Alive and Well!

Saturday, May 17, 2008

We’re here! We are having trouble with the internet connection in our apartment, and it has been a whirlwind since we landed. We finally made it to a coffee shop with wi-fi and wanted to give everyone a quick update.

We don’t have baby news to share just yet. We are still going through the initial process. We hope to share some good news with you within a couple of days.

We made it to Aqtobe with hardly a hitch, and so did all of our luggage. We had 4 checked bags and 2 carry-ons. What a surreal experience the travel alone has been. From sitting shell-shocked in the Charleston airport to arriving to the dusty tin building that is the temporary airport in Aqtobe, our bodies and our emotions have been all over the place the last few days. But no worries -- we are doing just fine.

Each leg of our journey brought different accompanying emotions with it. Leaving Charleston was very mournful. More so than we ever thought. We were in shock that were actually leaving our loved ones behind for many weeks to go on this extreme journey. During the Memphis to Amsterdam leg our focus slowly shifted back to our child – and the future undertaking at hand. Amsterdam to Almaty was a mix of utter elation and sheer terror. It was the wildest feeling sitting in the Amsterdam airport waiting to board the plane to Almaty. That’s when you start seeing many Kazakhs and Russians and hearing Russian being spoken. The first word I recognized was “see-vode-nya” which means “today.” I felt like an idiot being so excited to hear it, but it brought tears to my eyes.

TIP FOR ADOPTIVE PARENTS – The Amsterdam airport has a hotel within it that is convenient to your terminals. It’s called Hotel Mercure. We came across it while looking for the Meditation Center. Since we had a 7 hour layover we thought our ultimate purpose would be better served if we checked in for a few hours and catch some z’s rather than tour Amsterdam. The hotel charged the same price as a full night stay -- $85 euros single/$95 euros double -- but it was worth every penny, and they take credit cards. It was a simple, clean modern room with a comfy bed, so we were able to get a few hours of solid sleep and a quick shower. Very refreshing.


Almaty to Aqtobe was stressful at first because we nearly missed it with the tight layover timing and some confusion with baggage overage payment (they didn’t accept credit cards as we thought, and we didn’t have enough Tenge, so Frank had run back outside to the money exchange.) After we finally got settled on the plane, the trip was surprisingly relaxing. Oh, except for when Frank was accused of smoking in the restroom by an infuriated male flight attendant. (Frank has never smoked a day in his life!) The restroom smelled smoky when Frank went in, but the flight attendant was passing by as Frank exited and began accusing him and yelling very loudly. Frank held his ground that it must have been the guy before him…he even invited the flight attendant smell his breath (which he did) and look at his non-yellowed fingers. They ended up coming back to me to vouch for Frank not being a smoker. It was nuts. All of that was made extra weird by the fact that we were the only Americans on that flight as far as we could tell and we already felt conspicuous enough.

We were met by the Aqtobe LMI team and whisked off to meet with the head doctor of all the orphanages to be interviewed. It was very quick, and we simply answered a couple of questions about our family. We then were brought to our apartment and settled in here for an hour. Then we went to meet a few children (more on this next time) and were brought back to our apartment for the day.

Our apartment is inside an old, concrete Soviet era building. It is cozy, with a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, along with a small porch overlooking the street. (This is the same place Christy S. stayed after she got custody of Zahria. Thinking of you!)

We ventured out to the supermarket tonight all by ourselves and successfully procured our very first Kazakh groceries, which included 1 loaf of bread, 2 containers of yogurt, 2 apples, a large bottle of water and a bottle of cheap vodka to use for sterilization. We had pizza earlier with our interpreter, and it was pretty good. We brought peanut butter, crackers, oatmeal, granola bars, etc., to hold us over until we can make a bigger trip to the supermarket.

Some other random thoughts….

The weather today was nice. Sunny and mild, even if with a cloud of dust.
The Kazakh people are indeed beautiful. Stunning.
Gold teeth are all the rage in older generation.
Lots of people walk around the streets holding transistor radios.
In some areas, scenes from the movie Borat aren’t actually that far off.

We have been going non-stop and haven’t had the time or ability to take many photos yet. It’s something we really look forward to doing once we are settled. We brought our small Canon for snapshots, and Frank’s Nikon for the good stuff.

As we write this, it’s 1:00 am Aqtobe time early Saturday morning, but 4:00 pm Friday for Charleston. We just finished some green tea and James Taylor is playing the iPod. We shouldn’t have any trouble sleeping, as we have hit a wall. We occasionally wonder if we will wake up and still be here? It all still feels very dreamlike.

More soon…