Atlanta ILites Luncheon Get Together

Hi All,

We Atlanta ILites had been planning for the last 2-3 weeks to meet and get to know each other...and finally it happened today (August 18th, 2007).

There were 4 of us who came for the get together - Raji, Hema, Nivedi (aka Priya), and me i.e. Aarushi (aka Preeti).

Raji is the one in blue top, Hema in the pink top, Priya in the black top and me in the peach -brown top.

We decided to meet at an Italian restaurant called "Olive Garden" which was near Hema's digs.

From the moment we met, it was like meeting old friends...everybody was smiling and laughing...It was great fun and I felt like we had known each other for a long time...we had tons of stuff to talk about and conversation just flowed...All of us had a wonderful time and wished that we could stay on longer...

Wanting to develop our new found friendship further, we've decided to make it a monthly event (next one tentatively scheduled for September last week)and I hope we can get more Atlanta ILites to join us...

We also got to meet Raji's husband and 2 lovely daughters... which has prompted us to invite our husbands also to the next meet...

I'm posting some pictures of us along with the food and also the Olive Garden manager (Winston), who came by to our table to make sure we were having a good time... and then at the end, came to say goodbye to us and insisted on clicking a snap with all of us ..

Thanks to IndusLadies for providing us with a forum that attracts such great people to it whom I would love to have as friends in real life...

Some more pix..this time of our luncheon spread...

We had artichoke spinach dip for appetizer followed by a garden salad with italian dressing (forgot to take pix of those unfortunately)..we were so busy eating then....

By the time the main course came, we had diluted our hunger pangs and took the time to click some pix...

The first one is "Ravioli de Portobello" - that Hema and Nivedi had. The second one is "Fettucini Alfredo" that Raji had. The third one is "Chicken marsala" that I had. The last one is Hema holding up the desserts menu that had us all salivating... We finally settled on "Tiramisu" (the item just below the chocolate icecream) which we all shared (since we were stuffed from all the other food). We couldn't take a pic of the Tiramisu because it lasted all of 2 minutes..he he...

Enjoy!!

dear aarushi,
wish you could explain who is who, you people know each other but i dont think many of us know you all only by ur name so it would be better to inform like the one in blue dress and so on...i am so glad malathy has brought about such a wonderful forum for ladies to make friends wherever they are..sunkan

ohhhh..Thanks for pointing that out sunkan!! I'm going to edit my post and write down who's who...

btw Raji is the one in blue top, Hema in the pink top, Priya in the black top and me in the peach -brown top. :)

hey preethi

gr8 to c tht u guys hav met up and nice tht IL is growing in a very healthy way..well the monthly meet up seems quite interesting...

lov
sowmi

Hi ladies
The snaps are great and very nice to see the young , vibrant women beyond their usernames.
Aarushi thanks for sharing the snaps (including the spread!) and giving us an overview of the fun you had.

Regards
Honeybee

Dear Aarushi,
Very lively write up, as vibrant as the members of IL family.The photographs speak for themselves.Yet another set of faces who were known to us by their ids
Regards,
Meenu

Congratulations Atlant'ians!!! :)

You beat us to it

We have been planning a get together here for 'ages' now and due to one or the other thing, nothing has materialized till now !! But it WILL happen, mind you :)
Meeting at Olive Garden was a good idea too.

Enjoyed seeing all of you, all lovely and cheery young IL'ites. Hello to all, now I have some faces behind the names. I loved all of your tops...ethnic chic :)

Great job and great pics. Good idea to photograph the food .... never thought Olive Garden food would look so good in pics...ha ha ha....It surely is a nice place to eat at. We love the food there and their salads. Artichoke-spinach dip is an all time favorite with us.

L, Kamla

Hi ladies,

Thanks to the initiative of Aarushi and the enthusiasm and participation of Raji and Hema , we had a good time yesterday - time just for ourselves. We took a step forward from being cyber acquaintances. This is my first such outing in the US and thanks to IL for that. I can now understand the enthusiasm in all those IL meets that take place in Chennai at Chitvish's place.

We hope the IL meets in Atlanta will grow and will take place regularly.

Cheers!

Dear Atlanta IL'ites (Aarushi, Nivedi, Hema & Raji),

Great to know about your get together and glad to know that you all enjoyed it. You all are looking lovely in nice bright tops and with wonderful smiles .

Thanks to all of you for taking the time to meet up, take pictures of the same and post a write-up about how it went. We all felt we too were there in the luncheon. Special thanks to Aarushi for taking a lead in making this happen.

Lovely choice of foods you all have had and Olive Garden's Ravioli de Portobello is my all-time favorite along with their fresh Garden salad.

Monthly meet-ups seem to be a great idea. Love to see more Atlanta IL'ites in your next meet.

Regards,
Malathy