It has been somewhat of a bittersweet weekend for us as we have said farewell to Lars-Göran's oldest daughter, who is spending the next three months on the Indian subcontinent.

She left on Friday at 5.30am Swedish time, bound for the east coast Indian city of Chennai (which people as old as me will remember as Madras). The flight there took nearly nine hours and as she has a fear of flying, we were all concerned that she would feel stressed about it all and not be able to get there. Happily, our fears were unfounded and this morning we got her first virtual letter about the trip. She is using a Swedish site (Resdagboken) to write entries about her experiences there.

At this stage, she has planned to be away for thirteen weeks. She will begin in Chennai, then move across to Varkala on the southern most tip of India. After that, she will be doing fieldwork in Nuwara-Eliya (Sri Lanka) and Dhaka (Bangladesh). And finally, she has a little free time and hopes to travel to Calcutta, New Delhi and the holy city of Varanasi. All of this is part of her college course and she is there with a group from her university.

It's been hard to see her go and we worry about how a quiet, gentle girl brought up in a sheltered and affluent place like Sweden will cope with the mass of humanity and the appalling poverty that she will see over there. But at nearly 22 years old, perhaps it is time to go out and experience a little of the world, see a new culture and learn a little more about herself. She will be getting to know more about Health Care for the poor, a humanistic approach to development, Indian society and Indian non-government organisations.

I was in India for the first time in the late 1970's and I loved it. I just took everything as it came, soaking up the atmosphere and enjoying Reekshaw drives, train rides, sightseeing and weekend trips. My love affair with hot food began there - fabulous roti canai breakfasts and cheap Indian food everywhere (I have very fond memories of the delicious Hakka Noodles from Sai Krishna). She has already expressed surprise that people eat hot food for breakfast, so I wonder what she will make of all the strange tastes she will experience. Her other comment was that people drive like maniacs (especially the taxi drivers).

We are also wondering quite what she will make of the heat and humidity of India. It is nothing like the snowy climate that she left on Friday!



The other kids also left today to go ski-ing and snowboarding in the ski resort of Åre for a week. I hope they get some good weather for it as they have been looking forward to the trip for ages.

For us the last two days have been quiet and lazy with a little time out walking and a lot of time snuggled up reading.



I've managed to read two books in the last two days and thoroughly enjoyed them both. The first one, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller’s Wife was one I had started a couple of weeks ago then discarded after 20 or so pages as I just couldn't get into it. Instead I read other books and finally only picked it up again after a good friend (and fellow book-a-holic) told me that she thought it was excellent. As Liz and I share similar tastes in books, I decided to give it another go and was delighted that I did because it was a wonderful read. The other book I read today was Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, which I found a remarkable book about becoming immersed in literature despite the tyranny these students were living under. One quote in particular really struck me:



Words to remember always!

But I haven't been loafing on the couch all of the time. This morning when I walked outside with Lambi, I did a double-take. The morning light was eerily matte and sepia-toned, so that I seemed to have stepped from my little apartment into a set from a Sergio Leone western.



As I walked up the hill behind us, a spectacular rainbow nearly smacked me in the face. It was wide and clear and bright, its ROYGBIV array impossibly vivid. As I stared at this amazing rainbow, I realised that I could see its entire span. There it stood, a perfect arc of brilliant colour stretching over Nynäshamn. Continuing on my way, I noticed a second, more muted and pastel spectrum shining in the sky alongside the brighter bow.

The wind whipped my hair into a frenzy and a light but steady snow dappled my head and shoulders. I couldn’t help grinning at Mother Nature’s early-morning antics, which felt like a happy omen gracing the new year.

Back to the real world tomorrow....

And I'll finish with S Rozhdestvom!



Which means Merry Christmas to all of my friends celebrating it according to the Russian Orthodox calendar!