Thursday, July 23, 2009

Prize Day 7/22/09

Cant believe its Prize Day again. It was a year ago that Priya gave the welcome speech at the 2008 Prize Day. Ashwin and Priya had a wonderful year (and six weeks) at Jessie Moses in many ways.   The icing on the cake was Ashwin being awarded first prize in third standard in Scripture. Here are some pictures from the prize day  Fitting the occasion was a celebratory happy meal at the Annanagar Mcdonald's which is still the hip place to go in Chennai.

School's Out

Here are some pictures of Ashwin and Priya's last day at Jessie Moses school. As some of you may know, Ashwin and Priya came to Chennai in June 2008 and immediately started school without any summer break. To help make up for that, this year they will have two summer breaks. The school year here ended in mid April, followed by a seven week summer break. Ashwin and Priya resumed school, in fourth and first standard, on June 3rd (since all the friends were going back and there wouldn't be much to do at home). We thought they deserved a little break before they started school in Boston, so we took them out of school on July 17th. On the last day of school Ashwin and Priya wore colored clothes and distributed candy to their friends and teachers. We are proud of how well Priya and Ashwin did in a school (both academically and socially) which was very different from what they were used to. Great job guys!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Mango Madness

This blog post is dedicated to Leann's mom, Naren. Naren LOVES mangoes, but was sad to have missed the season by coming to visit in January. Well Mom, mango season is now in full swing. Everywhere you look someone seems to have set up a cart on the street selling them, and the shops are full of all different types... Rumani, Alphonso, Banganapalli, Malgoa, Neelam, Kilimuku and more. We're eating them up with great abandon - see above!

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

July 4th, 2009

What can one do to celebrate American Independence Day in India? Well, go to the opening of the latest Mc Donald's in Chennai, right around the corner from us. It was a grand affair - and it looked like all of Chennai was there! We went with Priya's friends to celebrate. The local paper reported that during the opening "Mrs Aishwarya Danush ( a Tamil actress) gave a traditional welcome to Mr Ronald Mc Donald , Chief Happiness Officer of McDonald's. " Sadly we missed that part.
Ashwin would have liked this venue to be open a year ago and Leann would likethe Paneer Tikka Salsa wrap to be included in the menu of US restuarants. Some of the other Indian menu additions were McAloo Tikka, Chicken Maharaja Mac, McVeggie burger and the Veggie Pizza Puff. Needless to say, a good time was had by all.