November 1-4

November 1 – On Our Way

We were able to get plane tickets from Philly this time which is great because it was not terribly convenient to travel 2.5 hours each way to Dulles. We also abandoned British Air and decided to give Lufthansa a try since they fly directly into Astana which cuts out an extra in-country flight and over-weight baggage charges. We headed out that door around 3:00 on November 1 on our way to Philly with our 3 carseats/booster seats that the limo company will have to store for us for 2 months (we are only making 1 long trip this time), 4 carry-ons and 5 pieces of checked baggage. Traveling with 2 or 3 kids really ups the luggage count! We learned from our last trip and didn’t take much for us, but we have a ton of stuff for the kids. We had another stroke of good luck/divine intervention today. As we were leaving, almost half an hour late, the mail arrived, including Matt’s US Passport. This will save our friend Tevis from having to scour the mail for the passport each day and then overnight it to our agency who would then have to overnight it to us. Matt’s travel situation is a bit more complicated than the rest of the family because he has dual citizenship until he’s 18. He needs his Kazakhstan passport to get into Kazakhstan, but his US passport to return home. We were greatly relieved that it arrived before we left!

November 2 – We’re Here

The flight was MUCH better this time than our return flight with Matt and Tim in tow in September. With Lufthansa, there is no 10 hour leg, a huge improvement over British Air. Even Tim said that the flight wasn’t too bad and that it wasn’t too long. We also got a seat for Matt this time. Both boys slept in their own seats most of the way from Philly to Frankfurt so we were all a little less weary for the second leg of the trip. We arrived in Astana a little after 11 PM and made it through immigration and customs with relative ease. This was a relief, because there was some concern that Debbie might have a problem because her invitation to travel was issued under her old passport number. We were met at the airport by Zhanara, Irina and a taxi driver to cart all our stuff to the apartment. Zhanara took Mike to the 24 hour market near our apartment to pick up some bread, water and milk so we could have a bite to eat before going to the baby house the next day. Our apartment is a much more modest 1 bedroom apartment than the palatial 2 bedroom apartment we had last time and could benefit from the Swiffers and Clorox wipes Debbie had considered bringing, but ran out of room for. We had been informed before we traveled that most people do not want to rent to families with young children so we will make the best of what we have. At least there is a washing machine here, an important consideration with 4 people living here for 8 or 9 weeks.

November 3 – Meeting our Daughter

Zhanara picked us up at 10:00 to go to the baby house to meet our daughter. After waiting a while for the caseworkers from the Department of Education we were finally ushered into Dr. Alma’s office to meet our daughter. She was brought in by her doctor, but was very hesitant to approach us. As the room full of adults tried to convince her to “go see Mama and Papa” her hesitance turned into uncontrollable sobbing. After about 15 minutes of this, it was agreed that we should approach things slowly with her and perhaps try 2 short 15-30 minute visits a day instead of 1 long visit. It is very difficult to watch your child be so scared. I can only imagine how terrifying it must be to be old enough to understand that getting a family also means have to leave behind the only safe, sheltered environment you’ve known for the last 4 or 5 years and go with people with people who you can’t understand and who can’t understand you. We returned to the baby house in the evening and met a completely different child. The sweet, happy little girl we met this summer had returned and came running to greet us with “Mama’s coming”. She really enjoyed the Sleeping Beauty doll set that Tim picked out for her at Disney World since she likes princess and anything pretty. One of her favorite activities during our visit was to put lip gloss on herself and Zhanara and Irina. She and Tim also enjoyed knocking down plastic bowling pins with a couple of large playground balls. They did a great job taking turns. I love the way she calls Tim when it’s his turn – “Teema, Teema”. We stayed for almost an hour until it was time for her to eat dinner and left with a promise to return to see her the next day.

After the morning visit to the baby house we had to go shopping for a crib and high chair for Matt since we decided the overweight luggage charges for bringing the pack-n-play from home and the additional hassle, made it more economical to buy something here. After that it was off to the Ramstore for our big grocery shopping trip.

November 4 – Another Good Visit

Today we had another good visit with dear daughter (DD). Tim brought her a colorful, princessy, Mickey Mouse hair bow. She made him very happy by taking out the one she had in her hair and having me put in the one Tim gave her. We bundled up all the kids and headed outside. It was in the high 40’s/low 50’s here. For such weather the kids were in winter coats and sweaters and hats. Matt was in his snowsuit that he hates. Tim is going to sweat down to nothing since we’d be lucky to get him to put on his fleece jacket at him in the same weather. But, when in Rome . . .

We wandered around outside for a while and then DD wanted to go back in to play. We had another round of princess doll, lip gloss and bowling, catch with Papa and added some beauty salon as we put clips in her hair and then she tried to put them our hair. Now, I haven’t had long hair since I was 7 years old. It’s become painfully obvious that my hair fixing skills leave a lot to be desired. Boys are much easier in this regard! Before we left Zhanara explained (since DD only speaks Kazakh and we don’t) that since tomorrow is Sunday we couldn’t visit, but that we all promise to come back the day after that. Hopefully our missed day visiting won’t upset her too much.

The apartment continues to be an interesting experience. When Mike couldn’t sleep last night, he washed all the dishes, glasses, silverware and cabinets, so eating was a bit more pleasurable today. On the other hand, we have discovered that unlike our previous apartment, which had all the basic kitchen items necessary to prepare basic meals, we have been left with 1 pot, some spatulas and spoons and a knife set. Irina did ask the owner to bring us another pot, which she did fairly promptly. She also informed us that the frying pan was in the oven as was a baking pan. She (Irina) is going to see if she can bring is a measuring cup (a little difficult to prepare formula by the pitcher at the moment) from home. Of course, we’ve discovered some more missing. It is rather difficult to open a can of peas without a can opener and pots with metal handles are difficult to remove from the stove without potholders. Thank goodness we had already bought our own dishtowels at the Ramstore so was able to manage with those. Oh well, it’s all part of the adventure.

Our only other activity for the day was to take a walk to purchase a Nursat card so that we could make phone calls home and use the internet. It was nice to get out for a walk and get some fresh air. It also helped dissipate some of Tim’s enormous amount of unspent energy from the last few days. I think he’s making everyone nervous by running across the playroom and diving into the ball pit or jumping from the top of the slide into the ball pit.

November 5 - no working phone until today - will update later.