it's been so long!

I can't believe it's been a whole week since I last posted! Not too much has happened to report, though plans for the next week are becoming very exciting.

This past weekend Mrs Simha and I went to a biological park on the southern side of Bangalore where we rode around in a caged bus and got to see lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Seriously though, we drove the bus through these nature preserves and saw the most beautiful animals. Interestingly, the bears seemed smaller than I expected (and had such long hair!) and the lions and tigers seemed much bigger than expected. The tigers were as tall as the windows on the bus and actually came up and walked right alongside the bus. We had to stop many times to wait for the animals to move out of the path, but they were so beautiful I was just content to stare at them. The paws on the tigers were enormous and I felt like if the took a swipe at me I'd be knocked out flat. Thank goodness for all the cages around the windows on the bus!

That afternoon an amazing thing happened in Bangalore... I found chocolate and milk hazelnut cream!!! If anyone remembers the mass of jars I brought home from Croatia, this is the same stuff! Half the jar is chocolate hazelnut spread and the other half is just a sweet milky hazelnut spread. Divine. I've been spreading it on toast in the mornings and eating straight out of the jar with a spoon in the evenings. It's addictive stuff and I find myself thinking of it during the day at work and wishing I had my trusty jar and spoon with me.

Though not quite as exciting as the hazelnut cream, I also found cheese in this same shop!! Cheese, at the grocery near my house, is limited to small packs of four slics of processed american cheese. Pretty foul stuff. At this gourmet market I had trouble containing my excitement at seeing not just cheddar, but goudah and feta too!! I must have had a funny look on my face or been making strange noises because a nice Australian man in front of me at the counter asked if I was having trouble converting everything to the metric scale for ordering. I explained that it'd been more than a month since I'd seen glorious cheese was just going nuts with excitement. He'd been working in B'lore for a year now and had some good advice on other shops to visit for goodies from home.

Now, to whet your appetite for the next blog post coming soon, on Friday I fly up north to visit the Taj Mahal for the weekend. After that, I continue further up north to the Himalayas for cool weather and clean air. I can't wait!
love, julie