Prepping Parents for their Visit

I had a fun time with my parents when they visited me here in US. Lots of my friends are also planning to bring their parents here, so thought will pen a blog which will share my memories and will help my friends to plan their trip. This is going to be a series of blogs and here comes the first one.

In my case my mom didn’t want to get out of India and take a flight and come to US. It involved lot of cajoling, sentimental talks and threatening (saying that I would get married to my imaginary American g.f if they don’t come here) to make her to come here. I started the process a year back with Passport and others. Visa interview was booked in the starting of the May and they came to US on May 21st. I was so excited to and couldn’t contain my excitement when I was waiting for them in the airport. Then there she came out with 1000 Watt smile in her face and off course my dad was ensuring that all the baggage’s came out proper and things like that. When planning for their flight journey I followed these tips or thumb rules whatever you want to call it



1) I didn’t want to book a direct flight from Chennai to JFK, It will be difficult for them to sit continuously and travel. So I booked tickets in Lufthansa from Chennai to Frankfurt (7 ½ hours) with a 3 hour layover in between and Frankfurt to Philadelphia (7 ½ hours). With a 3 hour layover in between they can stretch their legs in between the flights and can get refreshed. I am not a big fan of long haul flights.
2) I made sure that they carry some dry fruits and biscuits incase they don’t like the food in the flight, it helped since mom didn’t like the food in flight and she ended up surviving in biscuits. Even though they are non-vegetarians (like most Indians they don’t eat red meat), we made the food choice as Asian Vegetarian since they may get some dosa or idli in the initial flight.
3) They had enough foreign exchange (my dad got it from Thomas cook in Spencer Plaza Chennai) with a seal on his passport for getting foreign exchange.
4) I took a printout of customs declaration form and Immigration form from Path2usa.com and filled the details out and sent a scanned copy. This would ease their fears and questions on what to fill for what.
5) My dad can speak decent English so I didn’t give any other letter to immigration but for parents who cannot speak English then you can give a letter stating that they have problem with the language and you can give your contact number and details Immigration generally calls you for details. My friend did that for his parents.
6) For Philadelphia airport there will be porters for taking your baggage and putting it in big cart and take through customs and bring you out. They charge 10$ for that cart and I asked my parents to use that rather than them going through to find 1$ bills and put it in the vending machine for carts.