7 weeks in......

Well this post feels a bit like re-run of the wait to meet our baby! Yes we have been here 7 weeks on Tuesday going into our 8th Week!! It's starting to send us all a bit crazy now is all we can do is sit back and wait....We submitted our MN1 application to the British High Commission on 22nd July and then finally received an application number on the 11th August...Yes you heard right...20 days just to get a number for our application...we rang on Friday and was told we still don't even have a case worker....suprise suprise!! If you don't know the MN1 application is for citizenship in the UK and goes with every other person applying to get into the country, no matter what your circumstances. Every day they receive around 800 applications and ours is sat in a pile somewhere. We knew we would be here for around 12 weeks as they originally said on the Foreign Office website, 8 weeks for citizenship and then 4 weeks for passport application.....and now wait for it, the crappest news ever....this has now increased to 3-6 months for citizenship plus 1 month for Passport!! We've contacted the consulate and they do sweet FA! They are no longer in the position to help after its sent to the UK and its completely out of their hands...:(

So don't know what to do really but wait.......no one can expedite the case as we're in a queue with everyone else.

On another completely different note, 28th August has always been quite a good day for us! We moved in to our first apartment in Hong Kong on the 28-08-08 (The chinese for 8 is "ba" which means luck...so lots of luck hopefully!) My ID card in HK is also the 28-08-08 and We came to Delhi for our first "Donation" on the 28-08-10 and the result was our Boy Beau, a year later! So tomorrow is 28-08 and we are hoping that this week brings us a step closer to home!! Our new apartment in Venice is number 4828....again, we met on the 08-04 and our lucky number 28 keeps coming up!!

We are meant to flying home on the 20th September but at the minute I don't see this happening, so we will be looking to change our flights in the next week or two as one of us will have to go back to Florence to pick up our pups and empty our Florence apartment by the 30th September.

What else has happened??? Beau has continued to be a beautiful boy and fun to be with....he still has his umbilical hernia but his colic does not seem to be as bad which has been good for us, as he is now on a four hour eating pattern! Yay!! Adam has been ill again and his Veneer then broke! So we have all been a bit up and down lately but we have to keep our eye on the prize....HOME!!!!!! Michael went to see Doug and chad with Beau last week and really enjoyed the great company and BBQ ribs! Beau loved the copious amount of cuddles!

Here's some cute pics to finish with as he is the thing that keeps us going and the light of our lives.

Long overdue update!!!!!!!

SO MUCH has happened in the last 5 weeks (tomorrow) since Beau was born!!!!!! It's been a rollercoaster of experiences and moments, all part of the rich tapestry of our time in Delhi.

Firstly, huge congratulations to Mark and Kerry on the birth of their beautiful baby girl Cailyn, we're really hoping we get to meet up together with Beau soon! And we really hope Sam and Phil are having a fabulous time back home with Ruby and Zoe!!!

A few days after Beau's birth we received the most lovely, generous parcel of gifts sent from Edward, Paul, Vivian, Aria and Sydney (Faith to Vishwas) and here is Beau with a fabulous selection (clearly enjoying his new outfit!!!) Such a kind and lovely thought, we were so touched and grateful.



A few day's after Beau's birth, we started the process of citizenship application. It's impossible to put into words the frustration of this process. When we did our research on surrogacy, we was perfectly aware that for Brits, no matter what country they work with, the citizenship application is a red-tape-bureaucracy-filled headache. When we sent the MN1 citizenship application from the British High Commission, it has to be sent to the UK via the diplomatic postal service. This only leaves and arrives 2 days a week from/to Delhi, and can take up to 2 weeks for the package to arrive at it's intended destination. So it doesn't take a genius to work out that when the citizenship certificate is issued, a month has been wasted sending the application and waiting for the certificate to arrive, That doesn't even begin to include the time taken to process the application!!!!!!!

When we planned our time in Delhi, we studied closely the British High Commission website on the processes involved in applying for UK citizenship from New Delhi. It strongly suggests 6 weeks (ish minimum) to get the certificate and another 4 weeks to get the passport, then 1-15 days to get the FRRO exit via, so we planned 12 weeks in India.

When we called the Home Office in the UK who process the applications, they say 'Applications take 3 to 6 months', yes you heard that correctly, MONTHS!!!!!!!!! Since sending our application 4 weeks ago, we have only just received an application reference number as it took this long for the application to reach the UK via snail-mail, and get inputed onto their computer system. The next stage is for it to wait in a queue to be allocated a case worker who will assess the application. However, with our application being in the same pile as the 800 applications a day for UK citizenship, we can be assured that this will take weeks to be looked at.

So in the mean time, the wait and worry continues... but we remain hopeful that our application lands in the hands of someone who realizes we need to return to our lives and work as quickly as possible. Hopefully in a week or 2 we might be lucky enough to have a case worker allocated, so we will keep you posted!!!!

A great friend from Hong Kong came to Delhi to visit us an see Beau last week, so we took this as an opportunity to travel to Jaipur for some culture and a change of scenery. We LOVED Jaipur!!!!!!! And Jaipur seemed to love Beau, he got so much attention, (all good I'm glad to say).



Jaipur is such a lovely city full of contradictions, hectic but charming, gritty but extremely pretty, definitely one of the most fascinating and rewarding trips we've been on and so wonderful that it was part of our India Odyssey.







(Love this pic of a dog and a monkey haha!)



Adam recently became victim to some form of stomach bug and ended up having a whole day in hospital on various drips. After 2 or 3 days he was right as rain again!

However hard our application process might be, we are still very much enjoying our time in India. We find that Delhi is a city where, although the pleasures are not immediately obvious, the city can take you pleasantly by surprise, whether it's the genuine warmth of it's people, a wonderful meal, people becoming really friendly when you return to the same shops or restaurants, some great shopping (which might not be immediately obvious, but great when you finally hunt it down!) and as crazy and chaotic it's reputation might be, we find it can be surprisingly relaxing. For us, Delhi was not love at first sight, it's a place that grabs your heart over time, and like a great friendship just gets better and stronger with time.

Hoping to meet up with Doug and Chad very soon!!!!!!!!