One Week to go!

Jill continues to take small but encouraging steps forward.

First, up to this point Jill's disease has left her completely unable to move her tongue.  However  this week she was very excited and happy about her renewed, albeit slight, ability to move her tongue.

Second, she has shown poor coordination in attempting to simultaneously complete two motions or physical actions. For example, tossing a ball underhand requires the arm to swing and the fingers to release at the right moment.  This has been too difficult in the past. Today she is able to toss the ball with good timing of release.

Third, she has been able to take sips of soda which she had given up on before we arrived in Delhi.

In other news of the week, I picked up some sort of bacterial infection or stomach virus that lasted three days ; these are the kind of details I look forward to keeping you appraised of on the blog.  I stayed in the clinic as the staff nursed me back to health just in time for our visit to the Taj Mahal.

Jill's sister Erica arrived on Thursday afternoon and hit the ground running. We left for Agra (Taj Mahal's location) Friday morning and then continued to the princely city of Jaipur on Saturday afternoon.   Despite the relatively short distances of approximately 150 miles of each leg of the journey and the fact that most of the trip was on a divided highway, the traveled at best at an average of 35 miles per hour.  I was very glad to be in the capable hands of a driver, within a nice roomy vehicle, as we watched the freeway extend from 2 lanes to 4 or 5 on numerous traffic-rich occasions.  We stayed in two nice hotels  and guides showed us around both destinations.  My only regret is that we didn't have a little more "pool time".

Despite the 110 degree heat and the 5 hours in the car, Jill handled the trip quite well. No doubt the addition of her sister played some role in keeping her spirits high for most of the trip.  

In Agra we saw the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort.  In Jaipur we saw many more less famous sites that can be seen on a website that  I  stumbled on - http://www.jaipur.org.uk/jaipur-photo-gallery.html