Hard to believe it, but it's officially time to say, "Halfway!"

We've been here for five weeks now, and have five weeks left to go. It's certainly gone fast, so here's to hoping the last five weeks don't go too fast, because although I'm very excited for the fall, it doesn't need to get here quite yet.

I wish a very happy Independence Day to everyone at home! This is my favorite holiday of the year (followed closely by Thanksgiving) so I am extraordinarily jealous of everyone who will be enjoying a cookout and wiffleball and fireworks and the whole shebang today while I have a work day, so please enjoy! Aah, I'll be looking forward to a Spikes game with fireworks upon my arrival in late August.

We did make an attempt to have our 4th of July celebration last night at a restaurant called Barbeque Nation. It's not quite a BBQ like many of you will be having, but it was still a good time. We had prawns (shrimp) and chicken and lamb and mutton, although I stuck mostly to the prawns and chicken, and they brought out a number of different Indian sauces and curries to marinate them in and grill them right at your table. It was good, and we also had ice cream afterwards which is always a plus. That was our little taste of 4th of July.

Not too much has happened since my last post other than working everyday, but I did start on a couple new projects surrounding RFID and asset management and also a project surrounding making supply chains greener. We'll see how those go.

One thing that has happened is that the monsoon arrived this week. For the next two months, it's going to be consistently raining at night. I learned, too, (from Dean DeVore) that the monsoon really isn't the rain, it's the wind, but since it's coming from off the coast, it brings the water with it. I thought that was something interesting most of you probably don't know. We won't really get the brunt of the weather here in the higher elevation, so I'm not worried about it, but we just need to get used to it raining at night and plan accordingly.

Another thing that happened this week was that we met Dr. Petrick for another fun dinner. We went to a restaurant called Blue Ginger that allegedly has the best Vietnamese food in India. Having been there, I can now certainly attest to that. The place was awesome. I can't tell you what a lot of the food was, but I know it consisted of some duck and some great noodles and some prawn soup and some other various traditional Vietnamese dishes. The restaurant was set outside with running water in the background, and it was just another home run dinner considering the ambiance and a great conversation to catch up on what someone else is experiencing here. I definitely don't know of anywhere in the U.S. where we could get great Vietnamese food like that - certainly a great time.

We'll leave for Goa later today, so I'm excited for that and to have some fun. It won't be a half-bad 4th of July after all considering we had some BBQ, will end up at a beach, and also Lester shut out the Yankees last night, so this has the makings of a nice holiday. Any time the Red Sox beat up on the Yankees is a good day. :)

Again, Happy 4th of July to all, and I hope to be posting some nice stories about my experiences in Goa early next week. There is a lot of great Indian and Portuguese history in Goa, and also supposedly some wonderful Indian seafood, so I'm looking forward to it! Chalo!

Big Ten Paraphernalia Count (hats, shirts, etc. we've seen so far on random people in India):

Michigan: 2
Penn State: 1
Ohio State: 1
Illinois: 1
Wisconsin: 1