Tickets, visas and denial

Sunita, Anila. Thanks, you came through. Not a minute too soon. So a week before we depart, we finally received our plane tickets and an email from the Indian Embassy saying our visas should be here tomorrow.

The denial that we are actually moving is just getting deeper. At least iTunes will be well packed. Apprently I have so much time before we leave that I really can just spend hours downloading cds to our laptop. Hours.

None of us have any underwear packed yet.

Also, I am melancholy a little about the fact that about 99% of our meals are comprised of foods that In am pretty sure we will not be able to find abroad.

A poem:

Morningstar Farms

I love the yummy way

Your breakfast patties

crisp up in the

microwave

and how the high flavor notes

are so lovingly brought out by A-1 steak sauce.

I miss you already, little patties, little sauce.

Some things we still need to get together before we leave.

• Visas. I am going to have to go collection services on Anila at Travisa Outsourcing soon. She has the passports too.
• Tickets. Sunita, just buy them. Anila will come through, dont worry.
• HIV test for foreign registration office. This will be infinitely easier to get done here. Have I told you about the Anderson County bureaucracy? Well, if the lady isn't out for lunch (lunch is *very* serious business here), then you will be served right away, no line, front row parking. Though sometimes you have to go to the bookstore afterwards to kill a little more time so that the grandparents watching the googoo get their money's worth.
• More passport photos. More and more, for everything.
• Don't forget to take the next typhoid vaccine pill tomorrow. Three to go.
• Cancel credit cards.
• Cancel cell phones. Everyone we love: please get a webcam so we can talk to you on skype.
• Quick, learn hindi. Phir milenge!

Packing

It is about ten days before we are supposed to leave. We still need a couple of things before we leave:

1. visas (we paid extra for overnight shipping, SIX WEEKS AGO)
2. plane tickets (we gave the company our dates, two and half months ago)
3. passports (visa people holding them hostage)

Nice. Indian beauracracy is starting early. Portentous clouds, indeed.

However, I know it will work out. Because it has to. And they need us to show up, so they will have to buy our tickets in order for us to get there.

It is just as well. I dont know what day of the week it is and we have been packing for days. It seems to take about twelve hours to pack one suitcase. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. Zazie keeps jumping in the suitcase and taking everything in them out so she can be turned into a delightful package. We have to close the suitcase, pretend the UPS truck delivered her, open the suitcase and act surprised each time she jumps out. It is cute, but it slows the already interminably slow process down.
2. Everything I place in the suitcase, Zazie needs to play with immediately. "Buuuuuuut I loooooooooooooove Daddy's special sweet baby socks. I neeeeeeeeeeed to cuddle them, they are my sweet baby cuddly socks. I love them. My sweet sock, sweet, sweet, baby sock. Now I throw you, little sock. Run, little sock. I am going to hide the socks in the library. You'll never find my sweet little socks." She is right.
3. Because there are a million micro-decisions to be made. Tossing everything into a big truck would make everything much easier, but unfortunately, we can't drive to India. How many sweaters? It is apparently not hotter than hell in India, but only because there is less humidity. Two sweaters. But I am not 4'10" and 97 pounds. If it gets cold will I even be able to buy a sweater? Three sweaters. But what if we go to Jammu-Kashmir or the Hill District. Okay, down jacket. Okay that is ridiculous. I DO NOT need a down jacket in India. Do I? I just don't know. Start Over.
4. I really, really just want to go swimming instead.

So the glamorous world of international travel begins.