Mad Gab date....

One afternoon, the four of us single girls on the team each received a note from the single guys on our team that looked like this, a self-made mad gab phrase. Mad Gab has become a game that we play at random times and me and my roommate, Claire, have gotten pretty good at it! So the four of us girls had to figure out what the mad gab said. Can you decipher it for yourself?

It reads: Shall we go on a date tomorrow evening? It was pretty fun figuring it out and we all got excited that the single boys were taking us out on a date, because it means that we get to dress up!!!

So the next evening, all of us girls get ready to go out! The boys told us to be ready at 6, but of course in normal girl fashion, we are ready by 6:30. So the boys are looking nice and they open the car doors for us and we head off! They haven’t told us where we’re going, and I have no idea, since I still don’t know Hyderabad very well, but I’m excited because I know it’s gonna be nice since we’re all dressed up. So we’re driving for about 30 minutes, then we pull into Boulder Hills. It’s a country club here in Hyderabad that has a golf course, 18 holes even! I feel like I’m in America!!! 

We sit down at our table where it seems like we’re at a board meeting because each of us have so much room, it’s almost like the table could seat 15 people! But we were all able to have some fun conversations. My side of the table talked about which sport earned the most money as a whole, which sport required the most skill, which sport was the toughest, and so on. I bet the guys on my end of the table were enjoying this conversation!

Dinner was finished so we decide to go outside to take some group pictures! Here’s all of us together! Guys are Robby, CH, John (Ballgame), Caleb, and Ray. And the girls are me, Claire, Christina, and Lauren. 

Here’s a good picture of all the guys together (Caleb, Robby, John - aka Ballgame, Ray, and CH).

And here’s a good picture of all the girls together (Lauren, Me, Claire, and Christina).

We started being goofy and took pictures that represented each of us. I’ll just show you some of the best ones! This picture is one that represents Ray because he was in a band in high school and he sings all the time.

This picture apparently represents me because everyone says that all i love to do is dance, so here we’re doing a dance that’s called the “jerk” and for those of you who don’t really know what that is, it’s the running man backwards. And if you still don’t know, well sorry. Haha!

We had a lot of fun together and even played some catch phrase. In which I can’t remember whether the girls or guys won, but I’m sure it was us girls! After the date, we all headed home and got into some more comfortable clothes, just talked and enjoyed each other, and of course, ate some chocolate chip cookies and vanilla ice cream! 

The date was so much fun! The guys did a really good job planning the date! They all looked really nice and it was fun for us girls to have an excuse to dress up nice! I can’t wait til our next singles date night!!!

Monkey-ing Around

Earlier this week we hosted the Delhi ICE team in Hyderabad for New Staff Training. But this morning we had to say our good-byes. As the taxis took our friends to the airport, Suresh (my driver) and KK (Christina and Lauren, my colleagues' driver) shouted. MONKEY! So you may be thinking. YOU'RE IN INDIA. Big Whoop! But no, I have been in Hyderabad now for 3 months and I have yet to see a monkey. This monkey wasn't the cute kind where you want to get up close and get a picture of him, it's the intimidating kind that you want to get as far away as possible from him. So this monkey is walking down the street towards us and towards our house. Unfortunately our gate to our house is open, so CH, one of the boys, is brave enough to jump across the monkey's path to close the gate so it doesn't get in our house. But a closed gate doesn't deter the monkey. It climbs the gate and walks across it to the side of our house. Momentarily, Caleb, another colleague, who is a cowboy at heart, sprints out of his house with a rope in order to lasso the monkey up! I didn't really know how to process this situation because 1) i think it's the most hilarious thing ever because Caleb's trying to lasso the crazy monkey and 2) i'm afraid of what the monkey might do to Caleb and the rest of us if he is successfully lassoed. But Caleb doesn't quite get the opportunity to lasso the monkey for it's scaling the side of our house and everyone is hoping they've shut their windows to their bedrooms and bathrooms. The monkey leaves and we're all just standing there trying to process what just happened. It was a very eventful morning for sure! Hopefully it was a story worthy of the first blog.