NEVER SAY NEVER: February 2008

Monday, February 25, 2008

Blue Skies

We feel excited, relaxed and happy. We are very comfortable with waiting until May to travel. Besides having near perfect weather, we can finish up a hundred projects at home and at work, and also resume our social life for a while!

It looks like our paperwork will be A-OK to get us through the expected time frame. We just need to do a simple update on our home study. Piece of cake.

Andrea says she gives me until April before I start checking in with her constantly. I'm sure she's right; she sees it all the time. I'm enjoying my calm state, but I'm also certain that I will slowly move toward the edge of my seat as spring approaches. I’m thinking that by April 15 I will be restless; by April 20 anxious; by April 25 nauseous; and by April 30 a twitching basket case. Come May, I will feel like my hair is on fire. Promise me you won’t have me committed?

Of course I've been researching the heck out of Aqtobe. Here's some neat info:

The city of Aqtobe has about 320,000 people. That's about the same population as Colorado Springs, CO; Cincinnati, OH; or Tampa, FL. And it's about 2.5 times the population of Charleston, SC. (The whole country is about 4 times the size of Texas, or 2 times the size of Alaska.)

Aqtobe is 10 hours ahead of us. If it is 9 pm our time, it is already 6 am the next day their time.

Aktobe has a mixed ethnic community, including mostly Kazakhs and Russians, but also Ukrainians, Tatars, Uyghurs, Chechens, Armenians, Jews, Greeks and Germans. (We are looking to adopt either a boy or girl of any race and under 1 year old, so the possibilities are wide open for what our child will look like. We do imagine our baby as having the more commonly found Eurasian or Asian {Kazakh} features, but there is a small chance that we could fall in love with a blond-haired, blue-eyed toddler. One never really knows in Kaz!)

Most fascinating of all, here is a photograph of the entrance to the orphanage for children ages 0-2 in Aqtobe. It is called the Ymit Baby House, which means the Hope Baby House. This is the place where our child is right now. Incredible.

Thanks to the blogs of other wonderful families who have recently adopted from Aqtobe, we've seen photos of the very playroom in which we will spend our time during those required daily bonding visits. We have also seen photos of our in-country staff and many of the caregivers at the baby house. These are the very women who are loving and attending to our child the best they can until we get there. Again, incredible! In the interest of dramatic suspense, I will wait to post those kinds of photos until they are from our very own trip. (Many of you PAPs out there have seen the other Aqtobe blogs, but most of our family and friends have not.)

I found a much more detailed map of Kazakhstan below, as well as some very interesting thematic maps. You can see more of those here.

(click to enlarge any photo in this blog)

At no extra charge, here are two more great links about Kazakhstan in general:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kz.html
http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/places/countries/country_kazakhstan.html

I hope I'm not boring the non-adoptive parents too much here. This is just compelling stuff to us. I feel like a Kaz research geek, but I don't care! This is my child's home country. I respect that. I want to know all about it and incorporate some of the culture and traditions into our lives.

It's cool like that.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Pssst

On the last episode of Ruopoli Baby Comes to Town, we were waiting patiently (sort of) to hear our region.

Well ladies and gentlemen, as of Tuesday afternoon, the first red velvet curtain has finally lifted. We have our region assignment.

Drumroll please!

Our sweet baby is waiting for us in…

the fine city of...

Aqtöbe!

It’s pronounced Ock-TOE-Bee. (Or maybe Ak-TOO-Bee. I need to double check that!) It sounds a little like October, which is our favorite month.

Aqtöbe or Aktöbe (est. pop. 320,000) is 6,141 miles from Charleston. It is located in northwestern Kazakhstan, northeast of the Caspian Sea and southeast of Samara, Russia, on the Ilek River. It was founded in 1869 as Aktyube (“White Hill”.) The name is a reference to the heights on which the original 19th century settlement was located.

The city grew rapidly with the expansion of metallurgical industries during World War II. Currently their major industries are chromium mining and oil production. It has 2 universities, 2 museums, 2 theatres, a mosque, several other churches. Learn lots more about it here.

Our dossier will arrive at the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Aqtobe within the next 2 weeks. Then the MOE will issue our Letter of Invitation (LOI) to us. For Aqtobe, the average time frame for a LOI to be issued has typically been 8-10 weeks after a dossier gets there. The LOI will tell us exactly when we need to arrive, which has typically been about 1-2 weeks from the date of the LOI. So that puts our time frame at about mid-May. As summers are ferociously hot and winters bitterly cold in Kazakhstan, they say that spring (April to June) and autumn (September to October) are the best seasons to be there. Perfect!

So it's Aqtobe or bust! Aqtobe. Gotta get used to saying it. It is a word that will be tripping off our tongues for the rest of our lives. It will become fondly ingrained into our vocabulary and our minds. It is a little corner of the world that will become ours for many weeks, and where many powerful memories will be made that will live in our hearts forever. The genesis of our family will be in Aqtobe.

It is so nice to finally know. We are buzzing with excitement!

Sorry it took a whole day and a half to post the news, but I had already written the previous post and didn't want the the sentiments to go unexpressed or be out of order. :-)

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Here Comes The...

The last week was a quite difficult one in our little adoption story. I have finally emerged from a slight haze that clouded my world for several days.

It started when we made the tough decision to request that one of LMI's regions be taken out of the options for us. We just weren't comfortable with it for various reasons. It is LMI's quickest region, so this decision almost definitely means a longer wait -- up to 2 months longer. That was a hard (albeit self-prescribed) pill to swallow. Plus we really wanted to be in Kaz for their big spring holiday, Nauryz, on March 21-22, and that's probably out of the question now.

Honestly, the waiting doesn't bother me quite as much as potentially having to re-re-re-re-re-do some of paperwork yet again. For example, I have been to the doctor 4 times in less than a year for my 'proof that I'm not dying' exam. If I have to go back for a 5th time I think I will lose my marbles! And I've been feeling a little tired. Tired of paperwork, tired of wondering, worrying, waiting, planning, putting things off, being in limbo and declining invitations and band gigs that I could have accepted. I know it's all small potatoes in the big scheme of things, but it was feeling like big potatoes. Big 'ole heavy, brown, bumpy, lumpy, dirt-covered, Idaho selects.

I've stayed relatively positive and cheerful (my default setting) throughout this process. I really didn't want to feel a drop of anguish, but I guess that's just not realistic. This is one of the most trying things we will ever do. We've been navigating some very big emotions and decisions. Not the biggest, but still... This process can be torturous, and I was bound to get into a funk at some point.

Also, the waves of joy, love and excitement that wash over me regularly have been sprinkled lately by a dash of terror. The "What ifs?" are playing a little more loudly in my mind. Oh, they're not going to stop us. No way, no how. But they are there, holding their collective breath, just in case they need to blurt out "I told you so!"

Make no mistake; we are still completely ecstatic. This is as exhilarating as it is taxing, and I have no doubt that the strange emotional roller coaster will lead us to the child who is meant to be ours. And I'm feeling better now. My moment has passed and the sun is beaming golden streams of light into my spirit again. We are at peace with what happens from here.

So I am now digging deep into my resilience reserves, and I will try my darndest to stay focused on the ultimate goal. To help me along (and for all of your viewing pleasure) here are some beautiful little reminders that it's all going to be worth it in the end. Every last freaking document. Every last streaming tear.

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