Four Seasons in Minneapolis- Fall

By the end of first week of September my older sister- Viji- joined us for a week's stay. She worked with a New York firm and had to head there for work, so she managed to combine a vacation with us while there. It was the beginning of Fall, the weather was "Chilly", that's what she called it, but in our opinion it was still very very pleasant by Minneapolis' standards!!

We picked her up from the airport and she spent the next couple of days sleeping off her jet lag. Thereafter we started taking her out much like we had for our parents. Of course she was more independent and managed to head off on her own as well :-) She L-O-V-E-D the Mall of America and did tonnes of shopping there. She also picked up some stuff from Kohl's in Eagan. It was fun to shop with her, she always manages to pick out superb outfits for me, so I too did my share of shopping with her ;-)

Over the weekend we planned a trip to Duluth, it was wonderful! The lake walk was beautiful at this time of the year, we stayed at a hotel nearby and ensured we walked the length and breadth of Duluth. We didn't head as far as Gooseberry Falls, but still managed to take her to all the touristy points within Duluth. We had booked ourselves for a Fall trip on one of the boats/cruises. But it happened to be a very windy day and hence the tour was called off! So we just continued walking around the place. We did a little shopping there as well and picked up onyx rings and earrings! :-)

Soon it was the end of her trip, she was thrilled to see Fall colors beginning around our apartment tslef. The weekend after she left was when Fall colors blazed in all it's glory. We took my colleagues advice and headed out on a trip from Minneapolis-->Jay Cooke State Park-->Duluth-->Grand Marais-->Grand Portage. The trip was breath takingly beautiful!! Foliage Colors ranged from pale yellow to blazing red on this trip and we were wonderstruck!! It almost felt like we were driving through a rainbow!  It was wonderful to see the foliage colors reflected on our face and this was truly a dream-come-true trip for us!!

We stayed overnight at Caribou Highlands Lodge in Lutsen and drove all the way to the Canadian Border from there. The High Falls at Grand Portage was also a nice stop over before heading back.

For us, this Fall season was the most memorable and enjoyable and with all the best things, they are the most shortlived!! So Fall was over even before we knew it and the terrible Minnesota winter was impending. By then we were very determined to head back and AJ started initiating the process for our return to India. By end of December we knew our stay in Minneapolis was drawing to a close. Still winding up things at my work took a little longer by when the Winter itself was coming to an end (or so we thought, apparently this Winter continued for quite sometime) and the day arrived when we headed back home. We were very excited to be heading back, at the same time we had made some very good friends here whom we were leaving behind.... nostalgia set in as the flight took off from Humphrey Terminal, I clicked some parting shots of 494 and Eagan from the plane. Ths US trip had come to an end and for now it was 'Bbye USA!!....'

Four Seasons in Minneapolis- Summer

Well, well, summer was finally upon us in July 2010. Suddenly the cold city had converted itself into a bustling and blazing city full of outdoor activities. It was amazing to see the transformation and for us, this was a totally new experience. Temperatures soared to nearly 110 F and in the sweltering heat we wondered if indeed this was the city that only a month ago flt like an ice box!!

July 4th was a long weekend and we headed out with AJ's friends Ani and Madhu on a trip to Chicago! They were a newly married couple who had justcome into Minneapolis and so it was a lot of fun as we regaled our experiences to them! The driv was peaceful and we reached Chicago with a couple of 'Starbucks pitstops', the car was refulled and so were we ;-)

We had booked urselves into Sheraton near O'Hare Airport and used the metro from airport for all our travel needs within Chicago. Our first destination was the Millenium Park, after a bunch of quintessential Chicago pics near 'The Bean' we walked to the hudson river and all around the area. In the vening we headed to Willis Tower and went up for the view from the skydeck. It was overhyped in my opinion and nothing much to brag about..the long lines were tedious and the crowds overwhelming even for an indian.. almost reminiscent of a trip to Tirupati! ;-)

By the time we got out it was already too late for a restaurant dinner, so we stopped by a Subway and headed back to the hotel. The Shraton gave us evry nice rooms with verandahs and all in all proved to be a good stay. The next day we headed to the popular Indian destination Devon Street. After filling ourselves up with some yummy South Indian food at Mysore Woodlands we headed to the Arboretum and thereafter to Downtown again for the fireworks. The fireworks was disappointing, it lasted only 15 mins and we had waited nearly 2 hours for that in the fear of losing our prime watch spots!! Meanwhile we had also caught up with a bunch of my colleagues- Arijit, his wife Sampurna, Adhi and his wife Bhavani. So the 8 of us headed back to the hotel a tad disappoionted with the fanfare.So ended our first long driving trip in Minneapolis. The rest of July was pretty uneventful excepting some troubled times at work for me!

August arrived ans we were looking fwd to the 21st, our parents were coming in on that day. We picked them up at the airport, they had some luggage issues, our 'Mixie' and dad's luggage was coming in a day late. My father in law had left his wallet at the security check in O'Hare!! It took us a couple of days to get all these resolved and finally they were 'settling in'. AJ was really looking fwd to his mom's cooking and to be honest, so was I! We were simply bored of our own cooking!! Everyday we'd come back from office and tak them out somewhere, so we visited the Eagan Towncenter, library, community center etc. Summer fests were on everywhere so there was load to see and do. That apart we took them to the Minnesota Hindu Temple in Maplegrove and the Mall of America for an initial outing. They loved all of it! As expected they were thrilled with the lack of noise and pollution for the first week or so afterward things changed to 'boring' very soon. I did manage to work from home atleast once a week to help reduce the boredom. Their biggest struggle was the lack of a newspaper without which the day was kinda incomplete for them.

Over the weekend the Duluth Airshow was on, so we drove them there and spent a whole day watching the aircrafts on display. The finale with the Blue Angels was very awe inspiring and we could hear them gasp as the 2 angels just averted each other in what was otherwise surely a head on collision. <low whistle> Neat trick that! :-)

By end of August we took a day off and drove them to Chicago again, this time taking them to Hancock Observatory tower, Gaylord Restaurant and the Millenium Park. Mom in law loved shopping for corals at Devon Street, all in all they loved Chicago. It was more like the USA they'd seen on TV :-) We did a mistake by trying to take them by Greyhound bus, it proved to be a pathetic choice, so we rented a car on the way back and all was well once again.

September saw some cooler weather, we took a coouple of days off and flew our parents to Washington DC. After a delayed inward flight we had barely a couple of days to see DC, but parents loved the Capitol, Washington Monument and all the memorials. We saw the White House from a distance and had food at Bombay Club- a quaint Indian restaurant near downtown. The Museums were not of much interest to our parents, they felt it was more appropriate for kids and we agreed! :-)

From here we rented a camry and headed to Niagara Falls, it was one crazy drive there as we wanted to show them the night view of the Falls all lit up! We made it on time and our parents truly loved it. Next day a 'day view' of the falls ensured they'd seen the best of the Falls. The maid of the Mist trip was amazing excpeting the fact that I lost my fav silver bracelet while on the boat! :-( That apart this was proving to be a great trip with our folks!!

From here we headed to New York city where we spent a couple of days showing them the Empire State Building, Times Square, Statue of Liberty and Union Station. They loved New York too and felt it was closest to how things were back in India. We also met up with a couple of relatives who were living here and the trip ended on a high as we made a mad dash to reach DC airport only to see the flight take off literally in front of our eyes!! For our parents that was a traumatic incident!! We however saved the day by getting into another flight from a nearby airport. Back in minneapoli th enest day a gloom set upon all of us..... our parents trip was coming to an end.... almost before we realized it we were back in the airport bidding them farewell..both AJ and I had tears in our eyes by the time we were back home. Home felt soooooo empty that day!!

The end of their trip was also the end of another season in Minneapolis for us.... by this time we were very homesick and felt the need to be back in India. Meanwhile I was expecting my sister over in a weeks time and for now that was the silver lining in the cloud.

Four seasons in Minneapolis- Spring

Through May and some of June 2010 we had spring, when all of Minnesota’s snow began melting. Like an emperor undoing his cloak, Minneapolis started shedding her cloak of snow! Soon the vast white spaces we were used to had become sparkling waters and it dawned on us as to why our car’s license plate said ‘10000 lakes’!! Point to note here is that small water bodies- the kind that we had in our apartment backyard- didn’t qualify as a lake, to do so they needed to be at least 2 square miles!

One of my very first memories of Spring is a trip to Minnehaha Falls with our dear friends Dalbir and Barinder. The 4 of us wanted to head outdoors and hence took a trip to the Minnehaha Falls, the falls looked really nice as it still had some remnants of ice near its mouth. We walked all the way down to the falls. Some music concerts had already begun at the small restaurant there and soon we learnt that all of summer we’d have concerts and other sand up gigs here and in various other parts of the city! Wow, this sounded like fun! From here we also headed on a short drive to the Missisipi river near Prescott. We stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant near there and then headed to another State Park round the corner only to realize it was still closed! This route was a rail route and our first glimpse of an American ‘goods train’ was also interesting...the train extended almost a mile!! Barinder was a seasoned ‘American’ since she had spent quite a bit of her life in the USA, so she filled us in with many stories of here experiences here that all of a sudden fel familiar to us! All in all a good trip and finally we’d started heading out!! :D

We made another trip with our dear friend Uday- to Red Hills. We climbed the barn bluffs for a trek there and some wildlife watching. We shocked a red fox out of it's siesta and after a good photo session the dazed fox ran off! Then we spent all afternoon bird watching before heading back home. This was more wildlife than we'd seen in a year now! :-)

Spring was gone even before we knew it and both AJ and I started thinking of having our parents over for summer. It had been more than a year since we’d seen them and so began a nice session of planning, booking tickets, getting them visa interview ready et al. Finally the three of them- AJ’s mom, dad and my dad were all set to fly in on 21^st Aug 2010. That gave us less than a month to plan their visit and we were determined to show them more than just Minnesota!

Gosh, the wait for summer, with this impending family reunion, just seemed endless!!

Four Seasons in Minneapolis- Winter

When we landed in Minneapolis on 1st Jan 2010 we thought the flight had instead landed in Alaska! Even as we stepped out of the airport to get into the cab my legs started cramping!! My DNA was structured to live in tropical temperatures, Minneapolis was far far from that I'd think! We were totally unprepared for this cold! AJ's organization gave him a 2 day notice to relocate to the USA from India, so it was proportional that they gave us a one day notice to relocate to Minneapolis from Columbus, Ohio. Finding a mover and packer on New Year's Eve had been our worst nightmare but somehow we had found a good samaritan and now we were here in Minneapolis! We didn't know how long we'd be here and honestly at that point we didn't wish to be there for too long! It was late in the night and as the cab drove through 494 we saw what then seemed liked mountains of snow by the road! Brrrr.....

We reached Candlewood Suites next to portland avenue and as we checked in an eerie silence fell upon us.... we were wondering if we had done the right thing with AJ accepting this assignment. I am a hardcore South Indian with little exposure to winter. Even on my multitudes of vacation I had studiously avoided winters what with my perennial sinus problems I hardly needed any cold! I had just turned down a couple of employment offers, the year 2009 wasn't a great time to be looking for employment, in that environment I had cracked interviews and turned down jobs to come to this place...did I need a mental check up??? Thinking these thoughts, it was the longest climb up 2 floors to our sute (if you want to call it that, these IT companies sponsored really lousy pads for their employees in the name of cost cutting!)

With AJ's company things were never well planned! His visa had to be moved from one client to the other and since they hadn't done the needful AJ couldn't report to work here... after hurrying us into this Snow mine it was some very frustrating days for us!! Holed up in the room there was little to do, outdoors was not really 'walkable' and indoors with the heater on was claustrophobic. Our car was yet to arrive from Columbus and those first few days truly felt like a prison life. Once the car arrived he headed off to work leaving me alone in the hotel. I was also interviewing with his organization for th eposition of a Retail Consultant. All my life I had religiously avoided IT and now it was time to jump in the bandwagon... :(  For me, ever since I had watched 'FRIENDS' and seen that Rachel Green was a 'Buyer' I had wanted to be the same!! At first my dad was simply amused with this, slowly he realized it was truly what I wanted to do! So I had done my Masters in Retail Merchandizing and made a pretty successful career for myself as  buyer in India. Even in Columbus, I had gotten jobs in the same field.. somehow in Minneapolis it was time to change. So here I was at the end of Jan 2010-  a retail consultant in an IT firm!!

In Feb 2010 we moved into an apartment in Eagan, the apartment was closer to AJ's office than mine. We had only one car between the 2 of us and got into a rhythm where he'd drop me to work in the morning and pick me up in the evening. Ofcourse, life was a far cry from the independent ones we had in Bangalore! I had my own car there and I'd had one ever since I was doing my Masters, so life without a vehicle of my own made me feel soooooo handicapped! But so it was, we didn't want to spend more monies on a car and neither did my apartment give us 2 covered parking lots! Clearing the snow off your car in this city was a daunting task!!

So our first experience of Winter began, we are outdoorsy people. Hence after 4 weeks of heading out only for grocery shopping it was time we did something else. We tried braving the cold and headed to a nearby state park only to realize why no one else was trying such antics!! At one point I dropped the glass I was holding in my hand since it was freezing and I didn't even realize I'd dropped it!! Slowly MOA was the only place we could hang out in..but then being cash strapped and mall trapped is a very bad combination..almost every visit was depressing! :-( In March the snow started clearing a bit and just as we thought we'd seen the last of the snow it would snow again!! This was the dirtiest month yet I think, the snow was dirty and slushy!! At times we had \ice storms' where in we'd have some sleet rains and then all the roads will be covered with ice!! Gosh the curvy exits of 494 were the most dangerous during these ice storms. We had witnessed several incidents where the car ahead of us would just slide off the road!! Happened to a cop's car once.. and we had a wry smile as we thought about how he'd be dialling 911 now!! :-)

April was relatively better, by now we could brave the cold and we visited Highland Park near Richfield. It had an Osprey's nest and many herons. The events listed a program where they'd free some falcons that were injured and had now fully recovered. So the next weekend we spent in the same park watching some lovely red tailed hawks and kestrels that were set free. The park staff also put out some Bald Eagles and other falcons that were currently in their captivity for a display. It was heart warming to see kids being taught about these creatures and we ourselves learnt a lot at that program!

One of those weekends we also headed to the Como zoo for a pleasant tour. Surprisingly they had no entry fee and we could donate as much as we pleased at the entrance to the conservatory!! We loved this zoo, the cats seemed quite happy with each of them enjoying a lot of space for themselves!

By now winter was almost at an end and we had survived our first season here at Minneapolis!! :-)

Going back to the USA

Once back from my vacation even as  I tried settling in to work, it was almost impossible not to miss AJ! We had done long distance before, but with the USA it was getting to be increasingly difficult as we hardly even got to talk to each other regularly... after all how much can email replace somebody's presence?? So a month into trying to be brave we both decided this was not working for us, now the dilemma was should he come back or should I move there? Thinking purely from a career perspective we decided it would do me good to have some international experience on my CV. My managers at my small retail organization were fantastic, they completely understood and had me relieved and packed up in another month or so. So here I was again, looking at another 27 hour journey to USA. We didn't know how long this stay was going to be and we didn't even know what was in store for us, all the same, we sure were excited! I was a bit scared, after all I had somehow managed to live in my beloved city Bangalore for all these years only stepping out on vacations! Bbye Bangalore...hope I come back here soon!

This time I didn't allow AJ to book me on his fav airlines, instead went by Continental. The flight was sane and quick. I reached Columbus with minimum fuss. All said and done I am very career minded, hence the very next day after I reached there I rushed in my work permit applications and all else that I would need to get started again! Things were not smooth, the amount of paper work that needs to get done in the USA was humungous I realized! Also learnt how difficul things were when you were not a citizen in a country! Every small thing that I took for granted in India was difficult to come by! I was denied a mobile phone, a credit card, an insurance, a car loan....the list was endless. The whole 'credit history' mechanism was frustrating to say the least. Here I'd be staring at the retailer with cash in my hand and he'd be refusing to sell to me since I didn't have a credit history!! I almost felt like Obelix in the comic series 'Asterix' wanting to scream these crazy A*******s!! :-)) In India, both AJ and I were privileged customers in banks and retail outlets where most services were offered to us at our beck and call! So to come here and start all over again was clearly getting on our nerves!!

Meanwhile we made a fall trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. SOme trpedation around the trip since it was our first outing with this gang of friends. We were some 4 couples, one of whom had a 3 month old baby with them!! However much against our expectations we had a wonderful time. Madhu & Ashok were travelling with us and they made for awesome company. We had a fun drive and then we also got along famously well with Surabhi and Mukhesh with whom in the coming days we built a special bond. Life became mre fun in Columbus after this trip! :-)

Christmas was a new fun experience, all of Columbus was lit up. We loved going to Easton Mall in this time.the whole place was lit up and the kids almost always had a Santa and reindeer to meet!

Without a job on hand I had nothing much to do except cook, read books and shop! Without my second income the shopping was slowly but surely dwindling...not at all a nice feeling for an ex-buyer!! Still bit my lip and chugged along waiting for my work permit, the D-day was 26th December 2009!! When I received the mail I just couldn't believe my eyes!!! My authorization was given as early as 26th Sept but the card never reached me!! Twice it went back to US immigration and I was just about giving up on ever having a work permit!!

Finally I was all set to start work, having already applied with a couple of retailers there I turned around both into job offers!! :D But then how can things be that easy?? In true bollywood 'ishtyle' we had another twist to the tale! The project AJ was working on was over and they wanted us to relocate to Minneapolis....what place was that again?? Neither of us had even heard of this city and this company wanted us to live there???!! Gosh the irony of getting a job in 2009 with the recession and everything and then being unable to accept it was overwhelming!! But we didn't really have a choice, so relocation it was and goodbye Columbus!! On New Years we were busy travelling to Minneapolis, MN. Curious about the new place and anxious about having to search for another job is how I can best describe that transition...for now it was the end of another chapter in US of A!

Another Indian in the US of A- First Visit

The reason is very obvious and oh so common place! I never thought I would travel to this part of the world in my life, I hate long flights, a list of places to travel that did NOT feature USA- so that was the main reason this was to never happen... but guess what? Life had other plans! My husband is sent on a project to the US of A and the economy is so precarious we wouldn't dare refuse and sit without a project ('on the bench' as they call it in the IT industry), the worst bit being it is a long project one that extends into 2010 even! We brave our hearts and say we will manage living w/o seeing each other for a year, and yes, very predictably end of 3 months and I am missing him so much I decide to brave this flight....For some vague reason AJ(my husband) likes the BA a lot! So obviously when he books my tickets to Columbus, Ohio he books it on BA, which means I fly from Bangalore to London (thats 10.5 hours), stopover at London for 2 hours, then fly London to Chicago ( Another 9 hours), stop over here for 2 hours with a very hurried luggage transfer(!!) and then fly Chicago to Columbus for an hour by which time I really thought my legs had lost all motoring capabilities!! (Phew!) So it was no surprise that when I came out to meet AJ I was acting like a zombie!
I was busy wondering how do so many Indians commute all the way here so many times a year??! I mean truly what motivates them to sometimes even relocate so far away from home? For somebody who has spent her life settled in and around a ten kilometers radius in Bangalore, these were puzzling thoughts indeed!

For me, the US has been so different from being back home. I have actually grown up with so many girls who have this dream of coming here and settling down. This is the land of those dreams....girls who marry for the sake of coming here, who study engineering so they can come and settle here as they pursue their higher studies... ofcourse there are wierder stories that I wouldn't want to share on this forum, but any Indian who reads this will know what I am refering to! But yes, the gist was I was coming to the(pls read that in bold) US. 30 hours of flight time flew without me picking up the 2 P.G Wodehouse's I had brought along as I sat thinking these thoughts!

Ofcourse when I landed all I could think of was finding my husband in the small crowd....staying away for three months had made me miss him terribly! And when I did his first words were, "so how is the US of A?" Ofcourse, I didn't have an answer for him then!

After 3 full weeks of living in Columbus, Ohio, I did have somewhat of an answer to this question. Contrary to my belief that all of US had only skyscrapers and congested construction, Columbus was a very quaint and nice place to live in.  Only downtown was a bit congested. (No wonder AJ was enjoying himself so much here!) And keeping with my perception of the US the roads were AMAZING!! What an asset to have! And so well planned! For me the headlines of this experience has been the roads- I mean if this were a movie the hero would be the roads!Everybody seemed to own a car to commute around, so one doesn't see much of public transport, but then with roads like these even a dud can drive! I loved the lane system and the planning for a seperate lane for people who want to digress from the given road! Now why can't the many Indians who have lived here come back to our country and help make our roads a little better I wonder...? Maybe we should send the Minister for transport/infrastructure on a study trip here.....?

Our community(Christopher Wren) is awesome, look alike buildings, mostly made of wood (which is something that we are not used to in India), spacious rooms and quaint balconies with nice views of the lawns outside which has a thriving animal life- squirrels and birds- make for a nice place to live in. These are certainly stark opposites of what we have in India- in our case the hero of the story (as I call it) is the population- so ther's a crunch for space, a crunch for opportunities (if not you,!) and a crunch for life. It is this crunch that gives us our strong 'survival' instincts, we grow up in a competitive world and live our life that way, always trying to outdo the millions around..... I don't see any of that here and I shall explain what I mean by that in just a second..

The authorities that are planning and maintaining this country must truly respect and appreciate human life because they put so much effort into making it easier for everyone unlike back home where we take it for granted. We were amazed to see some of the following: signs: as we drove near a school that reduced speed limits to 20 miles an hour during school hours; red cones so vistor's wouldn't step on a wire connecting camera's to a generator at the zoo; reserved parking lots for handicapped people almost everywhere-malls, zoos,communities; reflector road signs 1/2 mile ahead warning of any road repairs that may be driving into .... I know for Americans who are reading this these may all be very commonplace! But back home, who has the time to do all this?? I mean here the GPS has all roads and their respective speed limits mapped onto it, in India we will have newer gullies by the minute even before you finish keying in something on the GPS I am sure! People take such good care of their lives and the authorities are doing a great job helping them do the same. That is something I am taking home from here for sure as I leave this country now, the lesson to care for your life and for those around you!

I reached here on a Saturday and predictably the many Indians who are working with AJ all live in the same community (thats another thing that freaked me out, how can you work with the same people and stay with them as well?) There were some of them AJ wanted me to meet and we headed off on Sunday itself to tell them a "hi", a very sweet couple really who take real good care of AJ when he's here alone! Surprisingly I had no jet lag, had slept well the prev nite and was all set to go to the neighboring malls  Don't blame me, being 5 ft 8" is not a great feeling back in India esp when you shop for clothes! So for me the US was a heavenly find! A whole new wardrobe that I cant wait to wear when I get back to work was what I was thinking!

Thru the week we went to many nice places around here- The Academy Park, The Easton Mall, Kohl's, Kroger's Market and Giant Eagles. I also did a lot of cooking for AJ- he's a foodie! And we Indian's are famous for the number of spices we have discovered and added to our pallettes, so if you have just salt, sugar, chilly and pepper we will just not survive! I spent nearly 3 weeks putting together a hot steaming lunch for AJ since he'd been coming home everyday. I never cooked when in India, we had a cook and she does all that is needed for us and my dad! So this was a change for me!

 In fact, it was so different to find that when I was cooking if I stopped humming or if I switched off the TV g then there was an absolute dead silence!! Our house was right next to a state highway, people just did not honk here & the engines were remarkably silent too! Or when I was crossing the road, vehicles stopped to make way for me and when I entered a store someone always greeted me with a “Hi! How are you today!” The first few times I didn’t know what to say in reply, we are so not used to that. Then again, in India the employees of the store go all out to service you, in the US, we had to do everything ourselves: you collect your coffee, you clear the table afterwards, you fill gas yourself, you iron your own clothes, vacuum your house yourselves, wash your own clothes....... the fundamental difference of us having abundant human resources to do everything and here people being technology driven is quite clear! And the other part that was so different was the abundance of space, it was a luxury really! Roads were so wide, the parks were so huge, the malls were ENORMOUS, buildings were large.... it was so clear that this was a country built from scratch... and I guess somewhere these are the conveniences that lured all my friends here. So I decide to get in touch with some of them that are settled here and guess what?? I find that they all miss home so badly! But I guess all these conveniences soon become a habit that’s hard to rid of! Contrarily geeks like me just love everything about their country- the smells, tastes, sounds, feel and sights of India for me are like being on drugs! Keeps me high all the time!

I remember having this interesting conversation with an American once- if you compared the number of experiences an Indian would have had, say in a span of 30 years to that of an American’s, it will probably explain why we look a lot older! After all what is age but a number?! True age is measured by the number of experiences you have in the said time period and not by a metric measurement! In just getting from home to office I navigate thru 30 kms (less than 15 miles) that takes me more than 2 hours of driving thru choc-a-bloc traffic, pleading beggars and pedlar’s, several potholes and reams of pollution that’s swigging in and out of my lungs! After this visit I realise these are not easy experiences to have here!

So with the first week making me conscious of this dramatically new life, we decide to take a small vacation to the Niagara! Having come all this way there was no way I was going back without seeing the Niagara- we are total nature buffs, in fact AJ & I met on trek 4 years ago, before falling in love and getting married! So we are always on the lookout for natural wonders to visit together and Niagara didn’t disappoint. As I mentioned before, what was just equally amazing was the number of Indians we found there! So many Indians all taking the conducted tour of the Niagara, I think we Indians are very risk averse! We never go out there and explore on our own, we always like a little help in finding our way in any new place and I am sure the same is true of our neighbours as well coz I see a lot of them in these conducted tours. Anyways, AJ & I explored the place on our own and we really loved it. The whirlpool was a bit of a disappointment, that apart we liked the falls and the ride on the maid of the mist a lot! A pity we didn’t have a Canadian Visa so we could get some rocking photos of the Horse Shoe Falls, we got to see it up close from the boat but our camera was not waterproof And regarding the many Indians here in the US of A, I guess that is the gist of America really isn’t it? It’s a country that started as a ‘free for all’ come and settle here kind of attitude. So if India constitutes for one sixth of the world population it’s gonna constitute similar proportions of a free country isn’t it? As AJ gave me this logic I thought it did kind of make sense. I mean if the US started closing doors to anybody it really wouldn’t be the US anymore would it? It is a country for people from anywhere to come and settle and get that equal opportunity, after all, men are created equal as they said then at the time of creation of the USA! After this little discussion I stopped thinking about the number of Indians here and just continued having a good time here and sometimes when we saw Indians I also noticed how American they were in their lifestyle! So that’s that then....

Driving to and back from Niagara ensured we were more comfortable with driving in US now, so there was no doubt that next weekend we would getaway to another place. We started looking up places to visit from Columbus (many suggested we see Columbus properly- the Capitol, Museum etc, but then we are nature buffs, so these didn’t appeal to us), AJ’s colleague suggested Put-in Bay. We looked it up on the net, it sounded exactly like what we were looking for. The trip turned out to be a photography expedition for us- birds, flowers, butterflies and snakes all made for a heady combination for us photography lovers! Top that with a sudden storm and a drive back in some heavy downpour with hardly any visibility and you have our trip report in a nut shell!

We spent Saturday at the Columbus Zoo, I love animals and like a kid get very excited going to zoos, so AJ promptly takes me to one whenever he can. I thoroughly enjoyed our time at the zoo, it is amazing to see them put so much effort to make it interactive for the kids! I stood in the line to get my turn to touch the children’s python, I was the only adult to do it and before you ask, nope I don’t feel embarrassed at all! : D I am seriously thinking of getting back and dropping some suggestions at our zoo in Bangalore! From here we went to the quaint German Village, it felt so European! Like a little bit of Europe right here in the US. Three hours in the book store Loft made us feel very good and a stroll into Starbucks to be told the vending machine was being cleaned. A wait of 15 mins for our coffee... hmmm...we were getting impatient! (What was happening to us? In India we waited for coffee for fifteen minutes ALWAYS!!) The guy served us our decaf and promptly refused to charge us for it as he had made us wait!! Another new experience for us I guess....!

I couldn't believe 3 weeks had flown by so quickly! I wished I had more time there, but then taking even so much time off from work had itself been a miracle. Still kept my fingers crossed and hoped I could visit him again in 3 months time. It had been a nice and very different trip for me, many new things to see and learn from while being very far away from home! Little did I know what was in store for me then....!