Abby: Hi!

Hi! So sorry for not writing! If feels like there's been just one thing after another.

School's out, I'm officially done with 7th grade! I've been working on my writing skills and art to pass the time. Speaking of art, I've done lots of photography lately. I even started a photo blog! I capture mostly Lego, plants, and an occasional bug. The one big thing I got to photograph was a monkey! (several actually) They were at the botanical garden here. Some of my shots:

Believe it or not, I didn't zoom in on any of these monkeys, they let me get that close! The pics of Lego are just a few of my favorites I've taken of him. That's about all! 
(if you want to see more of my pictures, the link to my photo blog is on our newsletter) 

Abby: New York Pictures No.1

Hi this is Abby! As you probably know, we recently went to New York so my dad could go to a conference and to see relatives there, my grandparents from Texas even got to come! I took a ton of pictures, so there will be more coming, but here are a few to get it started:

Me at the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

My grandparents, my aunt, uncle, cousins and our family at

 the "Brooklyn Diner" 

Hanging around with Teddy Roosevelt at the Museum of Natural History (the same one in "Night at the Museum")

I like the Brown M&M the best. 

At Columbus Circle

Okay, that's all for now, but there are more to come soon!

From Andrew: Interesting Critters

Hi Everyone! This is Andrew and I'm going to talk about some of the amazing bugs we encounter in India, plus a very rare critter at the end!

This is a beetle my mom found in our apartment building.   

We counted 30 of these little plant munchers in a patch right outside our school- amazing isn't it?

This is a monstrous grasshopper my friends and I spotted while we were playing in our apartment complex.

This is an enormous beetle that my mom saw and we have no idea what it is except that it's big! If you have any ideas what this beetle is called please comment.

This is a butterfly that decided to take a break on my arm.

This is another huge grasshopper, and that's my hand beside it just to show you the size of it.

And yet again this is another huge hopper that was right outside our door.

And this is that "rare" critter I said you would see! This "rare" critter is a really weird chapatti (Indian flat bread) that my sister (Abigail) is holding up in front of her face.

Thanks for reading everyone!!!!

Abby: A Catch Up

Ok, firstly, I apologize for not posting in FOREVER. The story of that is, after the latest post I procrastinated until exams, and of course all through the 2 weeks of exams I was studying for the next exam. Then we went to Texas for 5 weeks (more on that later). We started school successfully and I like all of my teachers, especially my math teacher- and it helps that she's nice 'cause math isn't my greatest subject :-). Also the material we're using is amazing; we switched to the British system so it's all new. 

All my close friends stayed in the school, so that's good since about half of the kids from last year left this school (because of the new curriculum). There's even a girl who moved from Coppell, Texas that moved here 5 months after we did! I've officially started guitar lessons! They've been great. The five weeks spent in Texas were good- even though they caused a lot of emotional stress, they were worth it. We were at a different church every week, so we got to see a LOT of people. 

Since my birthday happened while we were there, I got to celebrate with my grandparents which was nice. While we were gone, Lego stayed with a great family while we were gone who had kids and a dog, so he was in paradise. Speaking of Lego, he's been behaving a lot better since we've been back, and he's officially one year old! His birthday was also while we were away so we missed it, but something tells me that he wasn't too offended :-). 

A few pictures of some of the good friends we had really missed:

And here is a recent picture of Lego:

         

Andrew: New Fruits

Hi! One of the good things about living in a tropical country is all the great fruits there are to eat. We have a lot of the ones you would know like pineapple, orange, banana, apples, kiwi, grapes, mangoes, even strawberries. But there are some you might not have eaten, and this post is about those. Here are some pictures of some fruit from India:

This is jackfruit. All these (and many more) come from the same large fruit- larger than a big watermelon! They are sweet and chewy, and not too juicy. There's a big seed in the middle that has to come out, and all around these pieces is sticky white stuff. It is delicious, but because it's hard to get the fruit out, we don't have it much.

This is a pomegranate. I think some of you may have had these, but my mom thinks some of you might not. So here it is. They are big here!

To eat the pomegranate, you have to pick the seeds out. They are really juicy, and you just chew them up, even though there's a small seed in the middle of the red pieces.

This is pink guava. There is another kind that is green on the outside and white on the inside, but we like the pink one. The little yellowish seeds in the pink are hard and crunchy, but you just chew them up too.

This is a custard apple! The inside is white and has very sweet soft pods with kinda large black seeds in it. You don't eat those seeds, but you pick them out. I used to think I liked it, but I don't anymore. I don't know why.

Well, this isn't fruit, it's just me chilling with Lego. That's all for now! Bye!

Abby: Delhi

I've been promising this for a while so here it is:

New Delhi is the capital of India and is north of Bangalore. To me it looked much greener than Bangalore even though it is a bigger city. Here's a brief description of each day.
Night 1: We arrived at the hotel at night so we didn't really do much then.
Day 1: We went and had breakfast at the hotel and I got into something with nuts and threw up after we got back. Then some friends of ours came and took us to a beautiful park within walking distance of our hotel and their house. I wasn't feeling too great still at the park and I threw up there too.

Andrew's on the bridge... This is a "madrasa" or Muslim seminary. It was in the park, and was part of a medieval village from the 13th century. That's OLD! 

The park was called Deer Park because there are a lot of deer. We didn't see any, but we did see a peacock (the national bird of India) and lots of these squirrels that look like chipmunks. They squeak loudly.

Day 2: We went to this really amazing place called Qutub Minar. It has a bunch of buildings and monuments and stuff like that.
Night 2: We ate dinner at the house of some friends from Dallas who live in Delhi now. 

This is at Qtub Minar. It has the tallest stone tower in India (behind us), which was built around 1200 AD. Also OLD! I learned that "minar" is the word for tower, where we get the word "minarette".

Here is some of the detail on the tower. It was tall and really pretty.

Andrew and I got to climb on and around the ruins of Qtub Minar

Me with two of my new friends in Delhi

This iron pillar is 1600 years old!! It may also be where the name Delhi got started.

These are our friends that we knew in Dallas who are now in Delhi.

Day 3: This was technically the last day. We went to this place called Dilli Haat. Dilli Haat was a tourist market place. It has lots of handcrafts from every state in India. One thing that was fun was that you can try to bargain down the prices of stuff. This was the last time we saw our friends before we left.
Morning 4: We left the hotel at 7:30 so we just got ready and went to the airport.

At our hotel, we ate breakfast on the top floor each day. Across from us were always these parrots squawking and flying around. They are blue and green and yellow, with red beaks and a pink ring around their necks.