Almaty Amenities

With our friends Gretchen and Chris at Guinness Pub

during Trip #1

Food is OK. Our first apartment did not have a great supermarket but we did find a pretty good restaurant where we could eat and connect WiFi. This did get expensive. We were able to reduce our costs once we moved to a second apartment in a more central location. This supermarket had more pre-prepared food and we have found some reasonably priced restaurants. The way we found the pre-prepared stuff we liked, was by looking over the selection at the deli counter and pointing. Nothing was so bad that we did not eat it to fill our belly, but there were some dishes we did not buy a second time.
There were a couple of the dishes we ordered and liked. One was Plov, which is rice and a meat mixed together. It appears to be fried rice and mutton and is very filling and good. Shasleek (spelling ?) is their version of grilled meat on a skewer. If you find some good Shasleek near your apartment you may be set for the entire trip. I finally found really good chicken and beef at Restaurant Almaty and it was reasonably priced.

Internet Wi-Fi is pretty easy to find. Some restaurants charge for a hook up, while others are free so long as you order food or drink. Mad Murphy’s was the friendliest and had the better menu of American food. Their service was slow (like most places here) but the food was good and one of the waitresses made buddies with our six year old. This was important to us and we have patronized them several times since. Chinzano (bar/restaurant) had great rice and good food but was pricier. We went there mostly for the Wi-Fi. I think that their clientele start later in the evening because if you go there before 7:00pm you may be just one of a few folks there so the service is pretty good. Guinness Pub did not have Wi-Fi but has good pizza and a very good chicken breast filet with decent service.

Communication is not a severe problem if you do not speak Russian, since a good portion of the younger Kazakhs understand English. Although, I will be brushing up on my Russian and the Cyrillic alphabet before trip two, especially for street signs and menus. In Almaty there are many restaurants with English menus, you just have to ask.

Transportation is only an issue if you are not centrally located to a good supermarket or restaurants. If you do need a ride you can hitch-hike. This is a common practice in Almaty city. We have done this several times with an interpreter and the service is good and the ride is usually about 500 Tenge or $5 to most anywhere in the city. If you feel safe enough, here is what you do. You stand in the street with your hand out, palm down and cars will pull over and you tell them where you want to go and ask how much. I tried this once without an interpreter and was unsuccessful even after showing them the map, so we walked. This is another reason to speak just a little more Russian. If I could pronounce the cross street names correctly it would be no problem to then hand the driver a hand held calculator and he would key in the amount. There is a formal taxi service that cost a little more but you have to find one.
Bring a cheap hand held calculator, it is a great tool. We have used the calculator on numerous instances in a bazaar or other setting where we need to understand a price or communicate a number.

I know I am droning on with advice and I do have another lengthy piece written about apartment living and culture shock which I will post at some point. Writing this has been therapeutic for me, because it keeps me from missing Andrew so much. I cannot wait to get back to see him and then get him home. We should see him Wednesday 8/1 after we get off the plane.

Pray for safe travel and that Andrew won’t be too mad at us. -M

Almaty Advice

This is the outside of our apartment in Almaty.

Entertainment - We brought movies and TV shows on DVD. You could also upload them to an iPod but we did not have one nor did not want to spend the extra money. Our apartment did not have a DVD player so we use our laptop for watching DVDs and for internet communications. I did not bring any computer games but I will add that to the list for our next trip. Even if we had a DVD player in the apartment, Kaz has the PAL format and there is a possibility that it may not be compatible with our NTSC (North American) formatted DVDs. I have read that the iPod works for both. Sorry I cannot explain the specifics as I only have a superficial knowledge of the difference. We debated on whether to purchase a small 12” laptop to save the weight, but decided on the largest 17” screen and it has worked well for blogging and watching movies and TV. The extra weight is not a problem for me but you may need to shop for a high quality back pack to haul it around in, our 17” did not fit in several laptop style packs that we found. Make sure to get well padded shoulder straps and a pack with a nice waist strap. The waist strap helps when you need to make the occasional dash across an intersection to get to the curb and out of traffic. Kaz drivers are very aggressive, so do not play it cool and stride casually across the street if the light is turning green for the autos. Get out of their way!

Which brings up the next point, you will want to bring really comfortable walking shoes. I brought two, a pair of Asics athletic sneakers and a pair of black business casual Dockers lace ups which are as comfortable and padded as the Asics. Stacye (my wife) brought only sandals and she regreted that decision. We walked at least one hour a day minimum. We had access to a driver when we needed, but the trip from our apartment to the baby house was only about 25 minutes walking. After the visit this allowed us to walk and talk about how cool of a kid we think that Andrew is and how he will fit into our family. Also the walking has a side benefit of shedding a few extra pounds and inches. We have actually enjoyed this aspect of the trip since we are in no real hurry to get anywhere except to our visits at the baby house. We tried not to overdo ourselves because there were the four flights of stairs waiting at the end of every trip.

As far as regular TV, there are several programs that you could watch (from a guys prospective) with the volume turned down. For example, American Chopper and American Hot Rod (with my buddy Boyd Codington) are in Russian and are not a real problem to watch with the volume off. As far as sports there was baseball, soccer, road rally racing, and Olympic volleyball on many days. Stacye missed HGTV.

Drugs – Bring your own. Try to picture walking into a Walgreens to get tooth ache medicine or worse cold medicine for your kid but you cannot read any of the labels. Actually the drug stores are small kiosks so you may not be able to walk into them, they are not inspiring. I would recommend bringing the medicine cabinet like we did. Bring drugs for all of the basics like cold/sniffles, muscle ache, headache, PMS, fever, stomach, diarrhea, with the last two possibly being the most important. I used the muscle ache reliever the most. Advil and Icy Hot has been a kind traveling companion. A PM headache medicine may be helpful as it can help dissolve night time headaches with the side benefit of sleeping through the night.

Hygiene - Don’t leave home without it. Bring some small packages of toilet paper and paper seat covers, along with anti-bacterial hand cleaner that will fit in a purse or back pack. We went to a few malls and tourist attractions where there was no TP. Also get ready for "squatter" style toilets. Non-squatter toilets will probably still not have a seat. Without going into too much detail, these extras will help you feel a little more comfortable with your hygiene while in Kaz.
You can buy bottled water everywhere and that is what you will use for brushing teeth and washing out specific glassware. We were actually pretty relaxed about washing utensils and plates, choosing to wash with the tap water and let them rack dry. We didn't experience any problems from this practice.

Clothes – You will not need a variety. We brought four shirts and pants each and one dress out fit in the event that we were able to get court. This allowed for a decent amount of mix and match and it will reduce your load and your stress. We washed a couple of loads about every two days.
I recommend button up pockets. Cargo style shorts and pants with extra pockets are very practical. I wore a pair of these most of the time and it was convenient for wallets, cameras, phones, keys, and a variety of other items. Also the Velcro or button-up pockets give an extra measure of security.

That's it for now...more advice to come later.

We have our court date!

We received the call from our agency today and we will be going back to Kaz for court, August 3. This date is earlier than expected so we are very excited! This will finalize the legal proceedings and we will be Andrew’s parents. Of course there are more steps before the adoption is complete but this is a giant one.

We really miss Andrew and are looking forward to seeing him again. I will be sad if he does not recognize us when we see him again. Also I hope that he is not mad at us for leaving him. We had two hours a day together for 21 days straight and then ‘poof’ we are gone, so if he is mad we will have to gain his confidence back. I just really want him to respond positively when we see him again. To us he is already a member of the family. Not that a family is always supposed to be harmonious but for a new family it would be a nice start.

We are getting his room ready. Since it was Lainey’s old room we have to make some minor changes to the décor. The flowers on the wall are nice but not really what I picture for a boy’s room. We will be making some of those modifications this weekend and will take our time finishing. I expect that this will be somewhat therapeutic during this stage of the waiting.

Going Home - Trip #1

We are going home tomorrow. We are going to miss Andrew terribly. We will visit him again this morning and it will be the last time we will see him for a while. Our translator was with us yesterday so we were able to give the caretakers our photo album & his favorite toy and explain to them that we were leaving for a few weeks. They will show him the pictures while we are gone and let him know that we are coming back. We hope to have court in 3 weeks or so but we won’t know a date for a while. Due to Andrew’s small size, the surgery he had as an infant, and the fact that he has bonded so well, our coordinator is hoping that the court will show mercy and give us a date quickly. We have fulfilled the Kaz requirements but there are always new hurdles here and there.

Andrew has become more independent and communicative. He doesn’t talk per se but he does let us know what he wants. He pulls us in the direction that he wants to see when we walk with him. He played with a stick today and thoroughly enjoyed himself. We did not see this side of him the first week here. He has become an active and happy boy. We can’t wait to see more of his personality when we get him home.

Speaking of home - It will be nice to sleep in our own beds, eat food that we can read the labels on, dry our clothes in an electric dryer, walk barefoot in the grass, drive our cars, speak English with most everyone around us, and just a variety of things I have taken for granted.

Paka for now…

Court Update

Everything was turned in to the court system on Wednesday – this included the paperwork that went to/from Astana by train, a form from the baby house regarding our visits, the petition to the court, about 35 pictures of our visits with captions, as well as numerous other documents that our coordinator completed. We are now waiting to find out when our court date will be. We are still able to visit Andrew each day until we leave.

We continue to see more and more of Andrew’s personality. During our first few days with him, we would have him touch things that we thought might be new to him such as a leaf or a flower. He would touch it and quickly draw his hand back. Even if he touched our face or hands, he would quickly draw his hand back. He rarely draws his hand back now. Just the opposite, if he sees a leaf, he pulls it off the branch. On our walks, he pulls us in the direction he wants to go. He’s become very inquisitive. He even gives us hugs all on his own. No kisses yet but we’re working on it. He has also become more vocal. He makes lots of sounds like he is talking to us. I don’t think it’s Russian or Kazakh (& certainly not English) but lots of babbling. It’s a good start for him to be talking so soon. As far as walking, he is standing for longer periods of time, and is walking with just one of us holding his hand now. It won’t be long. We just hope we get to see him take his first steps.

We met a new couple last night – they are from Alabama and are adopting a 10 year old girl. It was interesting to hear their stories of how they are bonding with her and how she is adjusting. It’s exciting to know this little girl will have a good home with a mom, dad, and brother.

We also had dinner 2 nights ago at a couple’s apartment that we met at church this past Sunday. They are here teaching English, are from Maryland/Alabama, and have 4 children – 3 boys/1 girl. Lainey and the girl were close in age and had so much fun playing together. It was a good break for us to sit and talk and eat a home cooked meal. They have been here 7 months and are pretty settled. We spent some time talking about food because I think that is something that is so closely tied to culture and home. Knowing how much I have missed the food from home, it makes me want to incorporate some foods that Andrew is used to eating here, into our dinners at home for him. We had a good time with this couple and we were so appreciative that they opened up their home to us.

Just a side note to all of this – we checked again on getting earlier tickets home since we think everything is done for the courts (that could change). We found tickets ranging from $4,000 - $10, 000 – EACH. Yep, we’re here until Monday.

We are looking forward to going home to family and friends. It will be hard to leave Andrew. The caregivers will show Andrew pictures while we are gone and remind him that we are coming back – hopefully SOON.

Day 14 of Bonding

It’s been a few days since we’ve updated. We’re almost finished with our required 14 day bonding period. We’ve signed some papers at a notary’s office and typed the petition for the court. We don’t know our court date and the Almaty judges now want up to 30-60 days to review each petition for adoption. We think we will make 3 trips to complete our adoption. Our agency had let us know this would be a very real possibility before we left.

There are several families in the bonding or waiting period at the same baby house where we are bonding with Andrew. We are the only the Americans. There are 3 couples from Spain, 2 Canadian (French speaking), 3 Korean, and 2 Kazakh families all adopting. We spoke with one of the Spanish mom’s yesterday and she gave us the scoop. She knows everyone at the baby house because she has been visiting her son there since May 19th. She decided to make one long trip and she still does not have a court date. We are all outside in the play area during visits. None of us are allowed to be in the building during the bonding time. They want the children to have outside time with us. It’s starting to get crowded in the play area.

We are looking into coming back earlier since we probably won’t get a court date any time soon. Our current tickets have us here for 3.5 weeks, through 7/16. We checked with our travel agent at Golden Rule and she said there are no available seats between 7/9-7/15 on KLM. She couldn’t even wait list us because the standby list is already so long during those dates. It’s a problem that several couples are having. We are considering trying to get a flight on British Airways but then what do we do with the 2nd half of our KLM tickets? We’re not sure if we can apply it to our next trip. We’re probably just going to stay through the 16th.

For some happy news, our visits are going really well with Andrew. He even tried walking between us yesterday. Mark and I sat down on the ground a few feet apart and he would walk to each of us. He would take a couple of steps and then give us a big hug when we picked him up. He is such a fun little boy. He is very happy and he laughs and smiles a lot. First, we have to give him a couple of cookies when we arrive and he then perks up and we play. We have yet to see him really cry.

One more thing to talk about – the weather! Bring a sweater to Almaty, even in July. We get several rain showers a week, because we are so close to the mountains the rain really cools things down. We are glad that our friend Gretchen reminded us to bring our umbrellas and Mark suggested the sweaters. I wasn’t sure why at the time but I’m glad he did (and that I actually listened).

One other thing for those families coming to Kazakhstan – buy the Central Asia Lonely Planet book. There’s lots of information about many cities in Kazakhstan. It has a map of Almaty that we copied so that we wouldn’t have to carry the whole book all of the time. We blew it up because the print is so small. The map has been very useful to us. We ask our coordinator to mark different things for us on the map so that we can get around easier. Although you can get by with charades, I also recommend a small Russian phrase book.

We continue to pray for the process, the judges, and all of those involved. We appreciate all of the prayers from our families and friends from home. Our Sunday School class has been so faithful to pray for us over the past 16 months. I sometimes felt bad asking over and over for prayer - like we were in constant need. Believe me, in this process, that's the way I've felt. We're very thankful.

It's Very Green Here

We are so glad that we were able to come to Almaty City – first, there’s Andrew. He’s here and he’s wonderful. Next, there are lots of restaurants, parks, and shops here. It is very green everywhere, with plenty of trees and flowers, mostly roses. The adjustment for us has been as much about adjusting to city life than anything else. I would have to say that the imprint of the Soviet Union is still everywhere, with lots of gray concrete buildings and just a general “Soviet” feel to the city. I think with the changes Kaz has experienced over the last 15 years that it has been difficult for the city to maintain the streets, parks, and buildings but they are working everywhere on these things. I am very curious what Almaty will look like in 10 years. I probably wouldn't recognize it. We’ve found Almaty to be a nice city.

Our visits continue to go well. Andrew wants us to help him walk everywhere. He has taken the initiative to strengthen his legs. He is so funny. He is very clear in what he wants even though he doesn’t talk much yet. He gets his point across.

We hope to go Gorky Park today. It has a zoo and kid rides. We are planning to go with the family we met here that’s also from Mississippi. They have a 4 year old daughter so Lainey will get some kid time with a child close to her own age.

Paka

New Day, New Apartment

We changed apartments again today. This is our 3rd apartment and we like it the best so far. We are now close to a wonderful grocery store and lots of conveniences. We are also within walking distance of Andrew – maybe 5-7 blocks. We also have a bed with a mattress. Wow!!! We had heard before we came that most of the beds were just box springs with some blankets on them. That’s what we had at our previous apartment. It wasn’t unbearable but trust me having a mattress is so much better!

Now for a little bit about Kazakhstan on a day to day basis…Our friends Gretchen & Chris, who have been here since May, told us about all of the walking we would do. Gretchen had said it’s all “uphill” and I have to say it feels that way. We walk most places – to the grocery store, to eat, to parks, etc. Many of the intersections have tunnels so you walk under the street instead of crossing. It’s actually nice because the traffic here is everything we had heard it was. Crazy drivers but we have adjusted to it. Just a few things about the drivers…most of the streets are 4 lanes that we travel since we are in the city. What’s interesting is that they are turned into 6-8 lanes, especially at intersections. The way to drive in Kaz is to fill in every gap with a car, then blow your horn. They drive somewhere between the right hand side of the road to the middle. The steering wheels are either on the right hand or left hand side of the car. There is no standard and I would say it is about half & half. It is so congested so we haven’t seen any major accidents, just lots of fender benders. I haven’t figured out if some of the roads we go down were actually foot traffic alleys when they were originally built. Now cars regularly travel them. When you meet a car in the alley, there are some hand motions between drivers to work out who will get to go and who will have to backup. We have also seen real live games of “chicken” at the intersections. No one blinked and somehow an accident was avoided. We are so thankful that our driver does not take unnecessary chances. He is awesome. So, if New York City traffic is too tame for you, try Kaz.

It was a good day with Andrew. He was feeling much better. It’s fun to watch Lainey and him play together. He continues to laugh and smile and coo. You can tell that the caretakers have treated him well. He is such an easygoing child. They really seem to love the children.

We signed lots of documents for court yesterday. They were all in Russian so our translator read them to us. We trust her so we signed. Our coordinator will have someone hand courier our papers to Astana (the new capital) and they will travel by train to get there. She said it would save at least a week by handling it this way. We hope to find out this week when our court date will be. We have been pleased with the progress.

Snuggle Day

Andrew did not seem to feel as well today as he has the first few days. He definitely had a bad tummy (as evident by the smells and diaper). He wanted to snuggle today. He let Mark and I each hold him and rock him while he sucked his thumb. He likes to be held close as he is rocked. It was nice to see that side of him but we hate that he did not feel well.

After our visit, we went to the Ramstore (a mall) and ate lunch. We also shopped for shoes for Andrew. His are way too small and we can’t even get them to stay on because they don’t fit around the back of his foot. During our first visit, we were asked to bring clothes and diapers but not shoes. The caregivers change him into his “visiting clothes” and a Pamper before we get there each day. The rest of the time, he wears the baby house clothes and some type of sumo wrestling cloth diaper deal. It appears to be 2 baby blankets. One goes under him while the other goes around him. We will put his new shoes on him tomorrow and see if that makes walking any easier for him.

We had made plans with our translator to meet at the Ramstore and to go from there, to church. The church was on the other side of town which we had not seen. We had some apprehensions about traveling outside our newly found comfort zone but decided we needed to go. It was amazing. The sermon was in Russian but there was a translator there for English. They sang many of the praise songs we hear each Sunday in own church, just in Russian. It was such an encouraging service.

We are starting to feel a bit homesick. We definitely miss our family, friends, a comfortable bed, consistent hot water, and a few other things. Lainey also has her moments too. We have asked a lot of her. I’m not sure spending 24/7 with mom and dad has been easy for her. I know she would love to hop on her bike at home and just ride to her heart’s content. Instead, we play Uno.

We look forward to finding out this week how things are progressing with the court system. Our translator told us that she has translated several documents already for court and I guess for the Embassy as well since they are being translated into English.