First night in Delhi

A couple of you have asked ... after my Glimpses post ... what it was like the first few days here in Delhi.

I'll try my best to recreate, remember and recount, but I truly was in a fog that first week. If I'm honest, I still may very well be in one to this day!

We arrived at 10:00 pm on a Friday night in Delhi. The INSTANT the forward cabin doors were opened, I remember feeling a swoosh of heat. Hot, sticky, oppressive heat. It didn't matter though, because we were quite tired of the stale air, that had been forced and recirculated through the vents in the airplane for the past 12 hours.

We gathered up our things, said goodbye to the wonderful flight attendants and set on our way to find Todd.

We followed the crowd to where we assumed we needed to go. Down the escalators ... this tired and ragged bunch of travelers ... to the first checkpoint. Health screening. Due to H1N1, we were all required to state our originating airport, answer whether we'd been sick, and then "pass" the heat sensors that were scanning our bodies for high temperatures.

Next stop to be formally admitted into the country. We made our way - rather quickly - to the line for foreigners. Because of our seating class on the airplane, we beat most of the traffic to this point in our journey and I was excited to be at the front of the line.

Our visas were checked. Our passports looked over. Our visas were checked. Our passports looked over. Our passports looked over. Our visas were checked.


[No, I am not stuttering ... it felt like T-H-E longest passport check in history (and I've done a few). Here, I had 3 owly kids who just wanted to see their dad, and a mom who was plain tuckered out ... and the passport agent (is that what he's called?) kept flipping the pages of our passports ... back and forth // forth and back ... as if magically a golden coin or a Willy Wonka Chocolate Bar was going to leap from those pages.]

When he finally deemed us approved to cross over that yellow line, I felt relief. We'd done it. We'd arrived. That was all I'd set out to do when we first boarded the plane over 24 hours prior, was simply get from Point A to Point B .. and we succeeded.

No more than 5 steps away was Todd. We were both overcome with a myriad of emotions, neither one of us are too sure which were the most prevalant, only that the sigh we both let out most likely echoed in the Delhi airport that night. Tony ran into his dad's arms and Mia cried, probably from sheer exhaustion. Terran just shook his dad's hand and they awkwardly did "the man pat."

Because he knew we were tired, Todd showed us (along with the help of a man from his office) to the baggage claim. There we played catch up and I sent messages of "we've arrived" on my new 'mobile' to friends/family back home.

Once our baggage arrived (a long and painful process, but I don't want to bore you with the details of waiting for our 8 huge suitcases), we walked through customs (an easy process) and outside to our first glimpse of Delhi.

The smell of India hit me SQUARE in the face. I can't describe it, and I so wish that I could. It is something that seems to have permanently engrained itself in both nostrils and I wish that I could have bottled the outside air that I'm used to for those days that I just need a bit of what I was formerly accustomed to.

The smell of India (as I affectionally call it) is a strange combination of heat, diesel, cardammom, heat, sweat, trash, more heat, humidity, incense and what else, I'm not quite sure. The smell of India collides almost violently with the sound of India. The horns, the sound of diesel vehicles which is not the quiet pur of an engine you might be used to back in the States, the yelling, the horns and more horns.

The kids and I just stood there with wide eyes, as we were ushered to the waiting cars and drivers.

Wide eyes, but open hearts.

We spent the next hour in the car, as we made our way from the airport to our new home. When we pulled up to our street, we saw the guards leap to attend to our bags, Rosy our cook, came to the door straight away and welcomed us. Todd had filled the house with flowers for me, and two people were ready to give us all massages. There were "Welcome to India" cakes and wine. Yes, there was wine.

My first night in Delhi is one that marked the end of one chapter in my life and the beginning of the next.

[The next week or so proved a battle of beating the jetlag monster, but once that was over, we hit the ground running!]

PASSPORT PHOTOS and the FRRO

Utter these four letters (F.R.R.O.) to any expat in India and you'll likely get a groan, sigh or a barrage of different choice four letter words.

Within the first couple of weeks of your arrival into India, you are required - as a foreigner - to register with the Foreigner Regional Registration Office. Sounds easy enough right? In fact, we spent the summer talking with various expats in other countries who explained that it simply took "one piece of paper, and a quick 30 minute visit to the office."

Yea ... not in India!

Because I know that so many people have SO many different experiences with the FRRO, I'm choosing to take the easy way out when writing about this required process (also known as "pointing you in the direction of people who have already written about it).

Since I am not going to rewrite the book, first I will point you to this website (which I only JUST found) ... the FRRO India. Written and maintained by expats and NOT the city officials, it is a helpful guide to refer to.

Jen shared with me this cool spot to get ONLINE passport photos ... and from the little I looked around, they appear to be FREE!!

By the way ... if you're on your way here, or have just arrived -- it does not hurt to have 30 passport photos of each of your family members at any one time!  Really!  You will need them for almost every imaginable thing.

Also to note, they are MUCH cheaper here in India than they are state-side.  Get just a sheet before you arrive ... and save the job of getting multiples until you land.

On to the "they've already written about it" posts ::

Sharell's post

Katherine's post 

Abby's post 

Ayeshea's post

Sounds fun, right?  I think I should be enterprising and set up a little kiosk outside the FRRO and stock it with ibuprofen, coffee, little board games for the kids, popsicles, magazines and other things to help pass the time and make the process a smidge easier and more tolerable!

Have passport ...

For the next couple of weeks, the grandparents will rejoice and the non-family readers will sigh ... as I will be blogging loads of posts about the kids and NOT so much about Delhi or India.


Summer is rapidly fading away and we are concurrently rapidly losing steam when it comes to being excited for yet another day of spending 24/7 time together.


Recently though, the kids moaned and groaned about the requirement to start off our day by getting visa/passport photos.  Now, mind you - it is a relatively simple and painless process.  You drive to the kiosk/shop, pose in front of the white background, the photographer clicks away, and then Kushal goes back two hours later to pick up the photos.  


Apparently though, when you're 4 and 6, it is a HUGE waste of time to spend those 15 minutes BEFORE the pool, getting those photos taken.


Anywhoo ... when we got home, they asked why their toys didn't have passports.  More specifically, why the Barbies and Woody didn't have passports.


So I did what any mama would do ... and we made passports.


First step ... take passport photos ::

Next up :: 


Glue sticks, cutting the Great Seal of America hot off of the printer and glancing over at their own passports every so often for inspiration

What was so cute about this was when it came time to list the toys' citizenship, Tony got creative.  Instead of USA or India, he decided that Woody came from "Andy's Room" and Buzz Lightyear's citizenship was "Infinity & Beyond."


~ ~ ~ ~


Moving on to cute thing #2 from recent moments.  Mia has been long awaiting her fourth birthday.  Mostly because that is the magic age that she could start ballet lessons.  She turned four ... I registered her and brought home "THE BOOK"


Because this sequence of photos was taken without her knowledge, I'm going to simply share them without my commentary ... precious.

She starts this week ... and I can't wait! 

Have Visa, Will Travel

I just received an email notification that all four passports (the kids and mine) are on their way back to us, with a shiny new India Visa stamp in them!

Can I just say that I'm pretty impressed that our kids have passports (first of all) and that they are soon to have some amazing memories and experiences "stamped" in their minds forever?

We were just reminiscing the other day and looking at Terran's old passport ... complete with a stamp from Johannesburg, South Africa and then Nairobi, Kenya. Then there's Todd's old passports ... talk about some experiences there! Russia, Brazil, Italy to name a few.

Our children will soon expand their global awareness ... and I'm thrilled about that.

I've long been fascinated with all things travel.

(Of course there is a difference between --- sailing the ocean blue on a cruise ship to somewhere romantic, where your days are filled with shore excursions and mojitos --- and shipping your belongings to be sent across that ocean, where your initial days are possibly filled with travelers' diarrhea and Immodium AD.)

I can't wait until the passports are back in our hand. It has felt quite disconcerting this past week or so to have them off in the hands of the Consulate's office ... hoping that we filled all of the questions out correctly and that we would be granted our entrance into the country, without any problems.


With our passports, our seatbelts buckled, the prayers of our friends and family, and an attitude of "why not" our family will grow together, prosper, and have stories to tell that you might not even believe!

Visas

I think I mentioned that I've divided the to-do list into sections and have assigned each task a week. Some items easily fit in the WEEK 1 category and others obviously can fall into later categories, like WEEK 9.

One of the list items that I had previously assigned to Week 8 was the Visa Applications for the kids and I. I just assumed that since they were only valid for ONE YEAR from the date they were approved, that the longer we waited, the longer they would be valid once we arrived in India.

Todd kept after me to get the Applications started and I'm so glad he did. Not until I caved and moved "Complete Visa Applications" from Week 8 to Week 4, did I realize that the kids' Applications MUST be signed by both parents, in order to be issued.

We gathered all of the required documentation, including Todd's needed signature (would have been kind of difficult to have acquired once he left on the 16th!) and I headed to the Post Office to ship them off.

If we learn nothing else through this process, we will have mastered the concept of "there is a first time for everything." I am consistently met with the question "You're moving WHERE?", followed soon after by "Well, I'm not really sure HOW to do that."

After 27 minutes in the Post Office, attempting to figure out how to send four Visa Applications, with delivery confirmation, as quickly as possible, BY registered mail AND with some kind of insurance in place for our passports (that must accompany the Visa Application), the Applications are on their way to the consulate in New York.

We will soon have our passports stamped with a pretty visa to India! Have Passport and Visa, will travel!