"It's fine".

We're in! It's interesting to me that this will be our home for the next 6 - 10 months (I know some of you are laughing when I say 6-10 mths believing it will be longer). In the chaotic process of moving in and unpacking, John and I found ourselves using one phrase over and over - "it's fine". Two key words that many of the folks around us - who speak very little or no English seem to understand completely. The amount of people in the house the day we moved in was staggering. I literly had to hide from the chaos at one point (in Jack's closet) with my cell phone to call John so I could share my utter amusement at the scene. An interesting point to note is that the boys were oblivious to the fevered pitch of activity. They walked right through the front door, into their bedroom, found the bin of Lego we had shipped and sat down to play in their own world for at least 2 hours. Thank God for Legos.

So, "It's Fine" has become my new motto. In just two days, things have calmed considerably, many of the problems have been resolved (on Friday afternoon we didn't have one completely functioning bathroom out of 3) and we've seemed to have already developed a bit of a rapport with our cooks and cleaning folks. The cleaners are working non-stop all day doing I don't know what - especially in the kitchen and laundry area. I had to decide if I wanted to take some ownership over my kitchen and I decided I would. It would be easy to feel like it wasn't my kitchen or that I shouldn't go in there but I had to set the precedent early that it was my kitchen and even then - it's still NOT my kitchen.

We found a small grocery yesterday (not what you are thinking of when I say grocery) that had some American brands so I bought some things for the kids to show the chefs who stock our kitchen. Google had requested a food list prior to our arrival of some basics - mostly for the kids - which I provided but the stuff in the kitchen when we arrived was a bit freaky if I'm honest. The only thing I recognized was the peanut butter (jiffy) and that's only because I think American's are the only wierdo's who eat peanut butter. EVERYTHING they stocked was spicy - even the potato chips so... I went shopping. It worked out great and the chefs are doing a great job with the kids. Tonight they ate Chicken Tikka (basically chix on a skewer) and palak (spinach) with spanish corn and rice and naan. OK - so they mostly at Chicken and naan. It's a start. Matt has already made fast friends with our two cooks and watched them make naan tonight. They love him. Big surprise. As a side note, the chefs also made them tuna fish and mayo on ritz crackers for lunch - now that is being a good sport!

My favorite thing about being in the house so far is at the end of the day when the staff comes to say goodnight. Each staff member makes an effort to say goodnight (in English) to each of the boys and the boys have become accustomed to putting their hands together (as if in prayer) and saying Namaste. It's very endearing and I'm glad they do it - it is clearly a welcome gesture.

Thanks for reading...
Namaste.