Day 7--November 1, 2008

Day 7—November 1, 2008

Today we visited Aydar and found that he prefers technology to anything else. We finally found a ball, and he played with it for only a short time. Instead, he took about 50 pictures of John with the digital camera. We also flipped the video screen around to video tape him, and, trust me, we have some VERY close up shots of Aydar! He loves to put the lens cover on the video camera, something that he needs to squeeze and center before it will stay on--impressive for a four year old! He has an excellent arm when it comes to throwing the ball. He threw it to John every time (except when I was trying to catch it on tape), and caught it really well. It truly looks like his fine motor skills are superb.

We also taught him some sign language—he now knows the sign for “mama” and “papa”. We really think sign language is going to be key for him, because he literally does not make a sound unless we are tickling him, and then he laughs out loud. When we arrived today, he was dressed very warmly—a T-shirt, heavy sweater, and long johns under his jeans. And it is HOT everywhere. I blew down the front and back of his shirt, and he just stood still, transfixed like the greatest thing has just happened to him. We opened the windows in the playroom, and were questioned about it, but not told to close them.

We also found a number of stores that sold toys today. Anything American (e.g. Lego’s) is very expensive. A Barbie doll is $80. We stopped in a store that had some toys in the window, but the store turned out to be a shoe store with just a couple of toys. The shoes in the store that we looked at that would have been cute for Karis were $245! Yikes! We found some other toys elsewhere that were more affordable, and passed on the shoes.

The photo developer was closed tonight when we went to have pictures developed. I hope it won’t be a problem tomorrow. I’m sure it closed early because it is Saturday, even though the sign on the door only had one set of hours (9:00 – 7:00). We’re going to have to make sure we get pictures developed after our morning visit to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

We found our “Harris Teeter” of Almaty, that is very clean, bright, and has an excellent selection of food. I am still leery of buying meat—I don’t want to end up with something like horse intestines and think that it’s hot dogs. Instead, we had fish sticks, corn and bread with olive oil. Unfortunately, we have only one pan to cook in for a month. Oh yes, one more thing: they have the market on desserts. Everything is fabulous.

We discovered that we can’t have a court hearing until our 14 day bonding period is complete. And I don’t believe that they can even set it up before we have completed the bonding period, so we don’t have a clue when we will be coming home. Please take good care of Karis and yourselves for us.

Day 6--October 31, 2008

Day 6—October 31, 2008

Sorry for not posting a picture. Kazakhstan would prefer we not post anything until the adoption is complete.

(1:00p.m.) Today was an interesting day. We met with the Director of the orphanage this a.m. and received a great deal of information about Aydar. She was very forthcoming, and said that we could have a copy of his file (good news). This is some of the information we received: he has been at the orphanage since birth; all doctors say that he is fine/healthy with the exception of his mouth; he now understands that his speech is different from other children, so he doesn’t say much; he has had two surgeries—one on his lip and one on his mouth; he has had all immunizations (they say the same as American immunizations); workers come to work on the building, and he calls them “dad”; he is very intelligent and makes logical decisions; he stays close to his friend (girl) who has downs syndrome and cares for her; he was born in Almaty; he has no allergies; and he eats everything!

The orphanage was required to show us other children as well in order to satisfy court proceedings. They were very small and did not understand what was going on. Of course, we saw Aydar. All of the children were presented to us twice, once early in the meeting, and then again after the regional director came (she was required to ensure we saw more children than just Aydar). When we arrived, the children were going for a walk, and we saw Aydar in the group. We waved and said hello. Each time he came to the room during the meeting, he came right to me and climbed into my lap. What a sweetie! Bonding is obviously not a problem there. The workers at the orphanage are all caring people who truly love the children. I’m sure it is a mixed blessing for them when a child is adopted.

In other news, let me tell you a little bit about what is going on outside of the adoption. We went for a walk yesterday and found a park with some interesting statues commemorating WWI and WWII. There was a huge, bright yellow building with a decorative rooftop, but we have no idea what it was. The people here ALL dress in black, with the exception of small children. There is very little color here. The women dress in skinny dark jeans, black coats, and black stiletto boots. The women are all very tiny. I’m sure they don’t weigh enough to even give blood; they must eat only on Tuesdays and Fridays. The men dress in dark jeans, black shoes, black shirts, and black coats. The only variation in color is gray. Even when looking in store windows, the clothes for sale are only black. The food here is good, although I don’t venture outside of my own little realm here. At least they have what I like—fish, pasta, pizza, Chinese food. I don’t drink the milk, since it came in a carton that was from a display in the middle of the floor in the store. There is just something not right about that—at least in my head. John says it is good, and tastes somewhat like powdered milk. They have American soda (not Mountain Dew), but they typically serve it warm, so we drink mostly bottled water (although John has found a couple of good regional beers). We’ve been told to not drink the water, but that it’s OK to rinse fruit and vegetables in it. We’re not taking any chances—we brush our teeth with bottled water. People here drive CRAZY. There are at least five cars going in various directions at intersections. NASCAR has nothing on Olga. She is quick, and can get her car through the tightest of places. I just close my eyes when I’m riding with her. We’re living downtown, and there is definitely a split between poverty and wealth. One block may have Dolce Gabbana, and the next block may have a tiny market that no more than five people could fit into at one time. We’re told that teachers and doctors make very little pay, but someone is making money because there are a lot of nice cars here (BMW, Lexus, Mercedes). Everyone here smokes. That’s the one bad thing about going to dinner or to a café for the WiFi. There is no escaping it. We can even smell it in our apartment. YUK! Traffic outside of our windows is rough—people are always beeping their horns, and motion detector car alarms are going off constantly.

(8:00 p.m.) We saw Aydar this afternoon, and had a great visit with him. We played outside for more than an hour. We are putting pictures in a photo album to leave with him when we go back to the U.S., and brought the album to show him tonight. He LOVED it. He looked at it again and again, and then went back to it in between playing.

One thing that is very frustrating to us is that the orphanage said that our 14 day bonding period does not begin until today, but our plane tickets are scheduled for 14 days from yesterday. We’re not quite sure why, other than maybe someone did not know the correct sign in process yesterday, and had us sign a piece of copy paper. We signed a journal today, which seemed more official. We explained to our coordinator that we have pictures with the date on them, but that did not seem to matter. Also, we have to wait until after the 14 day bonding period before we have our court hearing, which means we may have another week here. That will mean almost a month without seeing Karis :-(

Day 5--October 30, 2008

Day 5—October 30, 2008

Today was a big day for us!!!! We finally saw Aydar (pronounced “I-dar”, rolling the “r” on the end). He was absolutely adorable. He was shy at first, of course, and we stayed in an office for a while until we asked if they had a playroom. The playroom was small, but had huge stuffed animals (like from a carnival) and some baby toys, and a car, which he enjoyed playing with for a while. He loved John’s camera, and was excited to see a picture of Karis on the carousal. He smiled and said “Aht!” (sp) for “horse” . They have a horse statue made of wire on the grounds, so he was familiar with it. We showed him several pictures of Karis, telling him “sistah” (sp) for “sister”. He will definitely know who she is when he meets her. The biggest toy of all for Aydar: John’s camera! When John showed him pictures of Karis and Boo, he started pressing all kinds of buttons. John’s phone is a PDA phone, so it started gong haywire with all of the different functions Aydar was selecting J. We took pictures while we were there, and showed him the pictures on the camera. He got a kick out of that. We bought two photo albums—one to fill and leave with him when we go back to the U.S. (the orphanage said that children are sad when the adopting families leave), and one to fill and take to court with us (and, of course, to take home to show everyone). For those of you with boys, you will be happy to know that we got a taste of what you’ve been telling us—he had a stuffed caterpillar, and started banging it on the stuffed dog. He’s all boy! We wish we had brought toys with us. We mistakenly thought that the orphanage would have toys, but they didn’t have any that were age appropriate in the room where we played. There is one toy store nearby, but most of what they had were hard plastic toys—difficult to take back and forth. We found a couple of other stores with a small selection of toys. We searched for a ball, to no avail, believe it or not. John bought a couple of Matchbox cars, and we’ll walk further tomorrow to shop to see if we have better luck. We’ll upload pictures from the nearby café that has free WiFi. I’m sure it will take a while. We hope to take him to a Western doctor soon and get a physical to confirm his health. We will visit him again tomorrow (and every day until we leave), so we’ll send another update.

Day 4--October 29, 2008

We did it!!!! We received permission from the MOE today to visit the orphanage (i.e. Aydar!!!). It was a very long day. We were told to be ready for an 11:00 appointment. At 11:15, we were told to go to lunch, and come back at 12:30. At 12:30, we were told to come back at 2:30 (we were getting nervous at this point). At 2:30, we waited…..and waited…..and waited. Oh yeah—we were waiting by the front door all of this time. We saw men in uniforms go into the building, and learned that they were “prosecutors”—in other words, auditors. So, we had to wait for them to finish, although we had no idea when that would happen.

Finally, at 6:00, John and I were told to go in. Olga (our coordinator) and Assya (our translator) were in another room on the phone. John and I were useless in our own defense! We gathered them, only to find that Olga was not on the invitation, so she could not attend the interview. Yikes! So, John, Assya and I went up to the Ministry of Education, where we were promptly told (twice) that our visas were incorrect, but that she would accept them because we had waited so long (our visas were written in Kazakh for the “Dept. of Education” instead of “Ministry of Education”—an old template that our adoption agency used when applying for our visas). We answered a few questions…what are our occupations, do we know that they have no healthy children, do we have any biological children, do we believe there will be jealousy between the children, who will stay home with the child and for how long, etc.

Finally, we were told that they would send permission to the orphanage for us to visit, and that they should have the permission by noon tomorrow. Assya is a college senior, and had missed two classes for us. She just made it to a 7:00 exam. We truly appreciate her dedication.

We had a great dinner to celebrate, and are going to call it an early night. We are very excited to see Aydar, and will take a lot of pictures. Miss you all! Give Karis big hugs and kisses for us! Goodnight.

From John (Day 2--Sorry it's out of order)

Dobre O tra, (my phonetic spelling for Good Morning in Russian) I have no idea in Kazakh,

We are on Day 2 in Almaty,Kazakhstan. We are doing well. Cindie still has a bit of a cold. She is resting today. We are 10 hours a head of North Carolina (EDT)

Tell Karis we said hello and we love her and miss her!

It was a good trip over, we made all plane connections with no problems, well...... As some of you may know, Cindie is not a fan of flying, she does it because it is a better way to travel, but it is not something she enjoys. We traveled in the air for about 20 hours, and on the 3rd and last leg of the trip, we started in on descent on Luftstansa air(aGerman air line), it is dark, almost midnight in Almaty Kazakhstan. Then we noticed, as frequent flyer's may know, the engines roared and the airplane nose went up drastically, but we felt as if we were now ascending up. Again it is night, we could not tell how close to the ground we were. By this time my hand is turning white. Not by my nerves, but by the grasp of Cindies hand clutching mine with nearly all her strength, as the Pilot comes over the intercom, IN GERMAN. At this point we knew we were not landing, and the plane, still ascending, starts to turn, all while we are still listening in German to this announcement. However, we did understand one word in German he said, 'PROBLEM'. Apparently that is an international word. Then the pilot begins to translate in English, at this point my hand is just about numb, again from Cindies death grip. The problem seems to be with the front landing gear and they should have that corrected in 20 minutes, he says. OK, it's just that, no problem.
Well we finally landed after circling the airport, and everything worked correctly. A bit nerving though.

We have not met Aydar(the child) yet, that will probably not happen until Wednesday. We meet with the minister of education tomorrow at 3pm for our first interview. We would appreciate the prayers.

Well, I need to get back to the apartment before it gets dark. It took us a few days to get connected to the internet but I think I have got it now. I found a Cafe with Wi Fi, and at night we can dial up from the apartment.

I forgot the phone number at the apartment but we gave it to Cindie's mom last night. We will try to make some phone calls tonight, your morning. You can forward this message on to others I missed, Cindie has most of the email list in her email.

Day 3--Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Today is a discouraging day. We received a call from Sasha this morning that our 11:00 a.m. appointment with the MOE has been cancelled. It is 7:00 p.m. right now, and we have not yet received another call saying when it will be rescheduled. If we don’t meet with them tomorrow and visit the orphanage tomorrow, we’ll have to extend our trip in order to satisfy the 14 day bonding period. And that creates a whole new host of items to be addressed in the U.S.

We slept the day away, since we’re still not used to the time change. The people here aren’t rude, they’re just not friendly. No one has smiled at us since we arrived, people walk right into us, they cut us off where ever we’re standing—just not something we’re used to (especially having come from the South).

Cooking is sparse, since we have to turn the gas on and off for the stove, otherwise the gas leaks. Everything in the apartment needs to be cleaned, and somebody’s clothes, slippers, etc. are anywhere we might want to put our things. We had planned to pay for a hotel with our credit card, and now we have to come up with money to pay for the apartment. It would have been better if we had known in advance that we’re staying here and could have planned for it, because we’re not sure how to get more cash. However we do it is going to cost us.

We also don’t know how to turn the date on for our camera—the instructions just aren’t doing it—and that is something that is important for court. John has been great at figuring out the monetary system, getting pictures printed, paying for groceries, and even speaking Russian. I don’t think I would have been able to get by on my own. We think we have a workaround for the pictures. We’ll have to see.

I hope tomorrow will be better. I apologize for being so glum.

Days 1 & 2

Day 1--Sunday, October 26, 2008

We arrived in Almaty late last night. We got some sleep, but it never seems to be enough. We had asked for a hotel, but were taken to an apartment. It’s not too bad. Olga, and her son Sasha, came over at noon to lay out the week for us, and to take us to the grocery store. We could not have asked for nicer people (Sasha translates for Olga). They helped us to figure out what was what in the store (e.g. what I thought was butter turned out to be mayonnaise), and how to use the tenge (Kazakh currency). Olga told us that we were given an apartment because it is less expensive than a hotel, and it is within walking distance to the orphanage. They also told us that it might be a month to one and one half months after we return to the US before we can come back to pick up our son. I hope it’s not that long. We were hoping for just 3 weeks. Olga also gave us a cell phone to use while we’re here, and took us to get an international calling card to use both with our phone and our PC. There is a café nearby (I’m not sure where yet) that has WiFi, so we’ll let you know how that goes once we find it. Tomorrow is a holiday for Kazakhstan, but Olga will still speak with the Ministry of Education (MOE). We will meet with them on Tuesday, and finally go to the orphanage to meet Aydar on Wednesday.

Day 2--Monday, October 27, 2008

First and foremost—we miss everyone terribly and appreciate your help while we’re away. Please give Karis big hugs and kisses for us. There are no words to describe how much we would like to be with her.

Sasha came today and showed us where the orphanage is—just a quick 10 minute walk from our apt. There are a number of children’s play items along the way—some like elliptical machines, swings, etc. We have an appointment tomorrow with the MOE (Ministry of Education) at 3:00. Olga will go with us, but we’re still nervous. They will ask us questions about our income, why we chose Kazakhstan, if we realize that Kazakhs have the right to adoption first, etc.

We bought calling cards to call everyone as well as to dial into the internet. Dial-up is incredibly slow, and we couldn’t read the instructions anyway once John dialed into the server (e.g. we had to input the card’s serial number and password), so John went exploring and found the café with WiFi. Sasha has been incredible—he has helped us with these tasks as well. I’m still sick (can’t seem to shake this cold), so I stayed at the apt. and took a much needed nap while John was out. There is a 10 hour time difference between Kazakhstan and the East coast of the U.S. John has adapted well. He took some great pictures while he was out. We’re not sure what the structures are (“Was that a school or a prison?”), but they’re interesting. We need to have the date printed on our pictures for court. We’re still trying to figure that out with our camera. We think we may have it, but we won’t know for sure until we print some more photos.

We couldn’t cook last night because the gas wasn’t turned on for the stove. Olga called today for us and found out the valve is behind a kitchen drawer! We had eggs for lunch, but by the time John came home this afternoon, the kitchen smelled like gas, so we turned it off again. John is making dinner as I type this. Oh no! John is cooking horsemeat for dinner. I have to go hide! Goodnight……