'Life in these United States...'

Yes, I know. I haven't blogged.

The past few weeks had been a lil busy for me as there was a lot of work. Scrap that. There IS a lot of work. :)

Yesterday, my team mates and I went on a trip to a wildlife park called Fossil Rim Wildlife Center at Glen Rose, Texas. It's a sanctuary to certain species of deer, giraffes and a few other exotic animals such as the ostrich, rhino and cheetah. We left at 11 am and reached the park by 1 am.

The idea is to interact with these animals/birds by offering food to them (but obviously not the dangerous ones). The first bird we met on our way was the ostrich. It was daring enough to move towards the car as we slowed down. It was also aware that we had food and it kept incessantly pecking on the roof till one of us rolled down the windows and offered food.

Even though in reality deers are very shy and nervous creatures, the deers at the park were quite used to human presense. The Arabian oryx was the most friendly as each one of its kind kept approaching the cars to get more food. My personal favorite was the giraffe. It was so gentle!

We all were famished by the time we sat down for lunch at the picnic area around 3:30 pm. I had never been so happy to see rice and sambhar in my life! :D

After lunch, we found a petting zoo. That's where you could brush down or hold a few farmyard animals. It was a lil funny because the sheep and goats looked so huge around the tummy area that we all thought they were pregnant. As we were exiting the zoo, there was a board that said: 'No, we're NOT pregnant. We just have four-chambered stomachs!' I guess the zoo keepers were a bit tired of answering that question. ;)

On our way back, we saw more giraffes, bison and cheetah. The surrounding areas were beautiful and we even got a spectacular shot of a watering hole.

Here are a few pictures of the whole drive. Click here.

As we made our way back to Dallas, I thought that we were on our way back to the hotel. All of us were tired. But a team mate, Sundar, had other plans. We reached Richardson around 8pm. He took us to a dancing fountain which was near our office. The dancing fountain itself was beautiful and Sundar made us all to splash around in the water. I definitely perked up after that unexpected shower. :D

We reached the hotel by 9pm, all drenched, and then we spent some time reviewing the photos and movie clips that we shot during the day.

Today, the girls (Kat, Poornima, Youngsil and I) spent the day shopping. I thought I'd get bored stiff but this time we shopped for accessories. So, YES! As usual, I went ahead and bought lots and lots and.. LOTS. :) I'm not kidding people, we girls had enough of shopping bags to fit the trunk of our car.

Anyway, one month down. Hopefully less than one month to go.

Yes. I'm homesick. :(