Kerala

We just got back from our trip to Kerala. We traveled there by plane. It was a four hour ride and had one stop in Mumbai before we landed in Cochin, Kerala. When we got there it was very late so we looked around and then we ate dinner. Do you know that Kerala is the coolest place we have been to in India? The temperature there is in the 80's during the day. We even went up into the mountains were we all had to wear jackets!

Kerala looks very different than Delhi. It is green, clean and developed. Kerala has less people so it is easier to keep clean. There are HUGE fishing nets and coconut trees. We stayed in a 3 star hotel in Fort Cochin. It has a pool and we stayed upstairs. The color of the hotel is white, green and light red.

Another thing that is different about Kerala is that there are lots of Christian churches there. We went to a beautiful, old, large one that was built by the Portuguese and the Dutch.

The Hottest Day Ever...

The hottest day ever was when we went to the India-Pakistan border. This was near the town of Amritsar in the state of Punjab. We thought we would be in the shade, but NO! The sun was pointing directly at the bleachers. Everyone was melting in the sun!

We went to the border to see Army men march and shout at each other. They were kicking so high they were touching the sky! The soldiers had very fancy uniforms.

The temperature finally got better around 5pm when the sun started to go down. Our shirts were soaked, but we felt better.
At the end of the ceremony it was very busy. There were people all over. We walked back through the special gates to meet our driver and went back to our hotel in Amritsar.

Back to School

We went back to school today. We needed to get up extra-early this morning to make sure we had our backpacks together and all of our summer projects ready to take to school. Grandpa and Nana helped us with some of these while we were on vacation in the US!

Dad got up early to make our lunches and he made us special pancakes to celebrate going back to school. Mom helped us get dressed and get our room tidy.

Here we are in our track uniforms (we wear these every Wednesday instead of our regular grey uniforms). Our school-backpacks are really loaded down! They can get pretty HEAVY some days.

Back From Vacation!

We spent the last 6 weeks visiting our grandparents and seeing lots of sights in the USA! We started out visiting our Grandpa and Nana in the mountains of Georgia. Grandpa likes to go hiking in the woods! We went on some really good trails and we took the dog with us. Her name is "Georgia."

Then we took a road trip (that's what Dad calls it) to visit relatives and sight-see. We visited some cousins in North Carolina and Virginia. We got to see our Great Aunt Jane and learned how to shoot a rifle!

Then we drove on to Washington D.C. It is the capital city of the US. We got to see the Lincoln and Washington Memorials, the Vietnam Memorial, and had a private tour of the White House (although President Obama was busy working so we didn't get to meet him.) One of our favorite things was visiting the Air and Space Museum. Very cool. It is one of the museums in the movie, "Night at the Museum 2."

The next place we visited was Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This is the city were the United States began. We got to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall - where the "Declaration of Independence" was signed! Our Uncle Joe is a Park Ranger there. He explained to us some of the history in Philadelphia.Then we went on to see our Grandma and JaJa in Buffalo, New York. We got to do all sorts of things with themincluding seeing Niagara Falls in Canada,and going to Detroit, Michigan. We also got to eat good local foods like Pizza and Chicken Wings.

We are back in India now. It is really hot here! Our summer vacation is almost over! We go back to Lotus Valley School on the 1st of July. We will post more pictures of some of the things we saw during our trip soon!