Rain drops not falling on our heads - yet!

Hello to you all,

As we write this we are in a hot and sticky Mumbai internet cafe with drops of sweat dripping down our backs! Lovely we know but that is the truth. The sound of 10 degrees with the odd shower at home does seem appealing at times when compared with our 35 degrees and imminet monsoon!

But not all is bad. We have just been out for our first Indian meal in a restaurant and after initial language difficulties we had a delicious curry, a rice disk, two naan and a sprite for less than 2 pounds - bargin!

Fo those of you who are wondering what we have been eating for the past 5 days we have somewhat landed on our feet with our apartment... It belongs to a cousin of a doctor we know in Norwich and the cousins sister lives upstairs. We have somewhat been taken under her wing with daily 10.30am shopping trips into Dadar. We have been introduced to the local store owners so as not to be ripped off and have had many lessons on what to at and what not to eat - very helpful. Much to Simons delight she is trying to turn me into a traditional Indian houswife with instructions on how to grow bean sprouts, make yoghurt, mango juice and how the milk steamer works. All sucessful so far, bar the yoghurt! Luckily for me however it is common practise to have a cleaner/cook come in daily. So we have had a lovely Indian come in and cook traditional dahl, japathi and rice fo us every evening. I even managed to get some cooking lessons from her despite her total lack of English and my total lack of anything but English!

Today we headed to Elephanta which is an island an hours boat ride from Mumbai. It has several caves full off buddist carvings - very impressive. However we were both more taken by the wild monkeys and excellent market stalls up and down the hill!

Tomorrow we are off to find the hospital where we start our placement and I may have my sari fitting!!! I am going to try and video record a taxi ride; no one would believe what a free-for-all it is; they need not have bothered with the white lines!

Hope you are all well, please add comments to the site.

Love,
Emma and Simon

P.S. Someone forgot the cable to download photos from her camera, but we will endeavour to buy one so you can see this crazy city for yourselves.