January

While friends and family spent a good deal of January huddled inside to escape the hazards of winter back home, we have done much of the same here in Delhi. Except we are dealing with a different type of hazard. No windchill factors, black ice or white-out conditions here, but we would have happily taken a Nor'easter over what we have been dealing with. While Bejing has been making the news for its smog, many experts, particularly in light of recently gathered data, are rating Delhi's air quality quite a bit worse. As the health coordinator here, Amie has been privy to a lot of this data and it has been quite alarming. As much as it has been killing us, we have kept the girls inside A LOT these past few weeks. There is reason to think that as the weather warms conditions will improve, however, we are sort of day to day right now on whether we will send the girls outside.
I think it is safe to say that our lack of blogposts this month goes hand in hand with our lack of inspiration. Too many hours indoors and too many depressing conversations about the air quality outside.
Here is the month in a few snapshots:

Here is our 3 year-old (going on 17), after her first real haircut upon our return from New Zealand (turns out 3 weeks of no real showering and lots of salt and sand can create quite a rats nest - I think we will opt for shorter hair on the boat!)

A week after we got back to Delhi, I (Ted) went down to Mumbai for a conference. Here is a picture of the Gateway of India.

It turns out there were some sailboats in Mumbai harbor, which I was pretty excited about.

The Taj hotel, which was part of the 2008 terrorist attacks.

We had lunch here, which is probably the most famous restaurant in Mumbai. Two of the 2008 terrorists ate lunch here before opening fire on other patrons. There are still bullet holes in the walls and ceiling. Although it was definitely a bit weird eating here, it was also somewhat inspiring - the city seems to have really rebounded from the attack and the resiliency of the people is certainly notable as you spend time here.

Sunday evening at the beach...with about a zillion other people. We have been told there are some really uncrowded and clean beaches in India, however this was clearly not one of them!

In other news:
Two weeks ago Ted tore his meniscus playing ultimate, which was a bit of a scare as we were worried he had ruptured a tendon and was potentially looking at surgery. In the end, he seems to have come out quite lucky - no surgery required and has been getting better each day since.

Scout has begun walking, however when given the choice, she still prefers all fours for now.

Lucy was officially accepted to AES for next school year (phew!). She is really looking forward to being a big girl who can go to school with Mom and Dad. She also finally tipped the scale past 30 lbs!

Today's pollution level was tolerable (though still off the charts compared to American standards) and to cure our cabin fever we spent some time messing around on the soccer field. It was actually pretty darn hot out, which hopefully is a sign of things to come. However, it won't be long before we are inundated with 100 degree weather and are longing for cooler days.

And finally, a little nostalgia for New Zealand. When we imported the photos from today we found a couple still on the camera from our last morning in Raglan.

Hopefully February will provide more blog inspiration than January...