Last trip to Children's Home

We made our last trip (of this particular journey) to Children's Home today. It went fine! It wasn't a really emotional weepfest - the Didis (nannies) were happy to see Mina, and she seemed comfortable playing on the floor of the baby room where she lived for several months. But she was perfectly happy to return to Mommy and head back to the hotel.

We gave Children's Home a lot of gifts today for the other children. Many of these were from friends of mine and Mina's in Colorado. Thank you so much for your generosity. Kusum, the woman who directs the children's day-to-day lives, seemed kind of blown away by it all: crayons, matchbox cars, colored pencils, playing cards, bottles of infant vitamins, infant toys, a Bumbo chair (a little chair that supports babies too young to sit), lots of clothes including ten fleece suits and snowsuits for the cold nights (there is no heat in the building and it gets down to 30 degrees F at night), and lots of diaper cream. Mina's friends are Children's Home's friends too!

Also, for the Didis, we brought some beautiful sarees that my mom had bought for them in India. Thank you so much, Mom. Kusum seemed wonderfully surprised by the sarees. I told her that my mom had gotten them in Mysore, way down in South India, so hopefully it would be something different from what they would get in Kathmandu.

We did some more sightseeing and shopping today, and we are winding up our trip! I'm a little nervous about the journey - keeping formula ready but not spoiled, keeping Mina rested, etc. But somehow we'll make it.

This may be my last post from Kathmandu, but I will blog again from Colorado Springs. I am so grateful to all of you for reading and writing to me, and I'm looking forward to responding to everybody when I get home. Some of your posts really kept me going, like Mark sending me the MP3 file of "Homeward Bound" - thanks so much, Mark.

I promise to post more pictures on this blog when I get home. David took a lot of good ones and we will share them.

We'll be home sometime Thursday, February 1. I'll blog again as soon as my head is screwed on straight again. Thank you all again for sharing this experience with us.

Sittin in a railway station, ...

Got a ticket for my destination, mm-mm. We got Mina's visa today and are set to return home on Wednesday. We're homeward bound. Paul Simon says it so well.

Today was actually a very nice day. The visa trip to the embassy took about 15 minutes. We visited my friend's daughter in her orphanage - a beautiful girl with roses in her cheeks and the liveliest eyes! It was a joy. We also did some shopping.

Tomorrow we will visit Children's Home for some final document stuff and gifts. I have heard it is an emotional trip - not sure what to expect. I'm wondering how Mina will respond to being in the baby room again. Should be interesting. I'll try to blog again tomorrow.

Sunday was great

Today, Sunday, was a great day. We actually broke the gravitational pull of the hotel! We took a taxi to Pashupatinath, a Shiva temple in Kathmandu that is the site of many pilgrimages. It's situated along the Bagmati River. Along the river are cremation ghats, where recently deceased persons are cremated. We witnessed one of these. The body was wrapped completely in cloth. The family was grieving at the side of the ghat. It was a very interesting sight.

Then Mina and I entered the temple. Apparently it is for Hindus only, so David waited outside, near my leather shoes and belt which are not allowed in the temple. We did our obeisance, got a red tika, and took off. Here we are with our tikas in the hotel!

After Pashupatinath, we went to Boudnath, a massive Buddhist stupa. We circumambulated the stupa. It was stunning.

I was so proud that we made it to two sights today, and Mina did great! After that, we returned to the hotel, and after a few hours, Mina and Mommy did Bath Number Two! Maybe a little easier than Bath 1, but still not a pleasant experience.

We have a little more business to do on Monday and Tuesday. But I'm really looking forward to getting home. I miss my house and want to get Mina into our place and our routine. She is a very sweet thing, so lively! If you know the song by Neil Young called, "I Am a Child," you know there is a line saying, "You can't conceive of the pleasure in my smile." Her smile is so exciting and happy!

Embassy interview done and David is here!

Today was a great day! We had our embassy interview today, and it went fine. I was asked some questions about Mina's adoption, and they had a basket of toys for her to play with. I was done in about 30 minutes. Now I simply wait for them to let me know that Mina's visa to the U.S. has been granted.

Then when I returned from the embassy, David had arrived at the hotel and was checked into his room! It was great to see him. His journey from Colorado was just fine, long but safe. We went for a walk and had dinner in Thamel, the tourist district. We ate at a small restaurant, a new one, and had a nice mutton curry-fry and a very hot alu gobi. Mina was asleep in the Baby Bjorn for most of the time, but eventually she awoke.

I've been VERY happy with the Baby Bjorn. It's fairly easy to get her into it (just have to lasso one leg and the rest is a piece of cake). And she can either face forward or toward me, and it's secure, and even kind of warm. Sometimes the straps cut into my shoulders after a long time, or if I'm wearing the backpack at the same time. But I will buy some soft spongy material to put around the straps when I get home.

I'm feeling pretty relaxed about tomorrow. My own adoption business is nearly complete. Now I want to help a few friends with airline reservations and visiting other babies at orphanages, and David, Mina and I will do some sightseeing. But I don't have that sense of running the gauntlet.
And I feel pretty good that we will get the visa in time for our departure on Wed Jan 31. I know people who did not get their visa and had to delay their departure... So I'm glad things are moving along.

Two crazy girls

Here are two crazy girls! One has oatmeal in her hair, the other has bacterial conjunctivitis in both eyes! Can you guess which is which?

Yeah, the conjunctivitis thing really sucks, especially because it's very contagious and I'm trying to prevent Mina from getting it. But the hotel doctor came very quickly, and I got the right eye drops, and it's all good.

On Tuesday we didn't do much other than take a walk through the tourist district, called Thamel. Lots of shopping potential. On our way into the shopping area, a woman with a baby came up to me with an empty bottle and asked me to buy her milk at the supermarket. I stopped and looked into her baby's eyes, and looked down at Mina in her carrier on my chest, and walked over to the market with them. She bought one box of Lactogen 2, the same formula that Mina used to drink at Children's Home. I was saddened by it. When I exited the store, two other women with babies and empty bottles asked the same thing. I realized it was a racket of sorts, or maybe "pattern" is a better word, and I wondered if the milk was really for the baby, and if the baby really belonged to the woman, or if the women borrowed babies and traded the milk for money somewhere to someone who resold the Lactogen 2... But anyway, I realized that I didn't care much if it was a racket. There is so much poverty here that even a pattern of hungry babies can be used to beg. And I'm sure there are plenty of hungry babies that have no formula.

Thamel, the tourist district, is an interesting place. It's mostly lined with shops selling khukuri knives (a special knife used by Gurkha fighters, I think), pashminas and silk scarves, Buddhist thangka paintings, embroidered suede purses, and music. There are also some high-end trekking stores for the mountaineers; I didn't actually check the prices, but since most things are not that inexpensive compared to US prices, and since the brand names are the same, I'm guessing it's costly high-tech gear. There are plenty of bars, restaurants and hotels, although it seems like the hotels would be noisy places to sleep.

Today, Wednesday, I got the news that our appointment with the U.S. Embassy is on Friday at 2 pm. I will be asked a few questions by the staff, and hopefully I will be put in the queue to receive Mina's U.S. visa within 24-72 hours. If all goes as planned, we will have that visa in time to depart for home on Wednesday, January 31,

On Friday around that same time, my friend David is arriving! I can't wait. By the time he gets here, my paperwork will be mostly done, and I look forward to actually having some more fun. Up till this point, I've loved being a mom, and most of the time I'm in survival mode: what's the next thing I have to do, the next paperwork, the next etc. I eat my meals fast and furiously. Hopefully when David gets here, and there are two of us to be with Mina, we can all have some fun. There are some great tourist sights that I'd like to visit with him and Mina.

I want to thank all of you so much for all your emails and comments. I haven't been able to respond to many emails here, except for time-sensitive stuff, but I will do my best to get back to you all. It means a lot that you are out there, reading and sharing this experience with us.

Monday and other reflections

First, here is Mina yesterday, going for the camera (of course!). That always seems to be my last photo: Mina approaching Mommy and reaching for the camera. Maybe I can make a collection of just those photos.

Today, Monday, was intense. Mina and I had to go to the U.S. Embassy Consular Section to turn in our documents for review. They will review them in advance and then call me about setting an appointment for her visa interview.

Our visit to the Embassy was tense. The photographs are not right, some documents are missing. We managed to get everything turned in, but it led me to think a lot about the emotional tenor of this trip.

This second trip is joyful but stressful too. We carefully go through our documents in English or whatever our native language in, find an error, and scramble to fix it. We check and recheck against our checklists (what else would you check against?), and we make calls around the city to fill in the gaps. We all do our best to communicate in different languages, and our paperwork needs are so pressing and important that everything takes on a painful urgency. Some of the urgency stems from our timetable: the embassy (of whatever country we are from) must interview the family and issue a visa for our child before we can depart Nepal. And often the embassy has limited hours for handling these concerns: for example, the U.S. embassy sees families on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 1:30 to 3:30 for document review. And then the actual interview cannot be scheduled until all the documents are in the embassy's hands, so the urgency of the first embassy trip is to get ourselves in the queue for the interview. Meanwhile the clock ticks toward our departure dates and our expensive airline tickets, which often do not have an open return date.

We families are all compadres in this journey, and I've been super super lucky to share this with four other families: three American and one French. We meet each morning over breakfast and compare notes on the process, we carry each others' kids when we urgently have to do paperwork (THANK YOU STEPHANIE!), and tonight we are unwinding together over dinner. I really hope we families stay in touch over the years, even though everybody's busy and it's hard sometimes to stay in contact, because we were together during this critical time and we supported each other through it. I often wonder what all the little girls will be like five years from now, entering kindergarten or first grade, still resembling their baby selves but also carrying the imprint of their families.

Amid all the noise and haste, I am trying to preserve some memories of this time for Mina when she gets older. Really, this trip is not about me being stressed out and rushing around. It is about her and me uniting as a family. She will want to know what she did and how she played and talked, and how she woke up at night, and how she would laugh. So I am taking pictures and video and trying to capture HER during this trip, because that is what she will ask me about.

Right now she is sleeping - a much needed nap after our travails of the day. But when she sleeps I can see her beautiful smile in my mind's eye. Sometimes I look at her and wonder, what did I do that was so good to deserve her? She is the greatest blessing.

Okay, anyway, tomorrow we don't have any real business planned. Hopefully we can just walk around enjoying ourselves outside the hotel. I'm getting a little stir crazy. And we both have colds - I am popping ibuprofen like candy.

Note to self: Wear bathrobe next time

I should have known better. When my sister Archana was little, my mom would give her a bath and come out of the bathroom almost as wet as my sister. But I didn't remember that ...

Mina and I tried her first bath today. I was dreading it but kept telling myself, hey, maybe she'll love it, maybe you're making a big deal of nothing. The bathroom sink in our hotel room is about the right size, so I filled it up with warmish water and I ran a hot shower for about five minutes, to make the bathroom nice and warm and steamy.

So she's in a good mood, and I get her clothes off, and we enter the bathroom. The towel is warm and ready, and the soap and toys are right beside the sink. I hold onto her so she is facing me, and I slowly start lowering her in, feet first. Big mistake! She is crying a lot, pulling up her feet, so I think, is the water too hot? It's just warm, and I add a bit more cold and try it again. She screams and crawls up me, and in her panic, a little warm stream hits my T-shirt. At this point I basically give up any hope of this being easy. But we gotta push on through - I don't want to start this all over from scratch. So I soap up the backs of her legs and fill a teacup with water and pour it down them. She seems okay with that.

Then I turn her around to face the sink and held onto her in a sitting position on a towel covering the sink ledge. That was the key to success! She was happy dangling her legs in the water, looking at herself in the mirror, and reaching for her keys. So I soaped her up a part at a time and poured water over her with the teacup. I did manage to wash her face without too much argument, and that really needed a good wash after all the bottle feedings and rice cereal and runny noses. But her hair was totally out of the question - I could not go there today.

I got her rinsed off, dried and clothed, and then I had a few minutes to change out of my "anointed" clothes. So for the next bath, I'll definitely cover up with a bathrobe.