One of the greatest problems one faces when visiting family abroad is, how to keep oneself well occupied. Of course, helping with the housework can take up some time, but I find that my spouse is slowly gong crazy, as he has always been a human “doing” and not just a human “being”. One solution is to visit in the cold weather, whecan walking around can both familiarize you with where you are, and get you a lot of exercise. Since driving is an issue for most of us who come to the US, I would certainly suggest this. The irony is that we are both comfortable driving in the US and specifically enquired if an international driving licence would be required to rent a car…we were told it was not necessary, and didn’t bother to get them; now we realize that we are not covered by the insure on DnA’s cars unless we possess them! So we avoid driving the cars (which anyway, both of them need much more than we do!). Luckily for us, here in St Louis, we live close to Forest Park and the Loop area and hence can walk quite a lot early in the morning at least, before the heat sets in.  Some of the ritzier shopping areas are not serve by the MetroLink; public trahinsportation is not the greatest feature of the smaller American ciities!

When we are travelling of course, hiring a car is a great way to see this vast country. If one of us navigates and the other one drives, we are really comfortable; we drove more than 1500 miles in the space of a week during our last visit but one. Of course, potrol (“gas”) prices are quite horrendous now…here as in India….

I did a lot of weeding in the front garden today, and I am happy that DnA live in a locality (“neighborhood”) where the neighbours say hi, and even come in for a short visit without standing on ceremony! I buy the daily local newspaper every morning during my walk and there is a lot of news about the Metro for which A works.

Ah….here’s A…am going swimmng at the local YMCA now…