The Martin's Blog

Tom – It has been a nightmare going through the Fulbright office for our trip to India.  I have had to jump through hoops to do a ridiculous amount of work related to both my presentation and the visa application.  Every time I finished one task, there was another hurdle.  The program form, including abstract of the presentation, autobiography, and special size digital photo was over five pages long.  The Fulbright office has had our passports since we arrived!  I have had to fill out the lengthy visa applications twice (Fulbright gave me the wrong ones the first time around), obtain special sized photos (two to be pasted on the same page – go figure), and get the info back to the office immediately!  Yet, as of this morning, the office had not obtained our visas; we leave tomorrow morning! 

I spent most of the day at the Fulbright office shepherding the process.  I turned in the money for Helen’s plane ticket three weeks ago but had to wait until 3:30 this afternoon to have their travel agent bring the tickets to the office.  The travel arrangements and costs from Jaipur to Agra are still not settled and we take that trip leaving at 5am on Sunday!   Lots of complaining here, in the end, I think it will all be worth it.

We took Ruki to dinner at the Xilation Chinese restaurant.  We are getting our tummies ready for our trip to China!  She is working on finding us a house to rent in Kandy.  She has been a great asset for us.