Stanley is our Saviour

We did it! We have finally found a house to live in. After several adventures to neighbourhoods both safe and seedy, viewing "furnished" houses without furniture, fridge or stove, we finally met Stanley. Stanley is a gentleman who made his fortune in "spare parts" in Saudi Arabia and returned home to purchase a few houses in a neighbourhood of Kochi called Kaloor. It's a "posh" neighbourhood Stanley tells us with pride, the occupants of the nearby houses are Engineers and Advocates (Indoglish for Lawyer). The house is about 700 metres off the main road on a quiet and clean lane of coconut palms and bougainvillea. The house itself has marble floors throughout, 3 bedrooms, a large diningroom, smaller living-cum-sitting room, kitchen with refrigerator and 2 burner gas cooker. It even has a laundry room with a washer! Each bedroom has its own bathroom (toilet and shower), overhead fans and built-in cupboards. One of the bedrooms has AC. Everything is brand new - mattresses that have not been slept on, and the decal remains on the TV!

Stanley and his wife Gee Gee live in the house behind ours. Their children are in College and at a boarding school away from Kochi.

Like many of the people we have met here, Stanley and Gee Gee are Christians - Rob and I have had an interesting time fielding questions about what religion we belong to! It is a question that is asked in what would be considered at home a blunt manner (since Westerners are often strangely private about religion). Luckily the Christians here have that all-pervasive Indian assimilation thing (resistance futile!) so that subscribing to some kind of "it's all One" belief makes them happy enough to accept you as one of their own. I had thought this a quirk of Hinduism - taking the best of everything and making it their own: yeah, Mohammed, he was one of ours. Jesus and Buddha too. Turns out it is more an Indian thing than a strictly Hindu thing. Regardless, it works for us.

Soooo, we move tomorrow! Stanley is calling the internet company for us to set up internet in the house. It could take a few days but we are hoping to be wired and settled a bit so we can actually get out the camera and start filming!

I think we've really turned a corner today. The boys are specifically asking for Masala Dosa, Emma is enjoying teaching Isaac to read (he read two whole sentences today! It's a really exciting time for him) and Rob and I are just so grateful. Grateful for the angels who created the brand new Naked store on Bowen, grateful to have our family with us on this wacky adventure and grateful for Stanley and all of India's other saints that seem to come out of the woodwork when you really need them...