Halloween!

I can't believe it's November 1 already! Soon the election will FINALLY be over -- yea!

We had a good, if rather avante garde (sp?) Halloween. The kids and I hung close to the hotel in the early part of the day as our air shipment was supposed to arrive between 1 and 3. And at exactly 1:00 it was downstairs -- can you beat that?

(Air shipment contained Halloween candy, more clothes and shoes, beach towels, school books, mac n cheese, PB, OTC meds, all the stuff we felt would make transitioning the kids a bit easier. And let's face it; what is Halloween like without cheap American candy?!?)

Anyway, after escorting several boxes into our space we took off with Roop to pick up Joe and register ourselves as Americans living in Gurgaon -- a beaurocratic process that might be found anywhere, except for a few minor details:

The building had no A/C and while it said it was built in 2000, it was in far worse shape than my high school, constructed in the 1930's.

Apparently the man in charge of processing our documentation was on a bit of a power trip so he made the lackey prepping our papers remove staples and paste Joe's photos on his information. (Apparently it was ok for the kids and my images to be stapled.)

As seems typical so far with most of our interactions, the man carries all the weight in this culture. So when our paperwork pusher was getting details (height, eye color, etc.) he asked Joe for his, then without even glancing at me, he asked Joe for "madame's eye color."

I think my husband almost burst out laughing.

We sat for what seemed like forever in a stuffy room on the fourth floor. Claire completed an entire reading book for school; Ava sat on Joe in the "boss'" office, where I was convinced the game was to see how many people they could fit into the small space.

At one point someone from the UK (or some other English-speaking domain) forked over 9,000 rupees (around $100), apparently to smooth over the fact that his passport had expired two months prior.

Oh how the system functions. I also had to laugh as I looked around and saw stacks of papers in what appeared to be no semblance of order, labeled as foreign documentation. Seems like it would be easy to disappear without a trace in these parts...

I was heartened to see a young Indian man keying data into a computer -- until Joe said he was flipping back and forth between data input and his yahoo account.

After completing the sign-in process, we dropped Joe at the office and rushed to the hotel to get ready for the ex-pat Halloween party!

Both kids dawned their more-expensive-than-they-should-have-been) adult size Halloween costumes, we grabbed our Halloween treats and headed over to T.J.'s apartment for the party. (T.J. is an American woman who we met through the Gurgaon ex-at connect group.)

The kids had fun playing with other children & I had fun chatting with English-speakers from the UK, US, South Africa and Australia. A few had babies, several with kids Ava's age and one or two for Claire to play with.

Four rooms in the apartment were the "houses" for trick or treating, and the kids made off with plenty of candy. We were the stars of the party for our straight-from-America m&m's, snickers, etc.

The ex-pat group gets together regularly for coffee, playdates and parties so we hope to catch future activities. T.J. has invited us to a holiday bazaar next week which we may put on our calendar.

Hope all of you had a memorable Halloween and enjoy the weekend!