So I guess you can tell I've gotten lazy on the blog...oh well, I'm really trying to keep up...some days there's just nothing much to say and other days I'm so busy, that I don't have time to say it!

So Friday was pretty dull...work as usual, nothing exciting to report really and nothing crazy happened at the office either.  Saturday I slept in until 2 pm...really haven't done that since college.  Then I got up, checked in on my staff, remotely from the hotel, and then slathered on the sunscreen and headed down to the pool.  I've been aiming to do this since I arrived in India.  I sat out for an hour and a half or so and it was quite nice and relaxing.  Not too hot since the sun was hiding behind clouds most of the time.  Then I headed back up to my room, ordered a late lunch from room service and watched a little TV.  Soon enough it was 5 pm and time to get ready for the cricket match.  The Hyderabad Heros were playing the Chandighar Lions.  I met up with 3 of my friends, also rotators and we met the car at the hotel that took us to the cricket stadium.  I must say my driver this weekend was much better, I'm going to request him in the future for sure.  The drive to the stadium took almost an hour...it was 25 km away from the hotel.  Once we got there we bought our tickets for approx. $2.50 and made our way in to the stadium.  I was not prepared for this experience at all.  The stadium was filled with about 99% men and as soon as we walked in they were calling to us, waving, etc.  It was quite overwelming, but I never felt frightened.  Finally we found some empty seats with a good view...there were lots of empty seats around us, but this only lasted about 5 minutes.  Within 5 minutes we had about 30 boys ranging in age from probably about 8 to their mid twenties talking to us asking us questions, taking our pictures, asking for autographs, asking to buy us ice cream, asking if we had dinner already, asking if we were married...you get the idea. Really strange to me.  It was quite difficult to pay attention to the match.  I think we lasted at the match maybe and hour or hour and a half before we were ready to leave.  On the way home, we had the driver stop at an irish bar called Dublins...it's in one of the 5 star hotels.  The three girls I was with ordered a double of bailey's on the rocks.  A double here is approx one shot.  When the bill came, it cost 900 ruppes per shot...that's approx. $22.50.  That would buy you a bottle of bailey's in the US.  After the one shot, we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.  Sunday I finally woke up around 12:30.  We had reserved a car for shopping and dinner starting at 2 pm.  We met the driver shortly after 2 and headed to Charminar to buy bangles.  I showed the girls around the market and this visit to Charminar was a little easier than the last.  This one girls I was with picked out a whole bunch of bangles in this one store and the owner was trying to charge her over 10k rupees...that's over $200.  Crazy for bangles...I couldn't get him down too low because he knew she wanted them so bad...she eventually agreed to pay 1700 rupees...too much in my opinion, but a far cry from 10k.  After Charminar we went to Hyderabad Central and went pearl shopping.  I tried on lots of very expensive jewelry and finally narrowed it down to 4 strands of pearls and a 5 strand necklace of sapphires.  All of this cost $1000 supposedly.  I've got it in my possession, but I haven't yet paid for it because I haven't decided on whether I plan to keep it all.  They took my name and number and that's all they required to let me leave with the jewelry...crazy...I could get on a plane and take it home, but they've built a reputation with my company and there's a mutual trust that's been built I suppose...I still was amazed.  i think they think that if I take it with me I will fall in love with it and keep it all.  So far, I've not completely decided, I would like them to come down another 25% and then I would be sold.  We'll see I told them I would return next weekend if not before.  After hours of pearl shopping we went to dinner.  The restaurant was really cool.  It was on the upstairs level of a shopping center...looks can be deceiving.  I can't really explain the interior, but it looked like a super trendy restuarant in the US.  Dinner cost about $25 but it was worth it.  It was probably my best meal in hyderabad thus far.  It wasn't Indian food, though the did have Indian food on the menu.  I had a seafood pasta dish.  Afterwards I had a chocolate brownie cake with vanilla ice cream...there goes the couple of pounds I had lost:).