Saturday, May 31, 2008

H-O-T Spells Hot

So how would we describe Kazakhstan today? In a word – HOT! In case you hadn’t noticed in our recent posts, it has been hot all week, with temperatures in the mid 30’s. There is little to no wind and few places have air conditioners. The cars all seem to have AC, but nobody uses it. Generally they prefer the 4 by 60 method of climate control (4 windows down, 60mph). Needless to say, there’s practically no point in doing your hair in the morning, it won’t look like you did a few blocks later.

Life at Club Baby House (a term coined by another adoptive family) continues to go well. It is kind of like a mini United Nations. So far we have met four families from the USA, and one each from London, Spain and Germany. There is also another couple from Canada who is using the same agency as we are. Each morning just before 10 am, a caravan of vehicles pulls onto the Baby House grounds. We, along with the other families hop out of vehicles and file into the various rooms to retrieve our children for our morning visit. Around 11:30, the same families slowly trickle back in to deposit their children into the waiting arms of the loving caregivers and then assemble themselves outside to be ferried back off to their respective living quarters. And so the story goes morning and afternoon. It has only been 6 days, but we already dread seeing the hands on the clock tick away, moving toward the time we must depart from our children.

Today had some variety for us. We started our day with a stop at the notary to sign papers allowing our coordinator to proceed with filing our paperwork. We will file these papers with the courts on June 9th (the day after our 15 days of bonding) to petition the adoption of M. Hopefully on the 10th we will be given our court date, which we expect to be 20 to 25 days later. We were only allowed one visit today, as the Baby House is short staffed on weekends, so we decided to do a little exploring of this fine city.

Our first destination was Park Kirova in the centre of down town Ust. It is only about a 15 minute walk from our apartment. The park is about two city blocks in area and appears to be a dedication to General Kirova, but that’s as far as we figured out so far. It is a beautiful area with many trees, flowers and winding brick paths that are scattered with various statues and iron garden figures. The picture above is a statue that caught our attention and seemed fitting to our time here.



There is also a Russian pioneer village in the park that we visited. It is reminiscent of the pioneer museums at home, consisting of a variety of traditional buildings, including stores, houses, cabins, and tack sheds. After the village we got up enough courage to purchase some ice cream treats from one of the vendors in the park. This may not seem like a huge accomplishment, but for us, it was the first time we bought something where the price wasn’t listed so we had to ask – and understand what we heard. It went well, the ice cream was delicious, and we discovered that Canada has many different pronunciations. Here, it sounds a lot more like “Kuh-nah-da”. After the park, we decided to take a different route home so that we would end up passing by the grocery store on the way to our apartment. To our surprise, we ended up finding one of the bazaars we had heard so much about. We thought it would only be a few stalls, so decided to venture in so we could get an idea of what types of goods were sold in a bazaar. As it turns out, this was no little bazaar. Our best guess would be that it had around 100 vendors in it, selling everything from shoes to clothes to fabric to household goods. The bazaar was a maze of stalls and paths, and the best thing we can compare it to would be a trade show, but far less fancy and far more crowded. In places the roof only consisted of a tarp, while other areas had sheets of tin. Of the prices we saw or asked about, most things seemed fairly cheap. Brand names, especially those from the west, were comparable to prices back home, but I would suspect the quality is considerably less.

We've also included a picture of the view from our apartment. We are fortunate to be along the river because we can get a cool breeze in the evening which helps to make sleep possible.


Friday, May 30, 2008

Life is Good

Another great day with our son. Today we met a new caregiver, Luba, who gave us two thumbs up. She was very impressed with the great eye contact M gives us, all of the things we are doing with him and how well he is responding to us. When we arrived this afternoon he was already dressed in his “visiting clothes” and quickly dropped the toy he was playing with so we could pick him up. When we dropped him off today he kept watching Mom the whole time she was putting his stuff in his locker, even when Luba was talking to him. We think she has a special place in her heart for M, because she called him “my son” and mimed “little”. We are certain she meant she has been his caregiver since he was little. It is comforting to get her approval. We think he's pretty darned special too.

M is teething and was quite uncomfortable this afternoon, so he was happiest being held. Of course, we enjoyed every minute of it, even though the temperature was about 35 degrees. We were happy that he took a teething ring from Rod which he got much relief from. Between teething and the heat, he wasn’t in a playful mood, but we are thankful that we were able to comfort him.

And from the Kaz files…

The only thing that makes traffic slow down here is a thick layer of fresh tar on the street. Having a clean car is very important here. You often see the men polishing and visiting around their cars. We're pretty sure our driver dusts and polishes his car every morning before he picks us up. He'd shudder to see how dirty our cars get driving on grid roads!

Eeeesh!

$1.35 a litre! Catherine, we may be moving in because it will cost too much to drive home. Tell Larry to get his walking shoes on, our little one likes to be walked! (Grandpa German would be in his glory!) As far as we can tell, it is about 80 cents a litre here, but the average wage is also much lower than it is in Canada, so in perspective, I guess gasoline would be more costly here, even if it is lower at the pumps.

Our morning visit was excellent! M taught us how to play "pick up" and got quite a kick watching his Dad retrieve his tossed items. M is teething and continues to find comfort in his soft books. We will take a teething ring for him this afternoon to give the little guy some relief. He is settling in faster each visit and we can now sit and play with him in under 15 minutes, which is a huge milestone for us. Rod laments that M continues to be a "mama-suck" because he goes to Tammy easier than him, but all in all, M is doing very well. Tammy figures she better get all she can now, because when M sees all of the adventures his father has planned for him, she isn't likely to see much of them once we are at home!

Well, it's time for us to head off for visit #2 today, so we'd better get going.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Daisy the Duck

Good morning Canada!

Today was our fourth day of visits to the baby house to bond with M. Both visits were good and we saw many changes with each visit. Today M started to play with the toys we brought. He also appears to appreciate fine literature, especially the soothing quality of Daisy the Duck. He started to look through the book at the bright colours, but since he has two new teeth coming through, he soon had other priorities in mind and Daisy the Duck was repurposed to a teething toy. Most days we spend a lot of time walking with M. There is a driveway that surrounds the baby house and many small play areas that we can use. He likes to cuddle, which is good, but with the temperatures in the low 30’s it is like carrying a small furnace! We were thankful today to find a patch of shade and a cool breeze.

On the other front, we now have one TV channel in English. We almost have the news feeds of CNN memorized, but it is good to have a bit of a connection to what is happening in the rest of the world.

Usually we aren’t ones to praise marketing and advertisements, but quite honestly, here it is a life saver for us. We are determined to become independent in terms of shopping, and that could not happen if it weren’t for the picture clues on food. Here’s a bit of an idea of the cost of some items we’ve bought so far:
1L of juice - 195 tenge (or about $1.63 CDN),
a loaf of unsliced bread - 53 tenge ($0.41 CDN),
5L of water – 166 tenge ($1.38 CDN),
10 hot dogs – 163 tenge ($1.36 CDN)
10 eggs – 195 tenge ($1.63 CDN)
0.5L Heinz ketchup – 670 tenge ($5.58) – Rod insisted.

Oh, and if we decide not to come home, it will only be because of the yogurt here, it is absolutely amazing! The milk on the other hand may take some getting used to.

Some other interesting things to note about life in Kaz:

Driving - Streets here are like a daily Indy 500. Lane markings appear to be only a general suggestion with the number of lanes of each street more commonly determined by the size of vehicles and spatial awareness of drivers. A general rule of thumb is to take the number of marked lanes and add one more. That’s usually how many cars will drive abreast. If there is an opening, two or three vehicles go for it. Car horns are multi-purpose. They are used to greet people, give them a piece of your mind when they eek into your space, to warn people you are coming, and to let them know you plan to stop to let them cross. Our driver honks his horn more times in a day than we have the entire time we’ve owned our car!

Walking - Apparently pedestrians have a higher point value here that at home. The downtown area has some marked crosswalks, but locals seem to prefer a more direct route, much like Saskatchewan’s gopher population. We are thankful that we live in an area with low traffic, else we would be limited to wander aimlessly around our block, longing to explore, but never braving to cross the street! Our general strategy in busy areas is to find someone that looks like they’ve been around awhile and cross when they do – hey if they’ve lasted this long, they must have a good strategy!

But seriously, Kazakhstan is a beautiful country with many interesting things to learn. Our driver pointed out some sites of interest within walking distance that we hope to explore sometime soon. Hopefully we’ll be able to post some pictures of these adventures.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

The Perfect 10

4 flights + 3 countries + 2 parents + 1 baby boy!

Yes, we are alive and well. Sorry we didn’t post sooner, but we haven’t had much of a chance since we left Frankfurt. Plus, today was the first day we could get and Internet card and quite honestly it took us 3 hours to translate it so we knew what to do with it!

We arrived in Almaty around midnight on Sunday and had a meeting with the coordinator there. After only a few hours sleep we were up and on the go again to make a quick stop at the bank and then catch a flight to Ust-Kamenogorsk. We were met at the airport by our Ust coordinator and our driver. Both are extremely kind and have been very helpful. From there we were whisked away with our ton of luggage, which surprisingly all made it to Ust, to our first apartment. We dropped off our stuff and had a quick meeting to go over our next steps. A few minutes later we were off to the baby house. We thought it would just be to meet with the director/head doctor but to our joyful surprise, around 3:30 on Monday afternoon a wonderful caregiver came into the Head Doctor’s office with a tiny bundle in her arms – our son!

Unfortunately, we aren’t allowed to share any significant information about him until after he is officially declared ours by the courts. The bad news is that this won’t be for another 30-35 days. I know you are disappointed by this, but with the Internet being the wonderful and scary place that it can be, it is most definitely what’s best for our family. We can tell you what will generally happen for the next few weeks.

We are driven to the baby house by our wonderful (and daring) driver twice a day for “bonding time.” On Saturdays and Sundays we will only visit once per day. We have already had three days of visits. After the 15th day we will have our first court date to ask permission to adopt this child. Then there will be a 20-25 day appeal period where we will continue to visit each day and wait for the courts to finalize their decision. After our second court date we will be officially declared as parents (by the courts, our hearts are in it hook, line and sinker already!) and then he will come to live with us full time until the remainder of his paperwork allowing him to leave Kazakhstan and enter Canada is complete. Only after all of that will we be able to fly home.

Well, we'll leave it at that for now, with dial-up we aren't sure how long posts will load, so this will be our test run. Until tomorrow....

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Coming to you live from Frankfurt Airport...

...its the Germans in Germany!!! "It's time to play the music, it's time to light the lights, it's time to meet the [Germans] on the [German] Show tonight!"

Okay, enough of name that tune, after 30 minutes of trying to give ourselves a crash course in reading German, we finally found the lightest of light grey buttons that would change the page to English so we could sign on to the WiFi here, so we haven't a lot of time left. Our flights have been uneventful, but for that we are thankful. The clock says it's about 1:30 am where you are, here it is 9:30 am on Sunday. Besides finally getting an Internet connection, we've also managed to spend $20 USD . No, that doesn't sound interesting until we tell you what we bought...exactly one small bottle of water and one small iced tea! Nope, not kidding! We're definately not in Kansas anymore. Ahhh....airport life! Anyway, I see the yellow warning sign has popped up, which means we are soon to lose power and we need to get this uploaded.

Just wanted you all to know that we made it over the Atlantic and we're waiting for our flight to Almaty which is about 3 and a half hours from now.

Take Care!