a known address!

After a lot of learning and negotiating, we finally have an address and keys. It has been a long three weeks of searching.  We thought that finding a flat in Delhi would be fairly easy. We thought we would find something in our price range with all our preferences quickly.  But, south Delhi has a very inflated market and we have white skin (skin tax as some call it).  I don't know what we were thinking as most processes in India are very twisted and take a long time.  It was a grueling three weeks for Graham "the searcher" and for the kids and me as we waited in our temorary flat one hour outside of Delhi with little to entertain them.

To break up the time for the kids, we decided to have family outing one night in search of a store to find some crayons and coloring pads to keep them busy.  We also decided to visit McDonalds to get some flavors from home (even though we rarely go to McDonalds in Omaha).  The fries taste exactly the same.  The only thing missing is the beef burger and the replacement for this is a spicey chicken tikka or vegetable burger.  We accomplished our errand and dinner run and made it back to the apartment via bicycle rickshaw in time to put the kids down and enjoy a nice King Fisher.  We got out of the rickshaw and realized that we had left our precious craft items on board.  Graham took off sprinting into the night only to come back empty handed.  After the kids shed some tears about the lost bags, they went to bed.  We took the King Fishers out of the fridge only to notice that they actually read "King Feemer" in a King Fisher bottle and turned out to be a knock off non-alcoholic horrible tasting beer.  We had been scammed!  Trying to keep things light and humorous around here:)

Off to the mountains tomorrow to visit with the rest of the eMi family and friends and gather our belongings.  No doubt it will be bitter sweet as Oaklands still feels like home, but we will have a nice empty flat waiting to be furnished when we return to Delhi.

On the house hunt.  William and Graham ponder this location

The guest bedroom of our new place.  Anyone for a visit?

an unknown address.

I felt my heart being pushed on and weighed down as we gave final hugs and kisses at Eppley airport to Lark and my parents.  Even though we have been saying good byes a lot in the past couple of years it doesn't seem to get easier.  After having checked all our bags, we gathered and had a little team meeting, making sure we knew how many bags and children we needed to keep track of as we boarded the planes.  Okay...one kid strapped onto Graham.  One baby strapped onto me.  Hudson and Priya and their backpacks holding a hand and then six other carry-ons to haul.  Our trek through the airports felt a little disheveled and we turned many heads some with grins and some quite confused at our ship moving through. It was not uncommon to have atleast three kids crying at the same time or a couple crawling around on the airport floor, but we made it to Delhi with no real set-backs.  We occupied a whole middle section of the plane and the kids slept nearly the whole 13 hour flight.  In Delhi, the customs official peered up very curiously through his spectacles after Graham places six passports on his counter to be stamped.  We managed to stuff our family and all our belongings into just one taxi van.  It was a puzzle to be solved.  We then took off into the darkness to find our flat. The emailed address printed out and folded in Graham's pocket.  "Why is India so rusty and old?"  Hudson asked.  He asks this every time we arrive in India from Omaha.

The taxi driver asked Graham to repeat the address multiple times.  As soon as Graham used an Indian accent to tell him, he seemed to understand where we were going.  We arrived, dismounted and unloaded.  The kids and I sat surrounded by high towered concrete apartments in the dark by our bags as Graham went to locate the key.  As we waited they played with the left over fire cracker trash from the recent Diwali holiday, their hands covered in black soot.  I surrendered my initial reaction to their dirtiness and let them play while trying to console a fussy William.  The key was located and Graham ported our bags up to our apartment which is luckily only one floor up.  The tenants have been away for some time now, so the whole place was covered in dust.  We found the beds and prepared for a long night of broken sleep.  Jet lagging with four kids means atleast one is awake at all times.

We were all awake by 0400 and hungry so snacked on the fruit snacks and peanut M'n'M's that LaLa had given Hudson for the journey.  By 0800 we were out the door looking for food.  There was a little tea stall open across the street next to a large temple and dusty deserted fair ground.  We fed the kids some biscuits and mango fruities.  Needing to locate a more substantial market with more then just snacks, we were adviced to go to the sector 6 market.  A group of thin men and their parked, tattered bicycle rickshaws were gathering and getting ready for a day of work.  We negotiated the price for two man-powered rickshaws and proceeded at a very unhurried pace being passed by trucks, buses, motorcycles and cars on the busy highway.  We reached the sector 6 market and dismounted at around 0830 arguing about the final price which had doubled from the intial negotiated amount.  Shortly after this, we remembered that most things in India don't open until after 10AM.  We should have known.  Now, needing to kill some time, we asked the only store that was open for some chai and sipped it as the kids ran around playing with some trash that they picked up off the ground.  I again surrendered my reaction to the dirtiness of this and we were approached by a young boy selling his shoe cleaning and repair services.  With tools and new sole material strapped to his back he pointed out the crack in the rubber of my chucks and said "glue".  I denied the need for the repair and looked over at Hudson who was taking the whole encounter in.  

We left the market shortly after 10 AM with two grocery bags full of food and managed to squeeze into just one cycle rickshaw on our way home.  We took a different route home which was under construction and had to get down a couple of times due to an extremely bumpy road.  These bicycles and carts do not have proper shocks.  The different route revealed a wonderful mother dairy shop and grocer with basic fruits and vegetables right next door to our apartment towers.  Our trip for food now is not so involved as the first experience.

We are grateful to have a place to land as we begin our search for a flat of our own.