, and they only had some weird colors (not even any white). So don't count on spraypaint. Metal painting is done by brush.

As far as cost, the labor is extremely cheap (about USD $25 per day for 4 painters - that's a total cost, and it's a generous amount); but the paint itself costs about the same as it would in the US.

Well, better go. I hear my kids fighting; it's time for dinner. Hope this helps someone.....

OK, not 99. 390 to be exact. I know this because I got to sit in the front hall and mark them off on the "Bingo" sheet as they came in the door. I felt like a queen bee, with worker bees (the movers) buzzing all around me. It went fairly smoothly and so far the only damage is to Shawn's plasma TV, which is ruined, thanks to a zealous customs officer with a box cutter. Needless to say, he's pretty steamed.

Now all I have to do is unpack them. As S said, it's like Christmas on crack.

Frankly, it's embarrassing to have so much stuff in a country where everyone else is so poor. I feel materialistic and greedy owning so much; yet I also am very relieved to have our own beds, pillows, mattresses, sheets, etc. My feelings on this issue are extremely conflicted.

At any rate, the unpacking is going well. We have accomplished the kitchen, Jessa's room, and the master bedroom, and tonight I started on L's room. There is still much to be done, but it's getting better.

It does help that any time I need some help - as in moving a box, or putting something away that requires a ladder - I can call on a guard or my driver. In fact, some of us expatriate wives have taken to calling our drivers "MacGuyver", since they are so versatile. Yesterday mine fixed the shower head that wouldn't work correctly (it would only spray the ceiling, definitely a disadvantage unless you were a gecko), and he hadn't even ever seen a shower before. So there you are. These guys certainly have a genetic connection with MacGuvyer somewhere.

Lest you think having servants is all peaches and cream and me sitting around popping bonbons while they slave away, though, let me just tell you that their work ethics are shaky at best. My maid didn't come for three days in a row, and then was an hour late, all of which adds up to a lot of lies from her and a lot of stress for me (because I hate conflict and so am not a good manager). Oh well. At least she, and the other maid that I hired in her absence, got most of the dirt off of the floors today.

And hilariously, my driver has canoodled his own room out of the other driver's family. I didn't realize that until Sudhakar, the driver who lives with us, slipped up and called it "Arul's room". Hmmmm. Methinks Arul is up to something. Sleeping, most likely. That man is either on the phone or sleeping all day, unless he is actually doing something for me.

But who can blame them in this heat? It is still well over 100 F and I sleep a lot too. I came down with a nasty sinus infection Sunday. Thankfully, I had the correct medications to take care of it, or I would have spent the day sitting at the hospital. But I still feel run down. The heat just really takes it out of you.

As for the kids, they are doing well. J still hates school, but we had a conference with the school counselor and her teacher, and she is slowly adjusting. Unfortunately, her teacher did not follow through with what she promised to do for J, which further destroyed our confidence in her. But, school is almost over, and next year we will have a choice of three teachers, so we are hoping for a better experience.

Her teacher actually wanted her to be held back, but we refused, since she was basing her recommendation on an entire 6 days of observation, and J was petrified the entire time. She can and does do the work easily when I sit down with her. Not only that, but J is one of the oldest in her class, since her birthday is in the fall. So she goes on to 2nd grade next year.

L's teacher continues to be excellent. She really is a gem. We are holding him back, as he needs more time with her. He also is further behind academically than J, and of course, he's a boy. Holding him back won't affect his future education much, since he will only be slightly older than the other children.

So that's about all I do these days: school, unpacking, and servants. It's very, very busy.

Happy Homemaker's Tip of the Day:

Polished tile or marble floors look worse after you mop them than before, if you are using hard water. If that is the case, then the key to a shiny floor is drying them with a towel - or using a sponge mop and not the weird styrofoam-type Indian mops. Bring your own mops, ladies!