The Time of Our Lives

Privyet! (Hi!) Kak de la? (How are you?) Ochen hirasho, spaseeba. (Very well, thanks.)

We are still rocking and rolling from halfway around the world. It’s getting hot, so thankfully we have a kick-butt air conditioner in our apartment! We needed an extension cord for it, and purchasing one was a quest. We were taken to three different hardware/houseware stores to find one that was not made in China. Apparently they do not trust Chinese-made products here, as the quality is even less than what is allowed into the US. They were hoping to find us a Russian-made cord, but we had to settle for a Turkish one. Who'da thunk? So far so good. The stores we went to were very interesting. Such a mish-mash of products and lack of visual merchandising.

Answers to a few of your questions:

Milan is pronounced just like the Italian city (since he will probably be a famous shoe designer to make up for the trauma of having to wear his big orange clown shoes.) It’s pronounced as a cross between Me-Lahn and Ma-Lahn, with the accent is on the Lahn.

Yes, we did take the “No Jet Lag” pills during our travel, but not as often as the directions suggested. They seemed to help, but we did hit a wall at the worst possible time – about 10 minutes before meeting the children!

We are both behind the camera in our photos. In the photos with both of us in them, those are taken by one of our translators, either Aina or Bayanna (pronounced Bye-Ah-Nah.) Bayanna is also who you see in the video below. They are both great! In fact, the whole team here is great and we feel very comfortable with them. We are pretty well taken care of.

The name of the wi-fi coffee shop is Black and Brown. It's near the Business Center (where they have great pizza!) The staff is very friendly here. We gave them one of our band’s CD’s. They start playing it whenever we come in. ;-)

A Few Tips

Photos: Because internet access in Kaz is mostly dial-up most families have some degree of trouble uploading photos because of the file size. If you don’t have Photoshop to resize your photos for web, there is an awesome, quick, free software program that will help you resize your photos easily to a much more manageable size that won’t take nearly as long. (It saves them as a new file so you don’t lose the original.) It’s called PixRESIZER and you can download it here: http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm

Language: We are still loving our Pimsleur CDs (we got halfway through the Russain II series), but also found a GREAT web site to supplement our Russian lessons: http://www.mangolanguages.com/
You can do a bunch of them for free and they are so user-friendly.

Multi-Use: We packed some puppy training pads to use as disposable changing pads, as well as a mattress pad to guard against leaks once Milan is in our custody (which won’t be until our second trip now.) I like them tons better than the disposable changing pads, and they’re less expensive.

Vitamin Drops: These are a good way to sneak in a little extra nutrition. We put some in a sippy cup of juice we bring him every day. We are starting slowly, so we don’t shock his system. We are using Enfamil Tri-Vi-Sol vitamin drops without iron. We also have a more vitamin-rich Poly-Vi-Sol formula, and a Poly-Vi-Sol formula with Iron. The iron formula will have to wait until we get him home because it can clog up his system.

Dust Control: Aqtobe is a very dusty city. If you bring screens for your windows it may not be enough to keep the dust out of your apartment. Bring a cheap sheer curtain to tape to the window instead. (Luckily we have an air conditioner and our street isn’t as dusty as some, so we have not had to do this, but I know of some families for whom this was a big problem.)

Ring: I purchased an inexpensive “stand in” wedding band and left my real wedding rings at home in our safe. Just in case... But we feel safe here.


We are having the time of our lives. Milan is the most amazing, kindhearted, good natured little boy. He is such a delight to be around and we feel like the luckiest people in the world. We have never felt more alive, and our hearts are singing.

There is so so so much to share, but not as much time to write as I thought we'd have. We will share lots more soon, but for now here are some more photos and videos of our precious few moments here. Much love to everyone!

VIDEOS:


Beach Ball Giggles



Gonna Git Choo



Runnin' and Huggin'