Waiting to fly

Hi Family and friends,

In early to mid-June, Karen and I began the process of saying good-bye to our Delhi and Gurgaon friends and boarded an airliner for a two hour flight from Delhi to Mumbai on June 18th. Getting three cats on board a domestic airliner in India is no small task. Security insisted on seeing the cat containers but wouldn't have anything to do with the cats themselves. I talked to many supervisors and coordinators before the transaction actually took place. Karen was busy with the debit card covering the cost of the extra baggage and the cats themselves, which we had already taken to the vets office and gotten documentation of their shots and certificates so they could travel. The vet was trained in America and when he sees and American he charges American prices so all the paperwork and the cages, etc, ran way over $200 USD. They were not happy about their new journey and of course, when we arrived at our new apartment near mid-night on Saturday night, security was not happy to see us or our cats. They refused to let us into our new apartment. Calls were placed and, with the cats howling in the background, after about 45 minutes of negotiating, we ended up being let in. The first picture at the top is one of Karen's and my best friends in India, Louise Eikerman. She called and met us at the mall just a day before she was going to board an airliner for her native Canada. She is a nurse and a sweetheart, who has helped us a couple of times. She is now already back in India and has said that Vancouver was lovely this summer. Blue skies, perfect temperatures, etc. Rub it in, Louise. Friends Simon and Jess Alexander also saw us off and have invited us to spend Christmas with them in one of the most beautiful parts of India, the Kerala coast. We really look forward to that and hope that it all works out.

In the meantime, the last few weeks have been consumed with getting a major inspection done on the airplane so that has given us a little time to get some trips done, which you already saw the blog for the Pune trip. We have been busy trying to get all the paperwork in order for our third visit to the FRRO, foreign regional registration office. This most hated of Indian government bureaucracies is just indicative of how things go wrong when you allow paperwork and old ideas left over from the British way of doing things to flourish and grow for decades. Its just horrible and now we have made two visits there with at least a 90 minute drive each way in traffic and with not even the courtesy to get in and speak with any of the people since they always find something wrong with the paperwork. Part of this required a visit to Delhi by airlines to deregister there so we could register here in Mumbai. Until you have been here and done this you cannot imagine the amount of time and energy that goes into keeping all your paperwork and visas and other transactions current and ready in case you need them.

At least, since I have come to Mumbai, we have been flying some quite interesting people. The picture above with the lady in blue is a famous Bollywood actress here named Somali Bandre. She flew with us twice and once she had a planeload of friends from Bollywood so that was a fun and interesting trip.

Karen and I have been traveling to the Mumbai Central SDA church every weekend that we are here. Traffic is bad, although if you leave early enough, we can make it in 45 minutes. If you leave a little late, then it's over an hour. Gives new meaning to the trip to church every week but we love the little congregation of only about 60 people. The pastor is a wonderful, young man, Pastor Rajan Paul, who has been very kind to Karen and I as we moved (shifted) into the Mumbai area. Just an interesting sidelight. The pastors here in India are paid so poorly that it is just kind of sad. Our current pastor's wife has a nice, corporate job near our apartment and she makes many times what he does. In fact, he told us that his salary only pays the tithe on his wife's salary. Kind of puts dedication to the church and it's work in a new light when you consider that. I remember my folks taking a job as missionaries in Chile, South America back in the mid-40's. Dad's starting salary was $30/month and they were starving to death. Just unbelievable what church work expects of people sometimes. Dad said that even though they were ex-pats from America that the division office had decided that they would be compensated as locals. If I had been dad, I would have been on the next boat home. They had just riden on a frieght ship from New York that took them weeks to get there. Once they got there, it was going to be 6 years before they got to see America again, courtesy of the church. Mom had her first baby thousands of miles away from home, without the support of family or people that she could easily communicate with. Wow, mom, I have a new appreciation for what you went through. You made some great friends, though, and now, all these years later, your friends from those many years ago in Chile, the Wanderslebans, are good friends from Cleveland, Tennessee. Turns out, that many years later, I hired Fred Salyers as a pilot at Life Care Centers in Cleveland, and he had married the Wanderslebans daughter, Joyce, so SDA world strikes again.

When I first came to India, I had told Karen that 2-3 years would be it. Now, I am going into my 3rd year and I have changed my story. Of course, you never know how it will work out, but if things go according to my plan at all, then we will stay in India for another 6 and 1/2 years until I hit my 65th birthday and will no longer be able to fly here.

We keep talking about things that we should blog about and then I can't remember what we wanted to say when I sit down to write. One of the things we have discovered is that pedestrians are not protected in traffic like they are in America. If a car comes for you, you better jump, as they will not move or slow down. So, Karen ends up screaming at the drivers and waving her arms like mad, which I am sure just makes them wonder what's wrong with that blonde, American woman there in the way. I tell her she is not going to change the culture here but that doesn't seem to change her mind about this one. We like our neighborhood here better with a Chili's restaurant and a Spaghetti Kitchen that make us feel much more at home.The gym is about 3 blocks away and when we walk there we have discovered one of the differences here is that they don't pick up their pet's dog poop so you better watch your step. We see the natives stopped, with their pets, just doing the business in the middle of the sidewalk, not even moving to the curb. PLEASE, people!! Karen usually makes friends with every dog in the neighborhood but here she has met with some resistance that we have blamed on skin color. These dogs not only don't want to come to her, but bark and snap and really don't want to be with her. She got her feelings hurt but not every dog on the planet is going to love anyone. Our little Poppy cat was going into heat and caterwalling around the apartment for weeks, so I finally took her to the vet and got her fixed. We just took her to a vet a few blocks away and you would have been amazed at this little vet office, with the operating table right there in the office. They shaved Poppy's side in a square about two inches on a side and so it will take months for her hair to look right again, although she doesn't seem to mind. Boy, now I think she is becoming my new favorite kitty, as she has calmed down and really is a wonderful cat, considering she was going to be a Feral cat on the streets of Gurgaon until that fateful night in March of 2010 when Karen reached down, picked her up and her life changed, miraculously, forever. God does something similar for us, if we let HIM. Karen now knows the names of all dozen or so dogs that we see on our way to the gym and back each day. We love our gym and the people here are warming up to us. We finally found a couple of ex-pat organizations that have promised to let us know what is going on and to invite us to come to their social functions.

I have decided I want to buy either a real piano or possibly and electronic one for the Mumbai church. They have neither a piano or organ so the music is done each week with the assistance of a wonderful, young man and his guitar. I love the guitar, but miss the keyboard function and hope maybe we can find one reasonably here in Mumbai to help them out.

Hope this finds you all well. Will be back flying again in just a couple of days. There will be more road pictures and stories from that.

Love you guys,

Dan