Happy Thanksgiving & Happy Belated Birthday to Vaishnavi

Here is Vaishnavi with a gift from my AP History class. A stuffed animal so big you can get on its back. Now that's cool!

A cute smile & new reading material from Nana.

Vaishnavi was very excited to get twin baby dolls to play with. Even though they are twins, she didn't want to share :(

Ruchi was very happy with the Giant Giraffe too. She has named the giraffe Emily.

For a Thanksgiving family photo op, we dressed up in our new Indian clothes.

Still in India

We waited at the airport for hours, and finally our flight was canceled.

We are staying at the Hotel Intercontinental in Delhi. They gave us the PRESIDENTIAL SUITE, which is quite literally the largest hotel suite I've ever seen. It's definitely bigger than one floor of our house. Hey, we've been at the airport since 4:30 AM, we are exhausted, we don't have any of our bags, and we really wanted to be on our way home. I'm willing to see a little silver lining!


We don't know what flight we will be on yet, but hopefully it will be the same 7:20 AM flight tomorrow. We haven't really had a proper meal all day, either. Do I sound like Eeyore? It's just been a hard day.

Ixnay ightseeingsay

Because we finished all of our paperwork on Thursday, I was hoping to do some sightseeing in Delhi. Wendy didn't want to do anything, I really did. Finally, we agreed to disagree: I would go out sightseeing while she stayed at the hotel. Well, the whole thing turned out to be a moot point, because I got sick and ended up sleeping until 2:30 in the afternoon.

Instead of wonderful pictures of famous attractions, I have a picture from the hallway in our hotel room. (I think it means something else in India!) I also have a few other recent pictures.

It's Official

It's been a busy couple of days, but we're done with all the paperwork for Vaishnavi's visa. We flew from Pune to Delhi on Wednesday and went directly from the airport to the US Embassy. We visited the Citizenship & Immigration office (and filed our I-600), and then we went to the Visa office and started that paperwork. Thursday morning we went to get a medical checkup for Vaishnavi. This amounted to 2 hours of waiting + 3 minutes with the doctor. Then it was back to the embassy, where our Visa interview and processing went remarkably quickly. So by lunchtime today we were all set with our official documents, and we can bring Vaishnavi home!!

We had the afternoon for shopping, or stimulating the local economy, as my mother likes to say. Everything's gone smoothly, but we're very tired. We can't wait to come home.

Sisters

Ruchi wins Artist of the Year award for the picture she drew of herself and Vaishnavi. It was also too cute when she and Vaishnavi fell asleep on each other after watching a movie this afternoon.

Day off in Pune

Our day didn't start off so well; Ruchi caught a stomach bug and threw up this morning. After that, things have been better. Wendy did crafts with Ruchi and Vaishnavi. I went out to a department store and did a little shopping. The other family that is here adopting was craving American food, so we had Pizza Hut for lunch. We'll hopefully get a chance to go swimming in the hotel pool before dinner. Tomorrow is a rush-rush day as we fly up to Delhi and start processing the I-600 form at the US Embassy.

Welcome, Vaishnavi

Greetings from Pune! These are some of our pictures of our first day with Vaishnavi. Vaishnavi has cried a lot today; I have no idea how hard it must be to process all of this. I think the most beautiful image I have of the day came when it was almost time for us to leave. Here we are, virtual strangers, and Vaishnavi picks up her little purple backpack, and leads the way out the door. Talk about bravely stepping into the future without turning back! It's about 6PM, and we're now in our hotel. She's warming up to us quickly. Ruchi, meanwhile, has sacked out on the couch.