Saturday, January 26, 2008

Home Again ... For Now

Slept most of the India to Frankfurt flight (after all, it left at 2am India time). In Frankfurt, grabbed some kindereggs (candy eggs with toys inside) and (the original) gummy bears. For the kids, not for me. On the flight from Germany to DFW, I only slept for an hour or so.

Not sure I've written about this, but in India, all water is suspect unless its bottled water. If an American even brushes his teeth with tap water on his toothbrush, he'll very likely be sick. Or so the travel doctor told me. And since several of my colleagues have been sick already while in or returning from India, I take that pretty seriously. So no drinking tap water.

Now, honestly, that's not such a big deal ... except that it means you can't have ice in your drinks. None. Ever. I can imagine my older brother reading this and thinking, so what? But the problem is, if you order anything cold, it is typically delivered at just below room temperature. (Or 'luke cold', as my boss commented.)

So when I got on the American flight in Frankfurt, coming home, and ordered a Diet Coke ... it was heavenly. Ice in the glass. Cold can. Refreshing. Seriously.

And as a side note, I think I wrote about this already, but I've confirmed that I'm not a big fan of Indian food. I got some ribbing for a certain 'burning' experience I had at a restaurant over there, but that's ironic to me since I eat quite a bit of Tex-Mex over here. So its not really that I don't like the spice, I just am not a big fan of the flavor.

Anyway, I arrived home on Thursday afternoon, on schedule. Mostly stayed awake for the afternoon, playing with the kids. To bed that night just after 10pm, woke up at 5:55am DFW time. 8 hours, that's good, but I wished I could have gotten myself to sleep another 2 or 3. No dice though.

Friday grabbed a Chipotle burrito at lunch. OH MY. Oh yes.

I go back to Chennai this coming Friday (yes, 8 days after I returned from the previous trip). This next trip will last 3 weeks. The Indian folks I'm working with are really great, both kind and gracious. But I am not looking forward to this trip. I swear my kids grew in visible ways while I was gone for 2 weeks last time. This time I'll come back and they'll be driving or something. And my wife will be mumbling to herself, I'm afraid. Cursing the father of her children. Hopefully not, but we'll see.

More to come.
B

3 comments:

Sarah B said...

Glad for your safe return! Sounds like jetlag to the west is not bad for you - sleeping and eating quite regular on your first day back! An 8 day turn-around is hard, though. I did that a couple times in my travels (once for a funeral, once for a wedding!) God was good and blessed me with short jet lag on both trips. Will pray that for you, too. - AND that the 3 weeks will fly with no visible affects on your family :)

Anonymous said...

No ice? Where do I sign up!!!

Mikey said...

Hmmm... so am I to understand that you DON'T want me to start Piper's driving lessons while you're gone?