Trip down memory lane

The possibility of meeting old friends was the main reason I was so excited to come back to live in the same place where I had studied in Germany. Many people I know from my student days are not here in Erlangen anymore, but some are close by and others are still here.

When I came to Erlangen in March 2001 the first person I met was Raghu. He handed me the key to my room in the "Internationales Studentenwohnheim", known as Wichernstrasse (the name of the street where it´s located). The day I arrived I had dinner with Raghu, Priya and Saher (who later introduced me to Vivek K. and Irfan). Vivek B. introduced Ishan to our "Wichernstr. Wohnheim" and that was the core group of my hindustani dost.

(L-R: Vivek K., Irfan, Raghu, Saher and Ishan-2001)

Vivek B. has the same birthday as Ishan and I will never forget the awesome birthday party we celebrated in the cellar of our building on that weekend. At that time I had met other friends like Abhijeet (who just became a Dad!), Tirumal, Prasad, Narayan and Silvia (from Indonesia).

(Vivek B. and Ishan on their birthday- 2001)

Another memorable celebration was a Diwali party in Erlangen. Vivek K. is not in the picture below because he had gone to India and when he came back he announced he was getting married. He showed me a picture of Nidhi and later Ishan and I were lucky enough to meet her at their wedding (during my first trip to India, when I had gone to get engaged to Ishan).

(L-R: Ishan, Mari, Irfan, Saher at a Diwali party in Erlangen 2001)

Looking back, I realize that the year 2003 was pretty exciting for me: I completed my Masters degree, got married and moved to India. What I didn´t know then, was that about three years later I was going to enjoy the thrill of a reunion with my "family" in Europe. And that thrill began just the next day after I landed in Erlangen last Dec. ´06, when I met Irfan again, who introduced me to Céline the day before they went to India (where they got engaged). They´re now the most recent newlyweds of the group.

I like to think that living in Wichernstr. was the best part of my experience as a student and not just because that´s where I met my better half, but because I also came across wonderfully warm people like Heike and Baris, who added an "international touch" to the clique. Heike had written a very nice message in Ishan´s memory book before he went back to India. She hoped for a "see you later" instead of a "good bye" ...how nice it is to realize that wish came true!



Ishan and I were lucky to have met another great couple of friends in the same hostel, Pamela and Sani. They are still in Erlangen and in fact have been more like our guardian angels during our first months after we moved here with Fabi.

It´s having people like them around that makes Erlangen really feel like our home.


Of course, I still keep in touch with friends that I met outside the student hostel. Some of my former colleagues from my Master´s are still around and it´s been a lot of fun to see them again. Several other people who I know are still in this small city, some whom I´ve met by chance (Hola, Sergio!) and some whom I would still like to meet up with (Hi, Tina! Hi, Tirumal! Hola, Rodrigo! Hola, Mauricio!)

Being in Erlangen reminds me a lot of Saher. Ishan and I were lucky enough to have him visit us in Mumbai a couple of times when we lived there. Saher´s now married and Ishan visited him and his wife Yaquta during a recent trip to Saudi Arabia.

(L-R: Ishan, Mari and Saher - Mumbai, 2004)

In case you´re wondering what triggered this flashback that has turned out to be a very long post: it´s the fact that this past Pfingsten weekend was extra special as Vivek K. and Nidhi came to visit us from Basel, Switzerland! Of course, it was absolutely delicious to see them again, catch up with our news and go out like in the good ol´times. I will write a post and upload pictures of their visit, but for now I will share a couple of pictures - my favorite "Then and Now" snaps.

Left: Nidhi, Vivek and I in our Gebbertstr. apartment when they came to visit us in Erlangen from Switzerland.

Right: Nidhi, Vivek and I celebrating Nidhi´s birthday in their Brüxer Str. apartment, just before I left Erlangen in 2003.

Top picture (left to right): Saher, Ishan, Mari, Baris, Heike, Nidhi, Vivek K. - Eating in Maalalu - an Arabic restaurant, when Ishan had come back to Erlangen for a short visit in 2003.

Below picture: All of us again - except Saher. Having breakfast at Cafe Mengin, next to the Schlossgarten, on the last day of Vivek & Nidhi´s visit to Erlangen in May, 2007.

I hope to enjoy many more of these meetings...to see more old friends, especially the ones who are still in Germany, like Raghu, Priya and Vivek B. -- so I would finally meet his wife Noopor in person! ... Saher, Yaquta: how about a trip to Erlangen?

Celebrity Look-Alikes

It´s the Mom who´s the crazy fan!

The spirit of a true fan!...

A Sesame Street fan! His toys match his shirts!

Fabi with "Elmo" on the left and "Bert and Ernie" on the right!

I wish they had these my size..

24 de Mayo - Dia de Maria Auxiliadora

Today is the feast of Our Lady, Help of Christians.

Ave Maria prayer (German)
Gegrüßet seist du Maria, voll der Gnade, der Herr ist mit dir. Du bist gebenedeit unter den Frauen und gebenedeit ist die Frucht deines Leibes, Jesus. Heilige Maria, Mutter Gottes, bitte für uns Sünder jetzt und in der Stunde unseres Todes. Amen.

A group of Latin American ladies (mostly Mexicans) gather every Thursday morning to pray the Rosary. Sometimes on Thursday mornings Fabi and I go to a German playgroup, but since today was "May 24th", we went to pray.

Afterwards, we joined a group of ladies that had been invited to a small town nearby, to an Indian lady´s house...to pray another Rosary! I met Rani, who turned out to be a (Catholic) lady from Kerala, married to a German. It was the anniversary of her father´s death and she had gathered some friends in her house to join her for prayers. There I met a Catholic priest -- also from Kerala.

That´s how we ended up praying two Rosaries today (one in Spanish and one in German) and also how we happened to have idlis for a late morning snack. Of course that by the time the second prayer has taking place, Fabi was a lot more interested in playing in the garden.

After we came back to Erlangen, Fabi and I stayed in the city center, had lunch, did some shopping and came back home for a few minutes to freshen up. Then we headed out to the playground to celebrate with one (of two of) his friends who had his 1st birthday today. (Happy Birthday to Manuel and Nicolas! See you next Tuesday at your party!)

And that´s how Fabi spend the day when he turned 26 months old!

Spielplatz Spaß

The weather was so nice and warm today, that our usual "Krabbelgruppe" met in the playground. There´s always so much to do there!...


Even the mommies have a chance to socialize...cool,huh?!

Speaking of playground, the second episode of "In the Motherhood" is out! :)

Cooking 101 (Updated)

I´ve said it before and I´ll say it again: "Cooking is not my thing." But because I would like to (at least try to) keep my New Year´s resolution, I thought I would experiment with an Indian recipe today (from a book that my Mom had given me called "Cocina India)". I was halfway into the "potato curry" recipe on page 44... when I looked down on the floor to see that Fabi was having a spaghetti party. Those fine pasta sticks were really keeping him busy:So I decided to go ahead with the second part of the project and make a historic attempt at making chapatis:
I had SO much work picking up the mess Fabi had made that it seriously makes me wonder if I am going to try cooking again in the near future. Maybe I´ll try again next week. Next time I will give Fabi something to "help me" with before he opens the pantry by himself.

P.S. On the other hand, MasalaDad was *SO* happy to find a resemblence of Indian food at home today...that I just might change my mind about cooking ... maybe it´s not so bad after all.

UPDATED to add: My friend Rong says it looks like Fabi was playing Mikado with the spaghetti sticks.

MasalaDad is back from China!...

...and he found two mangoes left, of which he shared one with Fabi after lunch today.

I really like what he got me from his trip: a "Sesame English" cd set which I will also share with Fabi.

Rring, rrring, rrriiiing....

We had our home phone installed several weeks (months?) ago. I have not yet given the new number to many people, so usually the phone never rings and when it does, I know that most likely it will be for me (and most likely it will be one of 2 or 3 people - "Hi, Rong!").

However, a couple of days ago it seemed like the phone was ringing a lot. The first time, I was not able to answer it, as I was in the shower with Fabi. (I also got a missed call on my cell phone, but it showed no number, so I never knew who called.) Then a nice german man called asking for Frau Prabhu. I told him it was me (eventhough I don´t go by that name) and I told him to call me back when I felt more confident with my German language (in a few decades!)...

The last phone call of the day though, was definitely the cherry on the top! It was my friend Abhijeet announcing that his little boy had been born last Sunday, May 13th at around 10:00pm. CONGRATULATIONS to the Avhale family!!

P.S.If you want my phone number, send me an e-mail and I´ll give it to you.

The fun part of my job

• My son knows that when he drops a spoon while he´s eating, I will pick it up and hand him a clean one. Yesterday while we were having our dinner, he dropped his spoon and suprised me by going to the kitchen and coming back with a clean one (he already reaches the kitchen drawers and knows where the cutlery is kept). This morning when I opened the drawer to give him a spoon for his breakfast, I had to laugh when I saw that he had kept there the dirty spoon he had dropped yesterday.
  

• Fabi likes to play, but most of the time he doesn´t like to do it alone. "Mamá, aquí!", he will command me to sit next to him and watch him solve a puzzle or destroy a tower that he has asked me to help him build with his blocks. The only ocassion, I´ve seen him spend time by himself is when he "reads" his books. He will take out all of his books, one by one and turn pages while he points and says the names of things that catch his attention. However, a couple of days ago, he was helping me fold the clean laundry and then spent a long time (a whole 10 minutes!) playing by himself. When I went to check on him , he had spread out all of his Sesame Street socks and had been folding and unfolding them over and over again.


• Lately MasalaDad has brought quite a number of stuffed animals. Not really my first choice of toy, but surprisingly Fabi likes them a lot. It´s funny to watch him feed his teddy bears, make them go to sleep or tell me that one of them needs a diaper change.

• Any scratch, bump, fall or bruise: it really does get cured with a kiss from Mommy!

Blogofractal

I like this because, after all, a blogger is a subtype of geek.

Celebrando

Estas son las fotos del grupo de mujeres celebrando el cumpleaños de Gricela.

El encuentro empezó el sábado 12 de mayo en "El Sombrero" (margaritas! comida mexicana!) y se prolongó hasta empezar el día domingo 13 ("Día de la Madre" aquí en Alemania) en Cubanito, al ritmo de merengue, salsa, bachata y demás ritmos latinos. Ahí se nos unió otra cumpleañera, Marilú.

These are some pictures of last weekend. This group of latin american ladies knows how to party: go to Mexican place for the food and to a Caribbean place for the music! It really doesn´t get much better than that. It was my first time at "El Sombrero" restaurant, which I absolutely loved! (Must go again!) I was more than thrilled to go to "Cubanito" again, something that I had been wanting to do ever since I knew I was coming back to Erlangen. I even wondered if I would see a familiar face...and whaddaya know...I did! (Hola, Sergio!)

"Mamá! Más mango!"...

MasalaDad arranged for some Alphonso mangoes to be brought from India. (Thanks, Sopan!) Ishan left for China yesterday. I hope that when he comes back on Friday, he still finds some mangoes left.

Fabi likes his हापुस!

Dia de la Madre en Alemania

I wanted to write a deep, meaningful post about "Mother´s Day", but due to my very busy social schedule this weekend (insert this theme song here), I will just leave you (for now!) with my absolute new favorite show with Leah Remini, In The Motherhood.

Happenin´ week

When a woman is pregnant in India, she decorates her room with pictures of cute babies (she´s suppossed to see nice pictures to get good vibes for her own baby - I guess). The only things hanging on the wall of my bedroom in India when I was expecting Fabi were a calendar, a couple of small paintings and a poster of Spider Man.

I love Spidey! He´s cool....and kinda cute, too! I had seen the movies SpiderMan and SpiderMan 2 on DVDs....and last night...I saw SpiderMan 3 in the movie theater!...with my friends Johanna, Monika and Claudia -- all of us with babysitter Dads at home! Too bad our friend Kathya couldn´t join us. She was the one who reserved our tickets online. I hope she´s feeling better today.

The movie was looong...they even gave us a break in the middle of the movie, just like they do in India! I liked the movie more than I thought I would: lots of action (of course), funny surprises and real shocker scenes. I even jumped out of my seat as a reaction to the reaction my friend Johanna had during one of the scenes! She screamed too!

I don´t recall any other action hero (in a Hollywood prodution) showing so much emotion as SpiderMan in this movie. I should have counted the times he cried! One thing that didn´t surprise me though, was the culminating moment when SpiderMan shows up to save the day: it´s shown with the USA flag on the background across the whole screen!... You would think they would have come up with a more original "subliminal" message by now!

My friends and I had a really good time...we looked like teenagers going out without their parents for the first time. We even asked the lady who was selling popcorn to take a picture of us (with my friend´s camera) while the rest of the line had to patiently wait for their turn to buy snacks. IT WAS FUN!

My friends noticed I looked different, but could not pinpoint exactly why. I wonder why they didn´t notice my shaved head right away. Just kidding! I didn´t shave my head...in fact, I was such a coward, that I didn´t even get "The Rachel" I was going for. Instead, I just got a shorter version of my old hair style with a few minor changes in the front. Have a look...

The irony of it all, is that I wanted to get rid of my "old" look and ended up with an even "older look" from a few years ago.

Do I like the results? Well...I feel like me again, after a loooong time: lighter, fresh, dare I say... younger, even. I´m enjoying the change indeed. However, I still want some "icing on the cake", but wasn´t sure exactly what I wanted...until I saw SpiderMan 3 last night! There´s a character called "Gwen Stacy" (played by actress Bryce Dallas Howard) and now I know that next time I go get my hair trimmed, I will go for this look. I just need some small additional changes on the back tips of my hair and voilá! The new "old me" again!

So...as you can see this has turned out to be a exciting week for me: new look, movie time with friends again....and the best part? Weekend is still yet to come! - Can hardly wait!

H-Day

H stands for haircut.

I don´t know what´s going to happen today...it can be anywhere from Sinead O´Connor to just a trim of my Morticia look...but most likely that it will be somewhere in between.

I need a change!

Der Berg Ruft

Der Countdown läuft... 24.Mai - 4.Juni....Erlanger Bergkichweih!!


Este pueblo se prepara para estar de fiesta! Será divertido para mí esta vez, ya que lo disfrutaré desde otra perspectiva...ya no como en mi época de estudiante, sino que ahora llevaré a Fabián para que disfrute de los caballitos. :)

Christmas in May

3 months without computer +
2 months without camera charger =
------------------------------------------
5 months of delay in photo sharing

Since I have more than 300 pictures to share, I have grouped them according to themes and I´m working on the best way to display them.

Nidhi was my inspiration for making videos and I have finally finished my first production - with the Christmas pictures. It took me a lot of time to complete it because I´m still getting to know the software and because I have to manage doing everything with one hand (while Fabi is on my lap `helping´ or watching his Sesame Street videos).

Without furter ado, I present "A Christmas Story - Erlangen 2006".

The X-Mas pictures are also in my Yahoo Album (link).

I found it!!

My camera charger was in a bag with Ishan´s cameras...in his closet.

My digital camera is charging as I type this...and I´m one step closer to sharing my pictures again! Woo hoo!

Also: I finally cleaned and put away all the tools I used during the wallpapering and painting. This house is starting to look normal again!

Today´s best buys

• Sesame Street cookies!!!
• A book with menu/recipes for children from 1 to 6 years (Kochen für Kleinkinder)
• A pair of shorts for Fabi

¡También encontré semillas de linaza! En India las busqué muchísimo para el control de la presión arterial (después de la preeclampsia). Pensándolo bien...con todo el trabajo que tengo acumulado la linaza me caerá bien!