Lalita & Lucas in Madison: Happy New Year everyone!!

Dear friends,
you will be excited to hear I have a New Year's resolution - and it is to update my blog more regularly. I am going to try for every 2 weeks, and feel free to send me stern messages to remind me of this noble resolve!

So we have been in India for 2 weeks now, and our last few weeks in Madison were crazy busy trying to get everything done before my 5-week absence. I left work on a high - it has been an incredible year with getting our federal funding and me feeling increasingly settled and happy. I had a great goodbye with the staff in the office, and then in the evening before I left I bumped into my boss in a restaurant, who proceeded to tell me how thrilled he is at the work that I do. So that was a fantastic way of saying goodbye to my office for the Christmas break. (I also decided to ride the high and apply for a promotion immediately. Fingers crossed.)

India has been and continues to be a mix of work and pleasure, and pleasurable work. Lucas and I spent one day in Delhi where I met up with my dear friend Mia whom I had not seen for more than 2 years. She is coming over this evening to spend some of New Year's Eve with us. Then we travelled to Bhopal where I met up with my colleague Ann who is a paediatrician in Madison, and who is helping me start a Global Health program in Bhopal. We stayed and worked in the Sambhavna Clinic which looks after the victims of the Union Carbide Gas disaster that happened in 1984. In addition to doing our rounds of the clinic so we know what to tell the students who will join us working there in the summer next year, we also visited a school for disabled children - the second generation of gas victims as the women who were affected by the gas have a much much higher chance of having a mentally or physically disabled child. Our stay there was short and intense, and I am excited about the course we will be teaching next semester as well as by the internship program I designed for our students.

Then - holiday!! You really don't know how stressed you are until you are no longer as stressed. I cannpt believe I spent 20 years travelling to India and being all snooty about Goa which I considered a place for drop-outs and people who couldn't handle the "real" India. Now I know better - it is so beautiful!! And super relaxed. It really is like paradise, ast least in that Bounty/Martini/Bacardi kind of way. We spent a lot of time on various beaches, but also did some serious driving around (James had driven down from Bombay so we had a car) and saw some amazing scenery. It really was the most fantastic holiday. Lucas enjoyed the beach and got into the spirit of eating fish, though he also misses home and his friends. He seems to understand that we are away for a short period of time, and we talk about what we will do when we are back in Madison.

Now we are in Delhi for 2 days until we travel to Benares so I can work with our Study Abroad students. So far everything has been going really well, and apart from too many mosquito bites we are well and healthy.

Happy New Year, and see you in 2011!