Finally some more pictures!

It is Monday and back to the weekly grind as they say.

Wednesday, I attempted to give myself a haircut and failed miserably. I bought a hair clipper set to bring to India and it has been working great on trimming my beard however I suppose using it to trim your hair is a bit different. And I've used it to trim my hair before but generally it was fully charged when the haircutting was taking place. And I have not charged the clippers all summer. Needless to say the hair clippers died halfway through my haircut and when I went to charge it back up I only used a plug converter for the wall outlet instead of the voltage converter. The high voltage must have been too much for the clippers charger because it died that day. And left me with an abomination of a haircut. So after showing and telling my predicament to Manjeet and Dhruv and their having a laugh at my expense, Dhruv walked me to a nearby barber. The man cut my hair with an insane amount of dexterity and only using scissors and a comb. Afterwards I got a vigorous head shoulder and arm massage and he even popped my fingers out of my sockets for me. What a pal!

Dhruv finished his summer schooling and took his test to get into the Doon School, so on Thursday his mother and little brother took a train up from New Delhi to spend a few days here and then take him home. Now while Dhruv may be a little mischievous, his little brother is a passionate little fireball. He is either laughing and giggling hysterically, or screaming because Dhruv did or didn't do something or running around throwing tantrums. His little brother is 7 years old and his name is Sohe (sp?). So for the past few days the house has been buzzing with the activity of the two brothers running amok. I usually was either playing a card game with Sohe or wrestling/pillow fighting with both of them.

Saturday we went to Mussoorie, a town that is an hour's drive from Dehradun and is up in the foothills much like Shimla. We spent the afternoon roaming around shopping and I got some little gifts to bring home. I have many more gifts that need to be purchased and not a lot of opportunities to do so, it seems. Especially because I have no idea where all of the cool stuff is in Dehradun. On the way home from Mussoorie, we found a paragliding place and Dhruv really wanted to go paragliding so we did. It cost Rs 500 to go from the starting point to a spot not too far away and the gliding part probably lasted about 15 seconds tops. Still it was pretty fun. There was an option to paraglide all the way down to Dehradun but that was Rs 6000 or roughly $150. Which I suppose is less than it would be in the States but still too much for me.

Oh and here are some pictures of the family, Minus V.K. who was in Punjab.

















Here's a random shot of some mountains with buildings on it.
















This is the long-awaited family photo (minus V.K.). From the left: Manjeet, my host mother, Sohe, Dhruv's little brother, Dhruv and Anchu, their mother and Manjeet's niece.

















This is a photo that Sohe took of us. We were all in the middle of trying to explain to him how to take the photograph when he figured it out—hence the lovely expressions on all of our faces.

















Here is me before I went paragliding. When running off the ramp the dude kept stepping on my feet and I almost lost my sandals midair.






















I think this is a picture Manjeet took of Sohe floating around. If you look close I think you can see me and Dhruv already down at the bottom.