Landed in Paris.

On the plane. Had one last burger from In and Out, but looking forward to good things (and food) ahead.

Our Itinerary...for the first couple weeks

Dec. 28 (afternoon) - leave San Francisco @ 3:35pm
Dec. 29 (morning) - arrive in Paris @ 11:25am

Dec. 29 - Jan. 2: PARIS

Jan. 2 (morning) - leave Paris @10:30am
Jan. 2 (late night) - arrive in Mumbai @ 11:50pm
Jan. 3 - spend the day in Mumbai
Jan. 4 (morning) - leave Mumbai for Pune, and then head for Panchgani

Jan. 4 - Jan. 6: PANCHGANI

Jan. 6 (afternoon) - leave Panchgani and head back to Mumbai

Jan. 7 - Jan. 11: MUMBAI

Jan. 11 - leave Mumbai for Ankleshwar

Jan. 11 - Jan. 15: ANKLESHWAR

Jan. 14 - day trip to Surat for Kite Day, return to Ankleshwar
Jan. 15 - leave Ankleshwar for Ahmedabad
Jan. 19 - begin work in Ahmedabad

Here's the deal...

Dixie and I will be traveling to India from the beginning of January through the end of March. With Dixie finishing up grad school and her student teaching stint, we thought this was our best chance to take a bit of a sabatical from our daily life (and our wedding planning!) and try something a bit new. While we hope to take advantage of some opportunities to travel around India and visiting relatives (on penalty of death!), we will be spending much of our time in Ahmedabad (in the state of Gujarat) volunteering at two separate organizations.
As a newly certified primary education instructor, Dixie will be spending her days teaching at a local elementary school. Dixie can speak Gujarati and Hindi and this is Dixie's seventh trip to India, so her other primary duty is to keep me out of trouble.
I will be branching out of the traditional financial sector (where I've been a strategy consultant for the last 4 years) to pursue a more recent passion for microfinance. I'll be joining up with the Centre for Microfinance, a microfinance field research group, to understand how the poor use microcredit, savings and insurance and look at ways to improve the structure and delivery of those services.
If you'll be in India between January and March, let us know!!!
We also want to give a BIG thank you to Jamshed, Richa, Farida, Kamal fui, Dhun masi and all of our family in India for opening their doors to us as we travel around. We're incredibly excited about this trip, and we can't wait to land.