What a difference a day makes…

While yesterday was pretty boring, today started with a bang, and I don’t mean the incessant firecrackers the locals are setting off to celebrate Diwali (for those who don’t know,  Diwali is a festival of lights to commemorate the triumph of good over evil and light over dark…also the Hindu New Year). The short video should offer a fairly accurate depiction…

But I digress. The day started with me finding out that the donut and coffee shop downstairs doesn’t actually open until the crack of 10:00 AM, a perfect time for my first cup of coffee.  The day got better when we open the door to head out for the morning, only to find Delhi PD officer Singh coming up the stairs with the intention of coming into the apartment for “a routine security check”, which loosely translates to “a routine bribe to make sure our stay doesn’t have too many problems from the locals”.  But of course, given that neither Stacey nor I have exactly perfected our mastery of Hindi, and officer Singh was equally skilled in English, and even with the help of our driver, we had to call in our landlord to figure out what exactly was going on.  She later explained the story about the “routine security check because of heightened concerns around Diwali”, which the owner of our car service, Rahul, even later explained as “they wanted a little money which the owner’s employee took care of”. We feel like real locals now after our first shakedown.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, except for a pretty good cup of coffee with two lovely new friends who are in the early stages of the surrogacy process with Dr. S.  I can honestly say, I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with people I’ve just met that so quickly got around to what happens behind closed doors at fertility and surrogacy clinic…I’ll leave the rest to your imagination since my mom, mother-in-law and sister will be reading this too.

A few hours of work (yes, it’s very much a part of my day) later, and a couple of visits to the local baby stores to pick-up a pack-n-play, the most natural (read expensive) baby laundry detergent and soap Stacey could find, and a fantastic butter chicken and burra kabab at Moti Mahal for dinner, I can say it was a pretty good day in Delhi.  To wrap it all up in a nice little bow, we just got a note from the Dr.’s office that Mrs. R is scheduled for a scan on Saturday and we’ll finally be able to see her and her baby bump in person.  At this rate of improvement, I’m getting goose bumps just thinking about tomorrow!!!