The Hiders Blog......: Taking a 'chill pill'....

Over the last few days we started to 'chill' just a little - in more ways than one...

Firstly, the temperature here has significantly changed and we have felt a chill once or twice for the first time in 6 weeks. When Tim was here last week the temperature really dipped - despite us wanting Tim to experience a little of the 90's we had had to put up with!! The weather on the web is looking to be around the late 20's for us here in the next few days - wonderful....!!

You would not believe the difference this has made to our lives....

kids are far less snappy with each other
parents are far less snappy with the kids
parents are far less snappy with each other (!) and can sleep in the same room at last!
our brains are far more alert (which enables us to do at least double what we were doing with the temp. the way it was)
we haven't got to lug jugs of water around with us wherever we go
we haven't got to plaster suncream on the kids
we can use the full day now and not just after 4pm (it was seriously that bad)

All in all we are feeling a whole heap better now that monsoon seems to be on it's way.....ahhhhh

The above has also helped with a change in how I (Dave) am feeling about where I am at with my workload too. Not sure if you have picked it up but things have been getting a little stressed with the fact that July is full of training and training needs preparation - in my mind anyway. I was struggling to try and find any time to prepare with a whole stack of meetings and events happening and partly due to my brain shutting down with the heat!

Yesterday and today Raj is away at a camp in Urkut and I had plucked up the courage to say a firm 'no'

to going. This has enabled me to have a good day and a half to crash through so much of what I have been wanting to do. The result: A massive amount of work done that I feel has broken the back of what I needed to do by the end of June and a feeling of utter relief!!! I feel now that with 4/5 more prep days I will be ready for July and for the series of training sessions we have set up for:

The Fishermen Trust Trustees (a day retreat),

South Asia Bible College,

The corporate sector training day and

The 3 day leadership training academy.

It's a great feeling when, after nearly 7 weeks, I feel almost as if I have my head above water at last!!

So to celebrate, we took a day out today. We met a rick driver called Salem (pic left) last night who had 'spotted us' a couple of times in Bangalore and introduced himself as someone who lives round the corner from us. He had seen us locally too he said. He drove us home for a good price on the rick last night and asked if he could give us his mobile no and be available to us. We took the risk today (you never know where some of these stories end up sometimes), and booked Salem to take us for chilled afternoon to the Bangalore Botanical Gardens.

We had a great afternoon and Sarah took some great pics so if you don't mind us overindulging in our gorgeous kids today, take a look at these pics.

This is a simple pic of us looking out from a rick. We get these ricks every day (at least twice) and this is our view for a good chunk of the day as we travel from place to place.

and this is how close it can all get at time - yes that's my knee and that's a local Indian bus!

Our wonderful kids (who we are loving watching growing in confidence out here) at the Botanical gardens:

Part of the gardens are a huge rock which leads up to a temple - very atmospheric for some (slightly bigger) pics:

and the 'not quite as gorgeous' parents - well Dave's not so hot anyway!!!

on a little golf caddy type ride:

and for the final pic.....this means a lot to us!! You constantly get stared at out here and we were asked a number of times today to pose next to India people - simply because we are white!! So we got fed up with this and thought we would get our own back by photgraphing one of 'them'. Sadly, we are brits and can't be that inpolite (!) so we photgraphed this guy back whilst he was having a kip!!