dateline delhi 20:58 hrs

Namaste - we're back home in Delhi, where it is chilly, foggy, smoky and lovely. Seung Yi has passed out on our bed after a great day of naps and playing with Laree and Iaimon. Ji just finally had a shower and is munching on a salami and arugula sandwich. Phet is hanging out in his new fleece jacket and I am doing my very best to stay awake for another hour before crashing.

The flights and travel went mostly very well. We got picked up at the aunts' by Emma's lovely taxi man and after a short delay on the Gardiner downtown, we made good time out to the airport. Pearson was shockingly quiet and relaxed given what we were expecting with all the froo-frah recently. We were checked in within 10 minutes by a very helpful counter lady, and she let us know that it looked very good to get an upgrade into business for one ticket. We then went to get some free drinks at the business class lounge. We tried checking at the gate about our upgrade, but there was no one on duty yet, but when we went back about 20 minutes later all the boarding was well under way. Weird. Luckily, they'd oversold the flight and were happy to bump me into business, and didn't even take our upgrade certificate! Sadly, it is only useable until February, so we won't actually reap any benefits from their niceness, but I must note any good service since I'm usually complaining about the airline.

The trip to Frankfurt went super great for me. I had the comfy pod, and got to watch a movie and eat tasty treats, and then lay down and slept for a good 3 hours. Phet, on the other hand, had to endure a testy Seung Yi, rotten service, and bad food. Still, SY finally fell asleep after much drama and Phet got to relax a little as well. We had gotten delayed on the ground in Toronto, so we arrived in Frankfurt almost an hour late, which was worrisome because our next flight was scheduled to depart in less than 45 minutes. The airport there is quite large, and we've had to change terminals and cover really long distances in the past, but somehow we lucked out and our gate was just 4 minutes away. We hustled over and raced to the desk because the Air Canada folks hadn't been able to give us boarding passes for the 2nd flight (which is really weird and often happens, and I don't understand why the Delhi desk can always issue 2nd flight passes, but never in Toronto). Turned out that not only did we not have passes, but they hadn't even assigned us seats! The desk guy was like, "You should have reserved seats ahead of time," and I'm like, "I DID." The long and the short of it was that they seated all four of us - yes, including a three year old - far apart from each other. All the seats were more than 3 rows apart, and one was on the complete opposite side of the plane. We had just one aisle seat, which we very luckily managed to swap for another aisle seat, and thus I was able to take care of Seung Yi while Phet and Ji got squished by random strangers in their middle seats.

The flight to Delhi was the usual for Lufthansa: 100% sold out, reasonable and efficient if not kindly service, lots of families and kids on board, adequate food, crappy entertainment due to the lack of in-seat screens. Nonetheless, time went by at a decent pace, and we got near to Delhi on time. With about 50 km to go, the pilot got on the PA and let us know that weather conditions were "very bad" on the ground. This was crappy news indeed. Flying to and from Delhi in December and January is kind of like Russian Plane Roulette. You might get to leave or you might get stuck for days. You might have delays, you might get sent to a city you didn't want to go to, you might not get fed for hours. Last christmas, our flight not only circled Delhi for an hour and a half, but it then got diverted to Mumbai where we sat on the tarmack for THREE HOURS and then went back to Delhi. I can't remember whether we got diverted twice, or whether they finally landed, but the news said that it was the foggiest day of the year. Well, it happened again. Visibility on arrival was less than 100 metres. Somehow, miraculously, the pilot landed the plane, but then, get this: we were kept on the runway for about 2 hours because they didn't have any disembarkation parking spots available!!! Can you imagine? Every flight out of Delhi was grounded, and I guess they wouldn't swap off a plane for 45 minutes just to get us out, so we had to wait and wait and wait and wait. When we finally got off, all our bags were waiting in the priority section - except for one. We waited another 45 minutes to see if it would show up, but it didn't, so then we had to spend another 45 minutes filling in missing bag forms. I was really scared it was the bag with my laptop, but it turned out to be the bag with all the kids' clothes and our camera. Stoooopid. I was delirious by the time we got out to see poor John, who was very happy to see us despite having been kept waiting for five hours in the cold and fog.

Speaking of the fog, I didn't take my own pictures, but here are two good ones I found that will give you an idea of how things looked when we got out of the airport. We could very literally see only one car ahead of us. It was so foggy that cyclists at the side of the road would appear seemingly out of nothingness when they were about 15 feet away from us.

Spooky, huh?

At home, it was cold. I put 6 blankets on the bed, turned the radiator on high, and then had one of those strangely light but dead sleeps for much of the day. Iaimon brought Laree to go to school, and Seung Yi was thrilled to see her. After Laree got back home at lunchtime, Seung Yi played and played and played with her for hours while we all slept. In the evening I forced myself to get up at 5:00 and went for a walk to get some fruit and veg. My veg man was friendly and happy as usual, and all the greens are wonderful at this time of year. I came home and took Seung Yi for a walk to the candyman and then we've spent the rest of the evening unpacking. Ji is amazingly cheerful despite the fact that BOTH his new aerogarden and his lavalamp blew out the electricity and won't work here in Delhi. Note to self: no plug-in electrical stuff from Canada from now on!

We've got Saturday and Sunday to get rested up (and to do a bunch of work - I have a huge yearbook deadline on Wednesday and will spend most of the weekend dealing with Indesign minutiae). Many, many warm thanks to everyone for making our holiday so wonderful and relaxing. Phet and I really enjoyed the chance to just take it easy and veg out with great company. The food was amazing, the fun was fun, the times were good. We've both kept saying to each other how much we love our families and how happy we were to be able to chill out when we are usually so super busy. We are both also still quietly pleased that Grampa said he's planning to come out to Ontario again in the summer. Although he was pretty snoozy this visit, we were so happy to get to spend time with him.

Thanks to everyone for the great holiday!

[Delhi-8-January-2010]