First things first

As I sit at our table in our apartment in Delhi I could be anywhere in the world (apart from the fact that our flat looks like India.) It is night time and all is quite still at the moment. Once morning arrives the first sounds of the morning remind me of where we are. The first thing is the smell of light smoke followed by the loud cawing crows that all seem to wake at once. The next thing to follow is the sound of the tea wallah calling his in his sing song way. I lie in my bed and smile to myself, we are in India.

The children have been amazing. (C) our 6 year old thinks that India is the same as New Zealand but that India is cleaner. I am not sure what sort of lenses he is looking through but I am pleased he is enjoying it. They do not seem to be phased by the cultural differences. The girls are happy to go to the local shops together and to make their own purchases.

Our friends son Jordy took the girls to see a movie the other night. They caught an auto rickshaw (took took) and did not return until after 10pm. I never would have let them do that In N.Z but for some reason it seems OK here. Maybe the fact they were with a male made the difference for me. He is a well built 14 year old.

It has taken a while to find out where to shop and how to get things done. We have come to the realization that a phone call followed by a delivery seems to do it for almost everything. I do like to get fruit from the local fruit stalls though.

Here's a few photos of our arrival into India and our apartment and local shopping areas.

Arriving in India

Namaste

We are here! As we walked off the plane the familiar smell of sweet smoke filled my nostrils and the memories of India began to fill my mind.
I have a bit of catching up to do because we have been here for about 5 days and have not managed to get online to write.

So, here we are, in Delhi. We set off on Malaysian airlines on the 12th Feb 2010 with a pile of passports and many boarding passes to fill out. Sean met us at the airport along with heaps of friends and family to see us off. It was an emotional time of goodbyes but it went better than I thought it would. There were so many people, we really did appreciate everyone coming.

By the time we were through customs all tears were gone and we were all ready to embark on the adventure that lay before us.

Before we even took off (J1) was screaming his head off. I think as they pressurised the cabin his ears hurt. Once we were up in the air, with some very excited children, he was fine and ready to sit in his own seat. I gave him a sedative that our doctor prescribed but he must have been the 1/100000 who has an adverse affect of doing the opposite. He slept for half an our the entire 11 hr flight. The good thing was that he was pretty good most of the time and enjoyed walking up and down the isle waving to everyone.

We had a one night stop over care of Malaysian airlines in the pan pacific. It was so nice. They gave us four rooms, 1 double, 1 single and 2 triples. (DH) and I did need to separate because the rooms were spread throughout the hotel floor.

We spent the day by taking a train into the city and then enjoying a swim in the hotel pool before heading back to the airport. This flight was better and everyone slept well after Jaxon did his pre take off screaming again.

I may stop this post here and carry on in a new one.

Must be tired

As I look over my blog I noticed that I have already posted about a lot of this stuff.
Must be time for a good long sleep.
My parents are insisting we sleep in their bed tonight so I know it is going to be the most comfortable sleep I have had in a while.
Good night

The time has come

So much has happened so quickly since my last post. It has been a whirl wind since then.
Our business was approved on Friday 29th Jan then our certificate of incorporation was emailed to us an hour later so we sent off our visa applications. The embassy would have received them on the Monday and our passports were returned to us on the Wed complete with Employment visas for both of us.

It looked like it was going to be hard to get quick flights at a decent rate but managed to get flights for us and Sean on the 12th Feb.

As I write it is the 11th Feb. This is the eve of our departure. I can't quite believe it is happening.
We have a stop over in Malaysia with accommodation at the Pan pacific with free buffet and airport transport.

I have some photo's of our house in Bangalore which I will post soon.

This is a bit of a readers digest version but maybe I can flesh it out some time soon.

Delhi accommodation

Our friends in Delhi have been very good to us and they have been hunting down accommodation for us for the weeks we will be in Delhi. They have found a place and have sent these photos through to us. It is a two bedroom apartment and we are so excited. It's one more bedroom than our caravan :) and it has a toilet I am guessing. Not sure what type of toilet yet. What an exciting adventure we are having. All the kids are now ready to go, plus us of course.

Reality approaching

I almost can't believe that I am now sitting here writing that all our paper work is done and approved. We now have a complete green light to head for India. I cannot even begin to find words that can express how I am feeling right now. AAAAGGGGGHHHH! may sort of describe it.

God is just so awesome and amazing. Not only did our visas get approved but both David and I got our Employment visas that we wanted. We had been told that it can be hard for the spouse to get employment visas. They would have received our application on Monday, approved on Tuesday and back in our hands on the Wednesday. That must be record speed.

Our next step is to book tickets. We will be chatting with Sean tonight to discuss days, times etc and possibly book online tonight.

We could quite possibly be sitting in India next week.