Thiruvananthapuram – Our New Home

I suppose it’s time to post an update? These last few weeks have been pretty much a whirlwind. We have been trying to get things in order for my trip (successfully!), trying to find a place to live (another success!), desperately finding a new doctor for me and Little Bean (done and done!), and squeezing in one or two fun things before I leave (also, success!). I figured I’ll post my highlights of the new city, for us, so far.

The IISER Trivandrum Guesthouse

Our room may not be fancy at this place, but it has air conditioning, hot water, free wi-fi, our room gets cleaned a couple times a week, and we get three square meals a day. And Shashi, the cook/caretaker, has somehow managed to rekindle my appreciation for Indian food. I don’t know how he did it because I was still hating it all when we moved down here. EVERYTHING he makes tastes good, even if it looks gross to me. God bless him, for real. It also helps that we get to veg out three times a day on this nice balcony.

And here’s our room:

We’re allowed to stay for a month, which has turned into the biggest blessing of all, because then we were able to focus a lot of time on finding a place to live, and that brings me to my next highlight.

Our New Home

Just look at this place.

We’ll be living on the top floor, which has three bedrooms, a huge living room, two bathrooms, a dining room, and a lovely kitchen. I don’t know how new the whole place is, but the owner (who lives on the bottom floor with his family) is just finishing up our place. It’s in such a good location too. This was maybe the second or third place we looked at, and I think Zac and I both knew when we saw it that we weren’t really going to consider any place else (unless it was exceptional).

Thiruvananthapuram Zoo

This was our fun outing. Zac’s cousin, Arun, did us a gracious favor by taking us to the zoo. The zoo is apparently one of the oldest in India, and it is housed in the same complex as the Napier Museum, which we didn’t get to go to, but the building itself was lovely. The zoo was much larger than I expected, and it housed a lot of animals. The highlight was a lioness chowing down on her dinner; the biggest disappointment was the king cobra – we could barely see it through the bars on its cage. Here are some of the best pics.

Unfortunately, since our visit there, I have read in the newspaper that the baby hippo was accidentally stepped on and killed by its mother, and two of the leopard cubs died of a virus. So sad. 😦

The Indian Coffee House

So, the Indian Coffee House is a chain of, you guessed it, coffee houses that was started pre-independence. The earliest one was opened in 1936 in Bombay. We stopped at one yesterday (because preggo was hungry) in the late afternoon. Let me tell you, they had the best masala dosa I have ever had.

So, if you’re visiting India on a budget and need a clean, cheap place to eat, PICK HERE. There’s about 400 of them across India. You won’t be disappointed.

And the biggest highlight of our move so far…

Credence Hospital and My Second Ultrasound

I’m going to be honest – Credence Hospital was my second choice for a place to see an obstetrician and deliver the baby. We went to the Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) first because we had heard that was the best hospital in Kerala. Well, it was super, super crowded both times we went, which is saying something because MIMS was regularly crowded as well. We both decided the crowds were something neither of us wanted to deal with, so I got online to find a different hospital. I discovered Credence and the chief obstetrician Dr. Santhamma Mathew, who, by the way, just won some 2013 Times of India health icon award. Yeah, she’s a big deal.

The outside and inside of Credence isn’t as nice and sparkling new as KIMS, but the caring and compassion of everyone I have dealt with so far surpasses any concern about a few stains on the wall. Dr. Mathew is great – she’s easy to talk to, and when I saw her today (in a room next to the big delivery room), she had already assisted in five births this morning. FIVE. And I saw her around 10:30 am! FIVE. And she was just as cool as a cucumber. She went over my ultrasound and my chart and gave me the total okay to go to the US. Woo! One more thing, as I was waiting next to the delivery room to see the doctor, I heard a woman in the midst of labor. Yeah, that wasn’t scary at all….

I think my favorite thing so far about Credence was the radiologist who did my ultrasound today. He was so jolly and cheerful, and he showed me everything! Our baby’s little face (eyes, nose, and mouth!), the little heart and heartbeat (“Ohhhh, the heart is beating so nicely” were his exact words), little fingers and hands, little spinal column, little legs – he went over it all and explained it step by step, which was a far cry from my first ultrasound at MIMS, where I didn’t know what was going on at all. And while he was showing me the baby, the baby let out a hiccup, floated to the top of the screen and then slowly floated back down. I had promised myself to try not to be a dork this time, but a tear or two leaked out as I watching.

This is the last time I’ll update, most likely, until after I return from the US. Unless something super exciting happens there, but I really just plan on eating. 🙂