There's not much to "report" these days, as I'm not doing much. We finally got our marriage registration process started. The Monday of the last week in May, we were able to give our 30-day notice to the Deputy Commissioner Office in Mohali (the city where we live). We had to put legal notice ads in 2 newspapers--one in India, and one in Minneapolis. The DC office provided the verbiage for the notice. My Lord, is it wordy! Plus we had to add a mug shot of each of us (no nice wedding photo, but mug shots!). The cost for each ad was about $300, which means we spent $600 total for those stupid ads. Boy, I really wish I'd known about this before coming to India. I'd have made my husband come to the U.S. to get married. Sure, it may have taken a year to obtain his fiancee visa, but we could have married and had our marriage registered within a month! His one-way ticket wouldn't have cost much more than the $600 for those two stupid ads, and he'd have met my parents by now, too. Grrrrr! One more reason I dislike living here--the horrid bureaucracy!

Like I said, I haven't been up to a whole lot. Been getting bored, really. I've been researching Alpacas and the Alpaca business a great deal. There are a couple of packages due to arrive this coming week with toys for Sharan, and in one of them is a booklet from the Alpaca Owners & Breeders Association. I even saw one on TV on Animal Planet here in India. It was in a commercial that appeared to have been shot in South America, but it was hard to tell. They are such cute creatures!

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of an Alpaca, so I can't post one from my Flickr page, but here's a photo of a couple of llamas from the Renaissance Festival. Alpacas look much like a small llama:



These days, obtaining an alpaca farm sounds like a great way to re-settle in the U.S., especially while sitting on my rear end and clicking on web pages. LOL Running a farm might be a bit different. And Alpacas sell at prohibitive costs. A good-quality, bred, mature female ranges from $10,000 - $20,000, or more if you want a top show-winning animal. I've read that if you search a lot. you can find nice to good-quality females on sale for less than $10,000 (I've noticed a number of farms dispersing or partially-dispersing their herds due to health problems. Most new Alpaca farmers start their businesses soon before or after retirement, which might explain the high attrition rate.) But even a $5,000 female is costly, even when you can write it off on your tax returns. You still have to pay for the animal and related costs up-front before obtaining the tax credits.

Of course, that means we probably will never be able to afford such a venture. But it's a good way to pass the time.

What got me interested in Alpacas? Last Fall I bought a neat pair of Alpaca longies (knit woolen pants) for Sharan. Alpaca is one of the softest wools I've ever felt! I envied her when she wore them. LOL I have a couple of skiens of Alpaca yarn on their way to me (I'm learning how to knit), and a pattern for a stuffed bunny, along with the necessary yarn (alpaca/merino wool blend), and some other yarn. India does have yarn--a lot of it--but they don't tell you the "weight" of the yarn on the packaging, if there is packaging, nor the needed needle size, and pure wool yarn is hard to find. It's almost all blended with acrylic, and the little pure woolen yarn I found was scratchy. It was not something I would want to use, or have Sharan use. For the high quantity of yarn available here, there really is very little variety. Not like in the U.S., where you can find yarn made from just about any fabric (natural or man-made) imaginable. And like I said, for a beginner like me, it's difficult to buy because they don't list the weight.

In case you're wondering just how much time I've been spending on this Alpaca thing, well, I already have a list of breeders and their information on an Excel spreadsheet. It was too overwhelming to keep track of which breeders offered what services, and what prices their animals ranged at. That's a lot of effort for something we likely will never have the money for!

And by the way, the title of this post is related to Alpacas. How? Well, the main sound they make is a hum. Yes, folks, they hum! Isn't that cool?

I thought so, anyway.

This photo was taken at the Cafe Coffee Day at the Fortis Hospital across the street from us. That means I don't have to do without my yummy coffee foo-foo drinks! Sharan also enjoys going there, as you can see.

There are some of my favorite recent photos of Sharan:

Stop the noise!



Bored in her high chair.



Sticky coin!

I must say that sometimes children can make you laugh. My daughter, who is now 15 months old, last night was eating a sweet biscuit (cookie) while sitting on my in-law's bed. To tease her, my father-in-law then held out his hand and said in Punjabi, "Give me the biscuit." My daughter then took her free hand, grabbed one of her dirty feet, and placed it in my father-in-law's hand! I was rolling on the bed laughing! I so wish I'd got that one on video.

After almost a month-long illness with Typhoid Fever, I'm finally feeling better! I have to say, it's easy to take for granted how it is to be healthy, until you lose your health for a time. My fever lasted over 3 weeks, and during the final week, I had to take medications by injection twice a day. The shots were quite painful, so a local lab guy came to our house twice a day to give it to me by I.V. drip instead, which (if it went well) was less painful. I wish I knew from where I got Typhoid Fever, but I think it's common enough in India that no-one ever bothers to trace the cases.

I'm still on oral medications for an additional week, then a week after that I will have some tests done to see if I'm still carrying the typhoid bacteria (in other words, to see if I'm a healthy carrier of the disease). It they turn out positive, then I will need to have surgery immediately to remove my gallbladder (as the gallbladder is the main organ where the bacteria resides). An ultrasound done during my illness showed that I also have a large gallstone, so one would think that gallbladder removal in that case wouldn't be a big deal. But it would be nice to have a choice between removal and laser treatment just to get rid of the gallstone, without taking out the gallbladder. Although you can live without a gallbladder, it doesn't mean there are no side effects to have it removed, as I've discovered in my research. It's fairly common to have digestive difficulties due to either not enough, or too much production of bile (the gallbladder helps to regulate the amount of bile in your digestive tract). How lovely! I'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Here's a photo of me with Sharan and my in-laws walking along Mall Road in Shimla. I'm wearing a Kullu-style shawl made out of Yak fur. It's a bit scratchy, but hey, it's YAK fur! (-:

Sharan loves dancing to music, especially Bhangra music! Here are two short videos of her dancing to music. The video was taken by my husband. He still forgets that you can't shoot video sideways with the camera. Don't worry, though it's only the beginning of the first video that's sideways. I still posted it because the rest of the video is so cute. You can see an obvious "what-happened-to-the-music" look on her face when the song ends, then she perks up again when the music re-starts.

While at our hotel's Christmas Party on Christmas Eve, I saw the worst-looking Santa of my life. He was hired by the hotel to be the party Santa. It was bad enough that he was skinny and plainly had something puffing up his tummy, but worse was the Santa mask he wore. It made Santa's face look pinched and downright scary. It would have been much better if he'd just worn a fake beard.

Below is a photo of "Santa" boogying it to Bhangra music, which for me also made the party not-so-fun. I wanted to hear traditional Christmas music, not Bhangra and disco music. Ugh! And there was something icky about Santa boogying with the women. I'm sure others have seen worse-looking Santas, but he's the worst so far in my lifetime.

A photo of the outside of Christ Church, and one of the stained glass windows from the inside. Christ Church is the second oldest church in North India, and is a landmark in Shimla. You can see it all the way from the opposite ridge when traveling in the train. Christ Church was built in 1846 - 1857.

Posing in front of Christ Church, the second oldest church in North India.



Sharan and I at the roundabout at Scandal Point.



A family photo in Shimla. The sun was very bright.

A photo of Sharan astride the horse.

Here is a video of Sharan's second horseback ride, which she got on Christmas Day while we were visiting Shimla. Boy, did she love horseback riding! She yelled and "talked" the whole time, waving her hands in the air. She takes after her mom. (-:

After the fiasco with Indian cloth diapers, I've gathered a stash of American-made cloth diapers. Most of mine are made by work-at-home moms, or at least the businesses are owned by WAHMS. Below are some photos:

This one was home-dyed and sewn by a WAHM. What cute colors! It's made out of mostly soft bamboo velour.


The next 3 are pocket diapers embroidered by a WAHM. The first two were also made and sewn by a WAHM, and the last one (with the pawprint) is a "branded" pocket diaper.

This one is a koi fish:


A phoenix:


A pawprint with a howling wolf:

A couple of weeks ago for the first time, I saw a praying mantis face-to-face. It was sitting right on the screen of our balcony door. How cool! I didn't even know they existed in this area.

The moment I pointed it out to my father-in-law, he just nonchalantly flicked it out the door. I guess he's never heard how remarkable they are.

A recent photo. Here she's just being silly.