Shopping with Autumn in Guwahati

Autumn likes to shop almost as much as her Grandma does so on Saturday Raysha and Pamela decided to venture out on their own, Ray and Andrew did likewise, and Autumn and I decided to go shopping. I think Autumn saw a slightly crazy side of her Grandma! (oh, no is that were my daughters get it from?) We did have fun. First of all when we go shopping we walk for about 5 minutes to where the auto taxi (3 wheelers) are all lined up. When they see us coming they literally jump out of their autos to see where we want to go and if he can wait while we shop and then we bargain a price which in his mind is already about 30 rupees too much. However, I am a softy so whatever, within reason is fine! So off we go to the Hub which is a rather modern department store and quite fun to look in but somewhat expensive. They do have imported things as well as lots of very nice Indian clothes. They also have a nice grocery section which has some imported food and packaged fruits transported from Delhi or Bombay. We got strawberries on Saturday and one day I got Kiwi fruit and yellow peppers. Autumn thought it would be fun to cross the street and just look in some of the hundreds of shops lining the streets. Crossing the street is somewhat hilarious!! Well, after starting and going back a few times and getting to the middle and stopping a kind policeman came and escorted us across. Autumn was about to roll on the street in laughter!! She was actually the scared one!! We began to look for a salwar for her. She loves them. We found a section of the shopping area where there were many stores with salwars in them and we had fun looking at piles of them and really not being satisfied. Finally she did find one that she liked. The man's first price was 520Rs. I thought it was a little much so then he said 20% off-he finally gave it to us for 400RS. It fits her perfectly and looks very cute. Then we decided to walk to get a few veggies and on the way found two baby Khasi stools as we call them. They are made from bamboo. One for Michael and one for Jesse. By this time it was about 5PM and time to head home but we were going the wrong direction so Autumn says, Grandma we need to go the other way but I said that the other day I got one there and he just went strait across the road and went the right way. She wasn't sure about that but we did get one. This one, unfortunately, went all the way around! We did make it home by the time darkness hit, paying a little more than necessary to the nice auto driver. Autumn was very happy with the afternoon. Ray and Andrew went to look at vehicles, got hair cuts and went to a new complex that has bumper cars and a bowling alley so of course Andrew went on the bumper cars. They had a good afternoon. Raysha and Pamela had a wonderful afternoon of shopping and found a nice little coffee shop to have coffee and cake. A great way to spend Saturday afternoon!