Leaving on a Jet Plane...

So here I am sitting in the airport lounge waiting for my flight to India and thinking about all that has happened over the last few days. I finally received word that my work visa had been approved last Friday. After letting CPA Global know that my visa was approved, they booked me on a flight leaving on Wednesday.

I've known I was leaving soon - but the date was a moving target while I waited for the visa and then, all of a sudden I had less than 5 days to pack up, move, get the necessary approvals for Jai to travel and get on a plane.
The flurry of activity began in mach speed.

I spent the weekend running errands, buying some last clothing items and packing. Then I packed and repacked my bags - trying to eliminate items. Finally on Monday, I moved my belongings into storage. It is very strange seeing your furniture and other belongings packed up in a 9X10 box - I just kept thinking - wow, my entire life fits in that tiny box. Maybe I need to buy more shoes -- :-)

By Monday evening, my condo was empty and I gathered myself to clean. I realize now that I really should have hired someone to do it for me - just to avoid the stress, but learning that I was leaving without much lead time, I didn't have anyone to hire on short notice. Needless to say, Monday ended up being a very long day and I drove to DC to stay at my brother's for the remaining of my time in DC at around midnight.

Earlier in the day, I had been told by my airline that in order to bring Jai to India I needed what's called an NOC - or a no objection certificate - from the vet's office in India. Why had no one told me about this before? I called the office at midnight (or 930 am in India) and was told that I should have someone who speaks Hindi call them so they could explain the requirements (apparently my attempts of speaking Hindi, which came out as French, were not sufficient). My cousin, in turn, told me that the NOC could take 3 days. I'm hoping some bribes can be spread around to speed up this process - otherwise I'm not really sure what will happen to Jai when we arrive. Besides, who could object to Jai?

While I hoped to spend Tuesday and part of Wednesday spoiling my niece silly, it was not to be. I left early to drive to Annapolis to get my paperwork completed by the USDA so Jai could board the plane and then had to unload a few things into my storage unit and go to comcast to drop off my cable box. Can I just say, I hate comcast. The lines there are ridiculously long and the staff who work there are not very polite. Maybe they hate comcast too. Lucky for me, on this occasion, the trip was relatively painless and I headed back to DC. I then faxed all of the necessary paperwork to Continental so they could approve Jai for flight - and that's when my problems really began.

Apparently, not only do they need to approve the paperwork but they need pre-clearance from India to ship him over. Argh - what I wouldn't have given for a couple of extra days before travel. At this point, they would ship the papers over and we would hope for the best. At worst, Jai would have to stay at my brother's until he was approved and fly on his own over the weekend. I kept my fingers crossed, but this morning, when I called to check in on Jai's status, I was told that no approval had been received. Sigh.

I typed up all the information that would be needed for his care and shipment and emailed them to my brother and went to shower with a slightly heavy heart. Within the next hour, everything suddenly fell into place - Continental called and said they received approval and Jai could go!! and I received an email from my realtor that someone wants to rent my condo -

I could really use a little less excitement right before I travel!

Now - I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who have been so helpful and encouraging - and especially send a shout out to my brother and SIL who have let me crash at their pad, hog their child and have been all around awesome.