SVL 1.4: The Great Outdoors and Indoors

After I wrote to you the previous time, we went out and went to DeeDees, a Gujarati restaurant for dinner. Just near where we parked, I took these pictures.

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  ​That Sunday we went to my nephew&#8217;s birthday party in Lemos Farm near Half Moon Bay. It was a great venue for a kids party because there are domesticated animals in different parts of the farm like ponies, goats etc. that kids can ride on or feed. We had passed it on our scenic drive after our first visit to my cousin&#8217;s place the weekend after we got here so I remembered it. The only thing was that I had misread Lemos as Lemons farm 🙂 It was nice to hang out with their family, this time along with many visiting relatives from India and different parts of the Bay Area. The little man was turning two! His mum had made &#8216;mac and cheese&#8217; and cupcakes for the kids and they had ordered awesome food from a South Indian place for the lunch that followed the big cake cutting. I took some pictures with my phone before I switched to their SLR. My cousin&#8217;s wife&#8217;s mum liked that I was walking around with an SLR because it is exactly what I did during her son&#8217;s wedding 3 years ago and those had came out well 🙂
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We went for a drive along Skyline Boulevard after the party and rested at home until the temperatures cooled. Then we headed to Santosh’s office parking lot for my first driving lesson. I started off shaky, drifting left and right and too far in the middle out of fear of hitting the edge. But as I practiced, I got better with going straight, stopping gently and with my turns. I even parked 🙂 Santosh was a good teacher.

On Sunday, we went swimming together in the apartment pool. Neither of us had swum in a long time and it felt awesome to be in the water again! Because I learnt how to swim at a very young age, a lot of it has stuck with me. Santosh on the other hand, remembered a lot less so in part it also became a swimming lesson. When we got back to the house, I noticed sharp tan lines bordering the edges of my 40s style swimming costume and felt almost Aussie again :). I had been hesitant to wear that swimsuit out here because it’s so modest but I’d be too shy to wear anything else. And when I went there, two of the ladies sitting in the shade, watching their children swim asked me where I got it (India) and whether they could try to get it in Indian stores here. Fashion, it seems, takes these cycles.

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  ​But we have also been going out sampling cuisines during weekends like Amici&#8217;s pizza, Wholefoods Japanese rolls and Buritos, Merit Vegetarian Chinese restaurant, Chaathouse, Deedees, Nirvanah Icecreams (where I had Mochachip icecream and Santosh had SweetPan).
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  We then opened a gift sent by Santosh&#8217;s cousin, which was a large picture of us together from our reception. That&#8217;s the first one that we have from the wedding which is printed and framed so professionally! Really great to have that in our living room. Then we decided the time had come to nail up all the pictures we had and rearrange the gods to include the new ones we got for the wedding. Now our house looks so much more ours, and settled.
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See also