Day 0 - We're Off
October 2, 2022
I'll keep it relatively short and sweet. Departure day is finally here. We are currently sitting at O'Hare waiting to board our plane. The last few weeks have been a blur, especially the last few days. Thank you to all our friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, and everyone else who has helped us up to this point and are continuing to support us back home while we are away. We can't thank you enough, it's stressful to manage this all but it helps to have everyone looking out for us.
We're about an hour away from boarding, but between catching the bus down here and getting through security we're already about 6 hours into our journey. By my math it'll be about 30 more hours of traveling before we get to Tiruvannamalia. Wish us luck. I downloaded as many movies and kids shows to the tablet as the memory would allow. Ravi's real excited to meet his sister and for all suspension of the screen time rules.
If you feel inclined to check up on us while we're airborne, we should land in Dubai after our first flight tomorrow late morning Wisconsin time. Then a quick 7 hour layover and we catch a flight from Dubai to Cennai. Finally, a 4+ hour car ride to Tiruvannamalai. Should be fun.
We're still waiting for Anandhi's passport to be issued, but we did find out we (I think) got the police clearance step. Hopefully it's printed and delivered by the end of this week. We won't be able to come home until we have it. Then we'll head to New Delhi for immigration appointments.
If you want to try and track our flights on this first leg, check out the links below. Full disclosure, I'm not totally sure I got the Dubai -> Chennai leg path right, since that flight isn't until tomorrow.
Chicago -> Dubai
EK236 (UAE236) Emirates Flight Tracking and History - FlightAware
Dubai -> Chennai
Thank you again to everyone. We'll do our best to try and post daily, even if it's short. I'm not really sure how it will go....
-Ryan, Leah, and Ravi
