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Welcome to our blog. Thanks again for following us. This is our first post:

We are learning before we go that nothing in India is easy. Jenna and I spent much of Monday picking through the minutiae of Indian visas. There seems to be a different visa for every special group of people: tourists, students, workers, businessmen, missionaries, journalists, medical patients, former Indian nationals, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans. You name it. (If you ever plan on going to India, for any reason--even just to visit briefly--you must have a visa. Here's the India Consulate website page listing all the types of visas you can possibly get. A veritable Baskin Robbins of bureaucratic meticulousness: https://indiavisa.travisaoutsourcing.com/guidelines.)

Complicating matters is the fact that Jenna was born in India and once held Indian citizenship. This disqualifies her for some reason (though I bet it has something to do with the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks) from getting a tourist visa--the easiest form of visa to get. So we have considered entry visas, student visas, employment visas, and even this thing called a Person of Indian Origin Card. All of this is to say that, by Monday evening, we were nearly at our wit's end.

However, we have gotten reassurances from the organization that is training us in Kolkata (the American TESOL Institute) that they will be sending us documentation by tomorrow that will prove we are students. Therefore, we can apply for a student visa. It should hopefully be in the mail by tomorrow night.