Hot, Hotter, Hottest!

Well, here we are back in India - back in the hot, hot month of May. I can't remember who said this about Chennai, but when asked what the seasons were here, their reply was "There are three seasons in Chennai: hot, hotter and hottest", which unfortunately is true. The month of May just happens to be the hottest and as you can imagine, coming back from England to this 38 degree heat is quite a shock to the system!

We had fun at Heathrow Airport on Saturday morning as they are SO strict with luggage and hand luggage now that I had to repack all of our hand luggage so we could check one of the bags in. On the BA website, it says that you can have a laptop as well as one piece of hand luggage, however when we got there we were told that this information was wrong and we could only have one piece of hand luggage each. So we had to pack one of the holdalls between our two laptop cases and pack the other holdall to go through into the hold. For those of you who have had this problem before - kneeling on an airport floor trying to make things fit and pulling out items of clothes, books and whatever else may be in your case is not an easy task, especially when there are so many nosy people around watching what you are doing! However, it happened to quite a few people while we were there and we saw lots of people packing and re-packing cases.

We arrived back on Sunday morning at 7 a.m and got a taxi from the airport to our house. Penri had managed to sleep quite a bit on the plane, but for some reason, I wasn't able to. So, by the time we got back to Chennai I was exhausted. We got into the house and put all the cases in the corner of the bedroom and went to sleep. The house was immaculate - cleaner than it has ever been before. This is because while we were away, our maid and her family stayed in the house to look after Pepsi and Socks. I think they must have cleaned the whole time they were there as everything was absolutely spotless. The cats also seemed very well and happy. I later found out that both the cats had made good friends with the family and Pepsi was sleeping in the maid's daughter's bed with her!!

At about 10 a.m. we were woken up by the air conditioner stopping. Guess what ... on our first day back in India we had a power cut! I did my best to try and sleep through it (as it is the easiest way to deal with power cuts otherwise you just dwell on the fact that it is so hot, and it becomes unbearable). The power came on a while later and we slept through most of the day. I finally got up at about 6 p.m. and unpacked all the cases and began the mountainous pile of washing. I also made a few phone calls to catch up with people and to check all had gone well with drama and things while I was away. We then ordered a pizza home delivery, ate and went back to sleep.

Yesterday (Monday), I got up at lunch time and continued with the washing. We decided to give our maid the day off as she worked so hard while we were away. In the afternoon, I went out to the supermarket. I don't really think it can be called a 'super' market when compared with Asda and Tesco. I think I had forgotten how different it is here. Just to give you an example (or two). I decided I was going to make a salad for dinner, so I began picking out tomatoes and onions. I picked up a cucumber to put in my basket and as I brought my hand back from the shelf, I saw a cockroach on the cucumber ... it made me jump (and squeal) and I threw the cucumber back onto the shelf. I finally found a couple of cucumbers (after looking through very carefully) and then I picked up a lettuce; well, would you believe - the same thing happened. There was a baby cockroach sitting on the top of it!!! I finally got everything I needed and went to the till. It took nearly 20 minutes to put through a bag of tomatoes, onions, cucumber, lettuce, carrots, mangos and a loaf of bread!! And, it took 3 girls to serve me! Oh, how I miss Tesco!

After coming home and soaking all the salad in water with a sterilising tablet (as is so important in India), I spent the afternoon with a friend and her two children. Penri came home at 11.30 p.m. and had dinner and we went to sleep at about 2 a.m.

It's amazing how when you go on holiday (even though Penri was working, he was out of his normal routine), you come home and it takes your body so long to adjust back into your normal routine. I am still absolutely shattered today and I'm sure it will take at least a week before I feel like myself again! Anyway, in keeping with my word, I am updating my blog frequently from now on so make sure you keep reading and I'll keep you updated on life in Chennai.