How are we holding up?

Okay, as you can see.

Nothing much has changed in the last two weeks. It's just the opposite coast, a new home, strange weather, a different culture, and an altered lifestyle. That's all :-)

The beach is half a mile away. It's a nice sandy colorful beach with surfers, swimmers, and kites. We've done several things on the beach including building sand structures, getting wet, flying a kite, exploring the pier, walking on the quaint old main street eating ice cream and watching people. Summy, ofcourse, loves the beach.

Everything we do here has been turning into an adventure. For example, yesterday I chose to drive by the coastline instead of driving straight back home from Torrance. The result was that we ended up driving by cliffs on the edge of the ocean. We even found a park on the edge of a cliff, which included breathtaking views of the ocean, a playground for kids, and a small icecream cart pushed along by a man who spoke nothing but Spanish (at which I blanked out on any Spanish I know). Summy looked from the top of the cliffs at the water for a long long time.

Then further on the way back home, guided by a car GPS (without which we would have been completely lost), we passed right through Long Beach harbor without expecting it. I mean on a bridge right through the middle of the harbor, cranes, ships, ocean, and all. Out of blue, into the blue, you could say.

And ofcourse, I don't have pictures of any of this, because I thought it was going to be a long boring drive on the freeway, and didn't bring the camera along.

It's like a new country. When we got here, I didn't even know how to operate the gas pumps, or use my credit cards. Now I'm much better. Kiran, he has the way to the office and back down pat. He has been working non-stop since we got here and hasn't had mucht time to look around.

And Summy? She has adjusted well now, to the time change, to the weather, to being with me all the time in a (relatively) small space, to the idea of going to a new school even.

In the beginning, she did have trouble adjusting to the idea of moving away from "home". She constantly thought of her friends back in Massachusetts. Once, two days into the move, I was driving and she was talking to me. I could hear something that sounded like babble ("boodle boodle"), and kept up a steady "uh huh, uh huh" while concentrating on the traffic. She got my attention only when she wistfully said, "Andrea (her best friend at school) always laughs when I say that."

Now I realize that she has passed the stage where she can be entertained by a grown-up all day. This is why she is always craving the company of kids her age. I don't play her games, I don't get her jokes. Well, some of the time I do both. But other times, I have more "grown-up", "important" stuff to do.

But soon, she'll have a new school (pre-K), and new friends, and I can already see her looking forward to it, even though she is being a little uncharacteristically shy when we go around looking at new schools.

What can we complain of? I am getting time off from work, precious time to spend with Summy, lovely weather all the time, beaches, great restaurants (Indian and otherwise). There is always something to complain of! Lately, I've been complaining to Kiran that my days are too busy :-)