A Welcome New Odyssey

We've been having a big problem. And I just couldn't take it anymore.

We bought a minivan.

You see, we travel a lot. A LOT. Some of my friends have joked that we're gone more weekends than we stay in town. We drive regularly to New Jersey, Delaware, and Ohio to visit my husband's various relatives. We drive occasionally to Florida to visit my relatives. And for the last year and a half we've been doing all that driving - all five of us - in tiny little cars. Our options were a too-little Jeep Liberty, the car we bought when we first married, or an itty bitty Toyota Corolla, the car we bought for me to commute to law school. In December Chachoo, (my husband's brother who lives with us) bought his own car and our options were expanded to include a Mazda 3. Except that's not really an expansion because it's even smaller that the Corolla. But we still stuffed all five of us into it for a drive to New Jersey once. We almost always travel in the Corolla because it gets so much better gas mileage. But the two times we drove to Florida we took the Jeep. It's was the largest of the cars, though not by much, and with a 16 hour drive you really need as much room & comfort as you can get.

It really was too much to ask though, to have poor Dulhan and Chachoo wedge themselves into such a small space. But they preferred it over taking two cars. Since Dulhan moved here, though, I've wanted to buy something with a third row of seats in it. Mian and I actually had some tense conversations because I wanted to buy something bigger a lot sooner and he thought we couldn't afford it. He was right, of course, but so was I that we really needed a solution to our expanding family. The paychecks I've been getting recently helped us to be able to afford it. And when it was decided that my mother-in-law and father-in-law were going to be visiting America this summer, I knew we'd soon finally be buying one.

(I think it's so funny that our impetus for buying a minivan - our expanding family - is seemingly so typical but for most normal people that means another kid on the way. In my case? It means two elderly Pakistanis.  Ah, the Gori Wife Life!)

Mian has this way of buying new cars. He went to school with a guy who bought a car this was after he graduated and he's been holding on to the idea for years and was finally able to try it out when he helped Chachoo buy his Mazda. We went to test drive a couple times but when we'd decided exactly what we wanted (A Honda Odyssey) he contacted all the Honda dealers in this area and asked them for their best deal. Once he had the lowest two or three he pitted them against each other - all over email - to get them to lower their asking price even further until he ended up several thousand dollars under what we'd expected to pay. You have to make sure you specify exactly what you want in the car and specify that the price includes all the various options you want and tax, tag and titles fees so that the dealer can't try to up the price once you get there. That was especially true for us because the lowest priced dealer ended up being an hour drive away. It would have sucked to drive for an hour just to have the deal fall through and drive back still at square one. But luckily that didn't happen and if you live anywhere near the DC metro area I can personally vouch for my experiences with Sport Honda in Silver Spring, Maryland. They didn't give us any run around. M says that when they bought the Mazda at a different dealer, they kept going on and on about how they were getting a really good deal and not really treating them very well. That didn't happen with us and every interaction I've had with our dealer and our salesman (Chris Lee) has been extremely, extremely positive. (And we paying for the car ourselves - neither Honda nor the dealer have any idea I'm writing this)

Driving in a minivan - I cannot tell you. It is fantastically comfortable. We all have so much room to spread out and all manners of storage so that there's not a pile of crap in anyone's lap. I used to have the GPS, Mian's & my phones, Mian's shahi supari, and a computer in my lap during drives. A computer, you ask? What, doesn't everyone drive down major highways Skype-ing with their oversees relatives? No, just us? Oh...

We're actually in the car right now as we speak. (As we type?) We're on our way to Ohio to visit Mian's sister (my sister-in-law) who had a new baby girl three weeks ago.  Gotta love technology. And minivans.

I'm a convert - I love my minivan! It's just one more product of my strange half-Pakistani life that I never would have expected but end up loving. 

A (Short) History of Father-in-law Visits

My mother in law, Ammi, arrived in the U.S. a few weeks ago. She stayed with us about two weeks, then Chachoo and his wife Dulhan drove her to the midwest where her daughter - my husband's sister - was close to the end of her pregnancy. Close call, too, because my sister-in-law went into labor within 48 hours and now has a brand new baby girl! Unfortunately, my work situation is a bit crazy right now, and we're right at the end of the minivan buying experience, so we can't head out there to visit the new baby just yet. Maybe we'll go in the first week of April.

We'll also be going at the end of April, because my father-in-law will be coming to America as well at the end of April. This is a momentous development.

My father-in-law, Abbu, came to America in 2003 when we were getting married. He'd also been to the U.S. twice before that in the 1990's when he was working on research in conjunction with a university in America for his Ph.D, but he'd only stayed a few weeks at a time back then. In 2003, Abbu and Ammi originally had planned their trip to American to attend their son's graduation. They got their first visit visas on that basis, and those visas were for five years, multiple entry. Later,  Mian told them that ..... oh, by the way, he thinks he'd like to get married while they're here and no he doesn't need them to find a girl for him, he's already picked someone out and what? They'd like to see a picture of this girl? Oh yes, let me just send one right now without giving them any notice of what white non-Pakistani picture they've got waiting in their mailbox.

Whoops. That was a run-on thought if I ever saw one.

Anyway, their graduation trip got turned into a wedding trip before they could even blink. Ammi and Abbu stayed in the U.S. for 50+ days.  You may have noticed that Ammi has been back to America four subsequent times, but my father in law has staunchly refused to come back to America since his 2003 trip.

I think he pretty much hated it here.

These are my hypotheses: We had just gotten married. During his trip we did a few tourist-y things. We went to Disney World, we went to Sea World, we went to New Jersey to visit relatives, and they went to the Shenandoah National Park for the scenery on Skyline Drive. (I wasn't there for the Skyline Drive trip, I had to go back to school. We were married during winter break and I had to go back to school in mid-January, about 2 weeks before Ammi and Abbu went back to Pakistan.)

Besides those few tourist-y things, we mostly sat around the house. Mian went back to work. I took Ammi and Abbu shopping occassionally - they had a long list of things that they wanted to take back to Pakistan with them - and Ammi taught me how to cook some Pakistani food. I often did schoolwork. We edited our wedding video in the evenings. M did the editing, I picked out pictures and Ammi and Abbu brainstormed about which music to include, but it was still a mostly boring activity. In truth, all of these things were  mostly boring - especially for Abbu.

Let me tell you about Abbu. He is really independent and likes to be busy. He worked two jobs all of M's life, as a zoologist during the day and teaching on nights and weekends. He retired from his government post a few years ago and about went stir crazy at home until he decided to go back to teaching. Now he's back teaching at the same school that M and all of her brothers and sisters went to school from Kindergarten to Matric. He's never driven a car and still rides the same tiny motorbike he has for the last 30+ years, a Honda 50cc. He likes to go out and run errands and he does all the shopping for the house. He's not a very expressive man, and I think he shows his love by doing things for other people like running errands. The times I've had to ask him to go out and buy diapers or milk for the baby, he's been extremely happy when he comes back, bursting to show me these things he's bought for us.

Now contrast that with his existence in America, when he's in the house all day, completely dependent on his son and his new daughter-in-law who is almost a stranger to him. Any time he left the house he did so because I or Mian was there to drive the car. No Honda 50 for Abbu here in America.

The only reason he finally did agree to come back was because his visit visa expired and they went to get a new one. Both Ammi's & Abbu's visas expired at the same time, so they just applied for them both again. I don't think Abbu enjoyed his time here, but he didn't go so far as to say that he never wanted to come to America again, he just kept telling us "Oh, not this time Beta, I'll come next May maybe..." even when our son was being born. But when the time came to re-apply for his visa, he did it. And since he's finally received it, and Ammi planned this trip to come see her daughter's newest baby, all of Abbu's children have suggested to him that if he doesn't travel on this new visa, they might never give him another one. He now believes that if they gave him a 2nd 5-year visit visa and he doesn't use it, he'll probably never get another one after this. So he's coming.

Now it is my mission to make this visit different than Abbu's first visit. I don't think it will be difficult. I think that our life has changed a LOT from what it was like back in 2003. We have a house, and a baby. That's comfort and entertainment right there. We live in a better, more accessible location. We're only 2 miles from the local mosque. There are stores that Abbu could walk to - or maybe ride a bike to - very close by. We have several social circles and host and attend dinner parties often. Hopefully he'll find a niche, he'll be able to leave the house of his own volition, he'll be able to run errands and buy things. He can go to the mosque whenever he wants. Hopefully he'll enjoy our friends as much as we do.

I'm trying to think of things I can do to convince him that he could be happy during visits to America. Eventually we'll want him to pursue a green card permanent residency and I feel like this will probably be our only chance to influence his opinion of what living in America would be like for him. I think the biggest hurdle is a job. He's not allowed to work as a visitor, but if I could find/think of something where he could volunteer at that he would find professionally fulfilling, I think it could make the difference. Teaching, maybe - our mosque has its own school and Abbu is theoretically fluent in English. But in practice, it can be hard to communicate with him sometimes. Plus I don't know how Pakistani teaching would translate to American teaching. Some methods used in Pakistan would not pass muster here. Plus, he might not like the idea of volunteering.

I'm not sure what we'll do, it's still mostly up in the air. And I'll admit that some days I still think that I'll believe it when I see it, he might decide at the last minute that he doesn't want to come to America after all. No plane ticket has been purchased yet. As always, I'll keep you all updated.

"BLANK Is Such A Rich Language"

I have billed over 100 hours at work last week people. I'm sitting next to another blogger who writes about Iranian politics and we've started talking about the similarities and/or differences between Urdu and Farsi and it reminded me of a funny joke me and my Mian always say to each other.

It started a long, long time ago, probably before we were married. We're both always asking each other questions about the other person's native language. We still do that. M will hear some saying at work and he'll ask me to explain it, or we'll come across something in Pakistan and he'll ask me what it would be called in English. I'll ask him how I would say something in Urdu, or like my Urdu teacher, he'll try to think of ways to rid English words from his speaking and he and his brother and sister-in-law will brainstorm about how to say certain words or phrases in Urdu rather than English.

So some language question came up one day a long time ago, and he asked me how I would say something in Urdu. Instead of one single word, I could only answer with a longer explanatory phrase and he asked me if there wasn't just one single word for that and I said no. He replied, a bit wistfully, I think:

 "Urdu is such a rich language...."

Then, just a few days later, I asked him how to say a word in Urdu, EXAMPLES, and he told me that he'd say BLANKS, just with a slightly Urdu-affected accent and I said "Isn't there a word in Urdu?" and he said no. So I, sarcastically, replied

"English is such a rich language...."

Ever since then it's been an ongoing joke. Anytime there's an easy way to say something in one language but not in the other, we bring out this joke all over again. We're always going back and forth with it and it's the first thing out of our mouths whenever these language questions come up with unsatisfactory answers. It's like we have some language competition going on (but of course we don't, it's just a joke.)

Recent Updates

My temporary work project in is the last throes of existence. A week, maybe 8 or 9 days stand between me and unemployment. I have to say at this point I welcome the downtime. Just yesterday, in the push between us lemmings and our deadline, the project manager announced an increase in hours we're expected-slash-encouraged-slash-expected (his words, not mine) to work from a former nice round 75 hour workweek to a future 112 hour workweek starting tomorrow. 112 hours, you may ask, how is that possible? That, my friends, is 16 hour days, 8 days a week. Saturday, Sunday. Add to that a 2.5 hour commute and you'll see that it is not, in point of fact, possible. Not without unethically endangering those on the road with my in an early morning commute to DC. But I will do what I can. Last night, after not seeing my son for the last two days, I climbed into his tiny bed so I could at least spend 6 or 7 hours with him him whilst he slept. Desparate times call for desparate measures, I thought, as I whisper to him and myself "It's only one more week, it's only one more week."

But that's not an update at all, you might say, that's just a plea for pity! Well, perhaps. Here are some actual updates, then:

I met last night with some local bloggers! The Big, Blonde, Bad Bahu and Milwaukee Masala. Lovely, both of them. It reminded me how much I am missing out by being away from blog reading the past few weeks and months. There are so many of you whose blogs I truly, truly love and want to read all the time but haven't had a chance to. I will, though. Expect comments on weeks-old posts coming soon. And new blogs! Ones I don't even know about. I wish I had more time, people, I truly do.

As for my blog, I do sometimes slip away from my workstation to post something small. I'll continue to do that for the next week or so. I seriously think of three new ideas every day about my weird life. They're coming soon, to a computer near you, as soon as I get the chance.

Urdu class is going well too. I'm as eager as ever and my heart has stopped pounding during the last 30 minutes of class like it used to when I realized I was way out of my league. My reading is faster, and we've finally waded into some territory and vocabulary that I didn't already know. It's like the first few weeks everyone else was doing the whole curriculum and I was just focused on the script and reading/writing it. Now we're all on relatively equal footing. There are two other gori wives in my class as well. I invited them to yesterday's meetup but it was too short of a notice. Perhaps they'll come to the next one. We all had so much fun last night that we've pledged the next one will be soon.

Lastly, my own blog. I've heard from a friend who said that Disqus and/or word verification makes commenting difficult for some people, so I plan to change it. Does anyone feel the same way or have any other suggestions for me as far as blog management? Here are The Gori Wife Life, we appreciate your suggestions :)

Pakistani Music, Second Edition

I wrote before about how my first exposure to Pakistani music was not from Mian but instead was from my Roommate at the time. After listening to a cd from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, though, my second exposure to Pakistani music was ALSO not from my Mian - it was from his friend Muda.

He hung out with three other guys all the time, all four of them and in various combinations of 2 of them or 3 of them - sometimes I was also included. Once, M invited me to go somewhere with M and his friend Muda. It was the first time I ever got to ride in one of his friends cars (M didn't have a car when I met him) and I really liked the music that was playing. They told me it was arab music, not Pakistani music, but I still associated it with M because that was about the only international music I'd heard and I didn't hear it any other place except Muda's car.

A few weeks later, M told me he'd sent me a package in the mail (we lived about 75 miles apart so it wasn't easy to see each other whenever we wanted.) I waited. And waited. And waited. I am not a patient person. I asked M about it but he wouldn't tell me anything about it, not even a hint. Then one day, he told me he'd recieved the package back because he'd put the wrong address on the box. My lack of pateince got the best of me and I drove 75 miles to personally retreive my package, though he teased me that he was going to correct the address and mail it again and make me wait. Inside the package was a copy (copywright infrigement, surely) of the CD and a case with a special inscripted message for me.

For months, I listened to that and only that CD in my car. Even though I couldn't understand the words, I could eventually sing many of the songs from memory. Later, after another trip in Muda's car, I recieved another illegal copy of a CD, this time a Pakistani musician named Faakir. That one replaced my Arabic Groove cd and soon I was singing songs from Faakir's Aatish CD.

To this day, while sitting at my desk semi-mindlessly clicking through documents, occasionally these songs come on my iPod and I smile. They bring me back to feeling like I did in the very early days of infatuation with Mian and everything connected to him.