Delhi Day 4

Before departing I had emailed a crew of people about having dinner on Thursday, and fortunately everyone was on board.  We ended up meeting at Ruby's in Nehru Place.  Rahul brought the van and carted down the Svelte crew of 7 people!  The boys from Spain/Denmark made their way over on a rickshaw and Megan and Bob came slightly later.  It was a great night full of positive energy, good food and drinks, and of course the company was wonderful.  Dave and Kathy from Canada were present and I was so happy to see them!  They are a wonderful couple here for baby pick up..come on baby, come and meet me before I leave!!!
As we gathered outside to make our way home all the beggar kids were there and wanted to play with  us.  I think they knew they were not getting money from us, so they started mocking us by repeating EVERYTHING we said to them!  As annoying as it was, it was equally cute.  These poor little filthy children break your heart, but the sensible side of you knows that giving money to them is most likely supporting crime rings or mafia. You really do wish you could pick them up and take them home with you.  This is the sad reality of India, one that is the norm, and difficult for westerners to understand. My sister and I were in a rickshaw coming home the other day and two boys were all over us as we were stopped at red light.  I gave the older boy a candy and in anger he chucked it at my sister!  We laughed at the craziness of this, as an 8 year old boy back home would not do this out of fear of repercussion.

Since Agra was a long trip for my sister we decided to have an easy Friday.  I had a coffee date in the morning with Poonam who had helped us with the exit process for Cailyn last year.  Poonam was kind enough to come to the hotel and we sat and caught up a bit.  I brought a stack of Cailyn photos and asked Poonam to select one for her office.  She enjoyed the photos and chose her favourite.  Poonam was so sweet to have also brought me a marble elephant statue for Cailyn!  Just meeting Poonam for coffee reminded me of how India/Delhi has become a home away from home.  I am comfortable her, I know where to go and how to get there, and I can have a casual coffee with someone I met almost a year ago.  Just love it!!

Similarly to feeling comfortable meeting Poonam, I also have my Aussie friend Kim!  Every trip to Delhi I have made  has allowed a meeting with Kim from Australia. Seems we are always here at the same time and have grown a wonderful friendship out of this.  Kim has 5 beautiful children, 3 of them born via surrogacy in India. Kim is a wonderfully kind and sensible woman whom I really enjoy having a cuppa with while gabbing about our kiddos, India and life in general.

Friday we headed to Saket for lunch with a woman here to self cycle from Australia.  She had landed at 5am and we met at 1:30pm.  We ate at Geoffry's pub in Select City Walk and it was a great time.  She is similar to me, positive and realistic about the process.  Her husband is due to fly in soon, after he actually gets a visa!  He travels for work and was not able to do the visa process at the same time as her, so he is on it now with intent to be here for egg collection.

The rest of Friday was quiet - we actually decided to have a lazy late afternoon and my sister and ended up each having a bit of a power nap.  Then, finally, the monsoons hot Delhi!! Thunder, lightening, massive winds and finally some rain!  We dealt with an evening of power outages and feel very fortunate that the hotel has back up generators!

Later in the day we firmed up surrogate choices with SCI legal.  We left it to the last minute to ensure our surrogates lining was optimal to start progesterone.  Saturday will bring another scan and blood test as well as a meeting with legal.  After all this excitement we are off to Shalom in N Block market to have dinner with 20+ IP's!