Today is my last day in Chennai. Tonight at 11:15pm, our groups flies out of India to begin our 32 hour journey back to San Antonio. We will arrive in San Antonio at 8:40pm. I am not looking forward to the trip (except for the Business Class seats on Singapore Airlines) but I am really looking forward to the destination.

A few last observations:

I neglected in an ealier posting to mention that I may have had a slight case of the "Delhi Belly". Although I was not physically ill, I was feeling under the weather for several days last week. Every morning, I took a dose of Pepto-Bismol to try to calm my stomach. It worked. I was back to full strength by the end of the week. So in the final analysis, of the six of us who came to Chennai, five of us succumbed to "Delhi Belly" and one person did not (or has not told us he did). One of our group got sick again yesterday, and we are all worried that he will have a miserable flight home if he is still sick tonight when we leave.

For those of you who are wondering what happened to pictures, the answer is simple. I had borrowed a laptop from one of my co-workers and I was able to attach my camera and download pictures. Then my co-worker wanted his laptop back. The hotel workstation does not allow devices to be hooked up to it, nor does it recognize any devices if you try. When I return to San Antonio, I will download all the pictures and make them available to whomever cares to see them.

Living in a 5-star hotel has its benefits. Everything is close by: restaurants, bed, spa, gym, bar, and some shopping. Patrons in the bar are very friendly. I met people from all over the world: local Indians who frequent the bar, Korean businessmen, Japanese businessmen who don't speak much English, Australians, Americans, and last night a Brit. And of course, I got to know the people I came with whom I had not met before. But living out of a hotel has its disadvantages too: laundry charges, washing your own underwear and socks and hanging that stuff all over your room, power failures at inopportune times, cable TVs with less-than-optimal signals, honking horns everyday and all day and other noise from the street, and of course missing my family. That last one was the worst. I am so much looking forward to getting home to reunite with Kim, Kelly, and Kevin.

USA...here I come!