Days 9, 10 and 11 ... and another long post!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of the comments. As every family before us will tell you, those comments really keep us going. We either huddle around the computer in the lobby (when it is working) and read them together, or we share the 2 inch Blackberry screen and read them via that unit. Thank you thank you thank you!

Before I forget, let’s talk food. We have both settled in on about 5 or 6 things that we will eat, and we just keep eating those things. We are still working through our huge jar of peanut butter. I stare into the jar every day, trying to determine how long it will last. :-) Last night, I counted out the Crystal Light packets and have now begun rationing them. These are the things we do with the time on our hands in Ust. LOL.

A special note for Angela and other vegetarians: While every meal is indeed built around meat, we have a nearby market that has plentiful supplies of fruits and vegetables, and they have all been delicious. You can find oils and dressings in the store, so I have to believe that you can whip up some type of vegetable medley to accompany your mac and cheese and potato chips. We have also found some form of granola bar – not exactly Quaker Oats, but good enough.

In the restaurants, we have found a lot of rice and potatoes, and even the occasional “greek” salad. Lettuce is not plentiful, but we have had salads of tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, peppers, etc. I do occasionally worry that we are eating veggies that may have been washed in local water, but we have not had any stomach problems – yet. We do wonder if parasites will take over our bodies once we return to the states, and we will have to cross that bridge if we come upon it.

We’ll now take you on a tour of our cuisine. Note – no need to hold onto your seats, as this tour bus does NOT stop at any horse meat, sheep brains, or goat testicle eateries. For that tour, you’ll have to seek out the more adventurous bloggers.

We have breakfast every morning at the hotel buffet. We each have a made-to-order omelet, and we are wondering who is going to make our omelets for us every morning when we are back at home. We could get used to this type of service! We really enjoy b-fast, and all of the families at The Shiny River (currently 3 families, but expected to grow shortly) eat together. It is a wonderful way to start our day, and we look forward to it every single morning.

For lunch, we almost always snack on fruit, sandwiches (peanut butter and jelly), and granola bars, and we run errands. We go to the market almost every day, as we only buy what we can carry comfortably back to the hotel. We buy a 5 litre bottle of water and 2 litres of Diet Pepsi every day. Diet Coke – our fave – is elusive, and the word spreads quickly when the local market has a few bottles in stock. We also buy fresh bread about every other day, and whatever snacks we’re craving at the moment. Currently, I’m staring down a can of Pringles Originals. (Read on to learn about the Kaz Costco!)

For dinner, we hit one of the four or five restaurants that we’ve come to know and love. We tend to wander in and ask for an English menu. If there isn’t one on site (and it’s usually only one, tucked under a counter somewhere), we move to the next spot. Glenn and I are surviving primarily on chicken shislik with rice and soy sauce. (I’m over my fried pork chop phase). I’ve also been known to have French fries and only French fries for dinner – they don’t taste quite the same as back home, but not bad. Note – I would never order French fries for dinner in the US. Here, we just let ourselves find comfort food and go with it.

Mayonnaise is clearly the Country Condiment. I order everything “bez (without) mayonnaise”, and it works just about every time.

While at first we thought we would lose weight while here, we now doubt that will be the case. We can only hope that the multiple walking treks and the constant running up and down the flights of stairs to and from the lobby to check the Internet 25 times each day and night will keep us from beefing up too dramatically. (In case you are wondering why Matt and Suz post almost daily to their blog, they are able to access the hotel WiFi while sitting in their own room, via their own laptop. No such luck for us, the MacBook users.)

Okay, on to matters of the little one.

We had a sleepy Tuesday morning visit (complete with Barry Manilow on the Ipod), and everyone in the baby house seemed to be moving a little slower than normal. We tussled and played as best as we could, but we expect that after lunch, ZM was out cold. As we were leaving, we did have a chance to watch him try to feed himself soup. They give the children big serving size spoons so that in of itself is a challenge for these little dudes. ZM still has a caretaker sit with him, and she is trying to teach him how to hold his spoon and shovel in the food. And I mean shovel. These kids are expected to eat FAST and they stay focused on the task at hand.

Our afternoon visit was chaotic, because a VIP with the Ministry of Education visited and told us that we were holding ZM too much. I’ve waited a lot of years to have a baby of my own in my arms, so you better believe I am holding him a lot! But, we understand her point, as she is fearful that he will then expect that same amount of cuddling from his caretakers, and they just don’t have that kind of time. So, as we tried to put him down, under her watchful eye, chaos broke out in the room. ZM was upset, we were upset, the other family in the play room was upset, their child was upset, and it was just no fun at all.

On top of that chaos, our translator, who we had come to love and adore, informed us that she had taken another job and that was our last visit with her. We really miss her. She asked for photos of ZM before she left, and we were so happy to provide her with a flash drive filled with her 8 days with our little boy. We hope she will stay in touch with us as we would love to update her for years to come.

We sulked our way back to our room, and really just couldn’t muster the energy to head out to eat. So, we went to the hotel restaurant, which is good, but really overpriced. Lo and behold, we heard another couple speaking “American” English, so we quickly introduced ourselves. We now have added Crystal, and her brother Bob (who is only staying for a short time), to our close-knit group. As one arrives, it seems that another leaves, and we bid farewell to Anne, who had a successful court appointment. She will reunite with her son in about 30 days.

We started our Wednesday visit committed to holding ZM less. I suspect this was a taste of what I have often heard parents talk about when they are first letting their bio babies “cry it out” as part of a falling asleep routine. We felt so pained to watch ZM reach up to us and cry, as we responded with offers to build a tower of stacking cups instead. Poor little thing – he finally has someone to hold him, and instead he has stacking cups. Why would anyone ever pick door number two? Fast forward to 20 minutes later, and we just said “forget it.” We’re holding him and that’s that.

It was during this morning visit – while we were back in the big physical fitness room – that we also had a chance to observe the gym teacher and a caretaker work with some of the children who have additional special needs. They were helping them with developmental exercises, stretching, and climbing … and they were having a lot of fun. Every once in awhile one of the children would wander over to where we were playing (if you consider holding our child as playing), and we would get to have a little chat and a wave with these beautiful kids. We can’t say enough about this baby house – they are really committed to all of the children.

Between visits, we were whisked off to the notary. A trip to the notary in Kazakhstan works against every fiber of your being, because you are signing documents left and right with little knowledge of what it is that you are signing. We had to officially choose a name for ZM, so we settled on the spelling of both first and middle names (both of which are slightly unusual), and we committed to giving him Glenn’s last name. (My last name is different). We also signed documents that had to do with ZM’s medical diagnoses, and the actual adoption commitment. It was exciting and exhilarating and scary. We are one step closer to court.

After the notary, we raced back to the room in time for me to connect via phone with Louise, my Asia Pacific colleague based in Hong Kong. While we love our trips to the baby house, it was also great to have a grown up business conversation. Thanks for tracking me down, Louise!

We had one final commotion in the afternoon when our Coordinator challenged us not to hold ZM as much. Again, total chaos. It was also so hard on the other family in the room and it was embarrassing that we had to put them in that situation. We’re just done worrying about it. ZM is a smart kid. He knows his caretakers aren’t going to hold him, and if he wants Mama and Papa to do so during our few short visits with him, so be it. We’ll undo the damage, if any, when we get home.

We spent Wednesday evening walking around town, trying to find a table for six at one of our favorite restaurants, but everything was full. We suspect it was because Thursday is a holiday (Labor Day), and a lot of people were having a nice evening out since they were off work on Thursday. We ended up at Donner, which is sort of a “fast food” place. On our way to dinner, we passed two other adoptive families on the street, as they were headed to a third couple’s apartment for dinner. It really is amazing how quickly we are all drawn to one another, and we feel so blessed to have such a strong support network in Kaz, in addition to all of the love and prayers we feel from back home.

Oh, and at dinner, I used my KwikPoint for the first time. We both really wanted a beer, but we couldn’t remember if the restaurant had beer or not, and I could not remember the Russian word for beer (which is PEEva, by the way). I did my best pantomime of holding up a mug of beer, pretending to do the “cheers” ritual followed by glug, glug, glug of my invisible mug of beer. By this time, quite a crowd had gathered on the other side of the counter, shouting out guesses in Russian. I then remembered that I had my KwikPoint, and I whipped it out and searched for the picture of the mug of beer. Everyone gathered around, and I heard one big “Ahhhhhh” from the other side of the counter, followed by “Nyet.” How much do you want to bet that someone knew I was saying beer from the moment I started, but instead took advantage of what to them was probably 3 minutes of American comedy?! I had a great time with it, so if I gave them a good chuckle, I am happy to be that person. Needless to say, we ended up with water (vaDA, bez gas).

On to Thursday, May 1, which is Labor Day/Unity Day in Kazakhstan. It is a celebratory day, complete with parades and parties. Little did we know that the parade passed directly in front of our hotel. Our room faces the back of the hotel, so the first we knew that something was different was when we tumbled out the front door at our appointed time and instead of seeing our waiting car and driver as we have every other morning, we saw hoards of people lining the parade route. After we got over the initial excitement, we realized that the road to our hotel was blocked to traffic. We then felt somewhat lost, as we had no way to reach our coordinator and vice versa. (Here-to-fore, she would phone us in the hotel room when she needed us during times when we would likely be in the room). So, we just started walking towards the main intersection -- the intersection that Matt refers to as the Holy Crap intersection, where five roads converge with seemingly little organization or traffic protocol. We happened to run into Matt, Suz, and their translator as we were walking upstream through hundreds of people headed the opposite direction. Their translator kindly called our Coordinator, who told us to wait in the middle of the intersection. Really? The middle of the intersection? So, we made our way to no man’s land where inexplicably there always seems to be a car or two just parked in the middle of the intersection. And, we stood there. Not on a median or anything – just pavement with cars flying by in five different directions. Sure enough, about a minute later, our driver came speeding up, slammed on the brakes, we jumped in, and he sped away. It felt sort of mysterious and James Bond-ish to us. We think it felt totally normal to our driver.

In the morning, the other family in the playroom took their little guy outside, so we stayed inside. We managed to get about an hour of play time in … I really think Angela hit the nail on the head about these little guys only having about 45 minutes to an hour of play time in them before they are pooped, hungry, and thirsty. We aren’t permitted to give ZM food or drink, so the only need we can satisfy is his sleep need. Because of the holiday, most of our regular caretakers and VIPs were on holiday, so I rocked our little guy to sleep (to the sounds of Styx), and that’s how we spent the last 30 minutes of our visit. He is, of course, angelic while sleeping. I cannot wait to add a bottle or sippy cup to this rocking routine!

After our visit, our driver took us to the Kaz Costco (AP3AH/Arzan). It is a huge supermarket/general store – really pretty much like a Costco or Sam’s Club back home. And, it was packed because everyone was on holiday that day. We went up and down every aisle just to take it all in, although we really didn’t need to buy very much. (Our coordinator was with us, and she was shopping, too). We took advantage of the fact that we’d have driver service directly to our hotel door – that is, a short distance to carry our goods. We bought extra water, more diapers, and a bunch of granola bars. The prices were less expensive than the nearby grocery store -- 3100 Tenge for Pampers vs. 3700 Tenge. If you are a traveling family, be sure to ask if this store exists anywhere in your region! If a family were staying in an apartment, we suspect that some of the home goods that were available would be even more relevant than they were to us.

I also bought some hand lotion, as I finally took the time to translate the Nivea lotion bottle that I purchased here, and discovered that I’ve been rubbing shower gel into my skin every morning after my shower. That explains the dry, itchy skin. Phew – I was starting to worry that it was the fist signs of parasites (or bed bugs!).

The baby house was super quiet for the afternoon visit, as we seemed to be the only family that was permitted an afternoon visit (or the only family that was forgotten when the “no afternoon visits on holidays” message went around). We spent the entire hour outside, primarily pushing a stroller around and around and around the baby house. It was great to get fresh air, and we are happy that ZM likes the stroller. That could bode well for airport transfers.

Crystal called it a night early (and her brother headed back to the US), and Matt was off dong some heavy-duty electronics shopping, so Glenn, Suz, and I had dinner at Pizza Blues. We are ordering veterans at Pizza Blues, and we had a really nice dinner together.

As we’ve been mentioning, we arrived in Kaz at about the same time as three other families. It’s amazing how we are all hitting certain “walls” at about the same time. I’ll write more about that soon, but suffice to say that while in some regards, your time here FLIES by, in other regards there seems to be no end in sight.

As such, keep those thoughts and prayers coming! We feel the love!