Kids,
You really took to this move like champs. Everything was new, but for your age that was just another day no matter where you were. The most memorable example of this happened not 5 minutes from the airport when we landed in Mumbai back in August.
With the count of people and luggage we needed two vans to get us from the airport to our apartment. Mom and Madelyn in one car and the boys and me in the other. Shortly after leaving the airport we were in the middle of the Mumbai cityscape at 3am.
Compared to the US there were more people out and about, but not enough that you couldn’t see the shops and buildings. Out of nowhere Christopher gets excited and says ‘Daddy, look at all those motorcycles’. Of all the things that people think when landing in Mumbai for the first time our 3 year old noticed the motorcycles. It was then that I knew you three would embrace this adventure.
We tried to keep things as normal as possible for the first few months just in case. We thought when we left the US, packing boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese, Goldfish, and Oreos would help with this. What we didn’t account for is the shipment taking so long. They were great when they arrived, but until then we had to find something else.
Lucky for us Powai is a very soft landing for expats and had plenty of places to go and get a taste of home. Within a block or two we had Starbucks, Chili’s, and Apple Store, Domino’s, and PizzaExpress just to name a few.
Before our relocation I had many conversation with people in the office about the adventure. Honestly it really brought out parts of people that i hadn’t seen in my day to day interactions. I mean, within a minutes i could tell how adventurous they were. Some warned of the security risks while others got very excited for us.
During those conversations someone mentioned that they had a friend who worked in Mumbai for two years and relocated their family much like what we were going to do. One thing that they did to keep things normal was have a movie night with nachos every week. Now he did mention that his friend remembered weeks when the local grocery store didn’t have cheese, which really makes it hard to make nacho’s but the story got me thinking. What’s going to be our ‘thing’ that we remember from this trip.
In the 5 months we’ve been here I’d say that our thing has changed from breakfast at The Ren, to Starbucks, to Popcorn & Movie Nights. Although we’re not very happy with it one of the things we did was head to Krispy Kreme every Sunday. We knew that couldn’t last to long…
We’ve got a long way to go, however at this point I’ve moved on from determining our ‘thing’ and instead focusing on getting as many experiences together as possible. Below are a compilation of awesome memories we’ve had in only 5 months…can’t wait to see what the future holds.
Love,
Mom & Dad
The Hotovec's 