We’ve made it to Pune! 

The flight didn’t set any high bars for comfort or food – in fact the tastiest item served on both Virgin Atlantic flights was called GU. 

It was a prepackaged chocolate/banana pudding thing, the only edible object on the tray.  In general, Lufthansa should rejoice.  Amenities were so poor on Virgin that the German carrier has been promoted out of my basement ranking for long haul fights.

But you aren’t reading this for airplane food rants.  Not only are we here, but after two days of aggressive power napping interspersed with cleaning and unpacking, we’ve managed to achieve relative sentience and order.  Proof of the unpacking:

Proof of relative sentience and a virtual apartment tour, not necessarily in that order.  First, the kitchen, with the soon to be infamous Pigeon Porch at the right.

The living room, with legacy non-working TV left by the landlord:

A couple of offspring-infested bedrooms:

Younger daughter is already entertaining herself with the paint set she brought with her.

Elder daughter, doing what comes naturally.  Note my knitting and stitching stash bin in the foreground, and yet another landlord abandoned dead TV in the background. Our bedroom is the same, a bed, a wardrobe wall that includes both hanging space and shelves behind wood and mirrored doors, and a king size bed.  No student desk in ours, though.

The Resident Male needs to do a lot of work after hours, synching up with colleagues on US time, so we’ve turned the fourth bedroom into an office:

The office is off the entry vestibule, on the far side of the living room, so he can do phone meetings without disturbing the rest of us.  I’ll spare you the pix of the dining room, in which I sit and type this; maid’s room, turned laundry room, with its curiously mobile washing machine and drying racks; and of all of the bathrooms.  Every bedroom comes equipped with its own, with a separate one off the laundry room.

And finally – the view off the balconies:

There’s no road behind the building – just a strip of shrubby ground between us and the Indian Army’s athletic training facility.  Most mornings there are groups of cadets out there doing dawn calisthenics.  On a couple of mornings they’ve had loudspeaker music accompaniment.  Other mornings a full military marching band has rehearsed, complete with bagpipes.  I haven’t seen them yet, although we can definitely hear them.  I suspect they are training on the field on the other side of the grandstand.

So there you have our post-settlement tour.  We’re here, finally (mostly) adjusted to local time, feeling out local resources and schedules, and starting to branch out on adventures.  More on those to come!