It’s Friday afternoon and our hotel room is darkened as Michele is catching up on sleep. She got very ill last night after eating something funny in a Korean restaurant – though I had exactly the same order as she, and didn’t get sick at all. Hopefully (likely) she’ll be feeling well enough before we have to fly early Saturday AM out of the Almaty Airport - about eight hours from now.
Morgan is lively and giggling, blowing raspberries and entertaining herself with gurgles in her crib. We haven’t quite found the right balance of fruit juice and sugary yogurt vs. starchy rice cereal and mush, so she’s either high and bouncing off the walls, or grumpy and sleepy much of the time. Naps are very hard to schedule between the important trips about town.
Yesterday, we went to the SOS Services medical clinic and Morgan got a checkup and HIV test required by the U.S. Embassy. She’s healthy of course, but it turns out that every possible medical problem on her original medical records was either self-contradictory or just fabricated (the incentive to fabricate medical problems stems from the way that baby houses are funded and the arcane rules by which babies are eligible to be put up for international adoption).
We met a couple of interesting people at breakfast in the hotel. Austin is an adoptive father and lawyer from New Orleans and will be taking home baby Merina; Grove and Jennifer are from New Mexico and are taking home baby Pavel – and like me, they work for nonprofits; and JoAnne is returning Sunday to Buffalo with new son Nicholas. We also enjoyed meeting Chan Park, a professor from Ohio doing a 2-week educational exchange on the Korean diaspora that are in Kazakhstan – over 200,000 were relocated involuntarily from Russia in the 1950s to farm wheat.
Having accomplished the last major bit of business this afternoon – a trip to the heavily fortified and guarded U.S. Embassy to pick up Morgan’s Kazakh passport with U.S. visa stamps, medical records and an “instantly valid upon arrival” U.S. citizenship document – we are now about 12 hours from departure. We thought about registering her to vote liberal, too, but she’s too young – darn!
It’s a huge relief that there have been really no surprises on this trip, and we must again thank the fine work of Libby, Dina, and Zhanat of MAPS; Oleg in Almaty and Efrat at Lifelink in Miami.
Morgan can’t wait to come drool on her new family, and in about 36 hours from now we’ll get the first chance to do that!
Showing posts with label almaty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label almaty. Show all posts
Friday, May 11, 2007
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Reunited
Just a note to say all has gone well, and we have Morgan sleeping in a crib in the hotel room now. Photos are on http://www.flickr.com/photos/rga.
We're back in Kazakhstan! ... and still waiting.
Good afternoon, it’s Wednesday here in Almaty and we’re waiting to meet the head nurse from the Delphin Baby House at the airport around 5:45. We expect to receive our beautiful new daughter and bring her back to the Kazzhol Hotel, where we’ll be changing our first diaper, preparing our first bottle of formula – lots of firsts tonight. (Hopefully first full night of sleep? Ha ha ha.)
The flight in was smooth – the Germans love their cigarettes too much so the Frankfurt Airport was a difficult place to find 4 hours of rest during a 6-hour layover. We eventually settled on some padded benches at a colossal McDonald’s food court in terminal 2. Highly recommended if you, too, wish to avoid the $240 day rate at the Sheraton.
Our flight from Frankfurt went by surprisingly quickly, and we got in at 11:30, were picked up by driver Nicholai and coordinator Oleg – and whisked to the Kazzhol Hotel (we expected to be in the Hotel Kazakhstan but this place is just fine, and cheaper). They’ve put a crib in our room and we went to a large supermarket that had everything we could possibly want – baby food and juice in all flavors and sizes.
It’s a national holiday – I think it’s Victory Day – so many people are wearing green military hats with red stars on them and there are many icons of national and civic pride around. In Almaty (Alma Ata) this includes apples, because it’s the home of the world’s first wild apples. (Benjamin and Jacob, that’s for show and tell on Monday
For the last 4 weeks in Miami, I have had to pinch myself to believe that we ever left town and spent more than a month in Kostanai, or that we spoke Russian, or saw tractors and belly dancers. But today it feels oddly natural to be speaking Russian again, and reading Kazakh signs. It means I wasn't hallucinating about the first trip, and it seems we're actually in a far-away land doing fun things like adopting a princess.
The city is beautiful with lots of trees and parks (as leafy as Gainesville, Fla. perhaps) – I would be eager to spend a month here. But compared with Kostanai, it’s very urban. Many more cars. More vendors on the street. Expensive prices for things. Fancy international designer perfume and clothing shops. And a few times people in the grocery store seemed to intentionally shove or at least bump me in a hurry to pass by (the aisle was plenty wide, but they needed my space). Our hotel TV gets both CNN Europe and BBC World channels and the buffet for breakfast had coffee, omelets and sausage included in the price of stay, so we’ll not lose weight as we did on the first trip May 3-April 8.
After walking around Almaty for just an hour this morning and getting some groceries, we’ve taken a long nap and are just in waiting mode now. Sleep was much needed but we have a new family member to go look after.
The flight in was smooth – the Germans love their cigarettes too much so the Frankfurt Airport was a difficult place to find 4 hours of rest during a 6-hour layover. We eventually settled on some padded benches at a colossal McDonald’s food court in terminal 2. Highly recommended if you, too, wish to avoid the $240 day rate at the Sheraton.
Our flight from Frankfurt went by surprisingly quickly, and we got in at 11:30, were picked up by driver Nicholai and coordinator Oleg – and whisked to the Kazzhol Hotel (we expected to be in the Hotel Kazakhstan but this place is just fine, and cheaper). They’ve put a crib in our room and we went to a large supermarket that had everything we could possibly want – baby food and juice in all flavors and sizes.
It’s a national holiday – I think it’s Victory Day – so many people are wearing green military hats with red stars on them and there are many icons of national and civic pride around. In Almaty (Alma Ata) this includes apples, because it’s the home of the world’s first wild apples. (Benjamin and Jacob, that’s for show and tell on Monday
For the last 4 weeks in Miami, I have had to pinch myself to believe that we ever left town and spent more than a month in Kostanai, or that we spoke Russian, or saw tractors and belly dancers. But today it feels oddly natural to be speaking Russian again, and reading Kazakh signs. It means I wasn't hallucinating about the first trip, and it seems we're actually in a far-away land doing fun things like adopting a princess.
The city is beautiful with lots of trees and parks (as leafy as Gainesville, Fla. perhaps) – I would be eager to spend a month here. But compared with Kostanai, it’s very urban. Many more cars. More vendors on the street. Expensive prices for things. Fancy international designer perfume and clothing shops. And a few times people in the grocery store seemed to intentionally shove or at least bump me in a hurry to pass by (the aisle was plenty wide, but they needed my space). Our hotel TV gets both CNN Europe and BBC World channels and the buffet for breakfast had coffee, omelets and sausage included in the price of stay, so we’ll not lose weight as we did on the first trip May 3-April 8.
After walking around Almaty for just an hour this morning and getting some groceries, we’ve taken a long nap and are just in waiting mode now. Sleep was much needed but we have a new family member to go look after.
Back in Kazakhstan!
Good afternoon, it’s Wednesday here in Almaty and we’re waiting to meet the head nurse from the Delphin Baby House at the airport around 5:45. We expect to receive our beautiful new daughter and bring her back to the Kazzhol Hotel, where we’ll be changing our first diaper, preparing our first bottle of formula – lots of firsts tonight. (Hopefully first full night of sleep? Ha ha ha.)
The flight in was smooth – the Germans love their cigarettes too much so the Frankfurt Airport was a difficult place to find 4 hours of rest during a 6-hour layover. We eventually settled on some padded benches at a colossal McDonald’s food court in terminal 2. Highly recommended if you, too, wish to avoid the $240 day rate at the Sheraton.
Our flight from Frankfurt went by surprisingly quickly, and we got in at 11:30, were picked up by driver Nicholai and coordinator Oleg – and whisked to the Kazzhol Hotel (we expected to be in the Hotel Kazakhstan but this place is just fine, and cheaper). They’ve put a crib in our room and we went to a large supermarket that had everything we could possibly want – baby food and juice in all flavors and sizes.
It’s a national holiday – I think it’s Victory Day – so many people are wearing green military hats with red stars on them and there are many icons of national and civic pride around. In Almaty (Alma Ata) this includes apples, because it’s the home of the world’s first wild apples. (Benjamin and Jacob, that’s for show and tell on Monday
For the last 4 weeks in Miami, I have had to pinch myself to believe that we ever left town and spent more than a month in Kostanai, or that we spoke Russian, or saw tractors and belly dancers. But today it feels oddly natural to be speaking Russian again, and reading Kazakh signs. It means I wasn't hallucinating about the first trip, and it seems we're actually in a far-away land doing fun things like adopting a princess.
The city is beautiful with lots of trees and parks (as leafy as Gainesville, Fla. perhaps) – I would be eager to spend a month here. But compared with Kostanai, it’s very urban. Many more cars. More vendors on the street. Expensive prices for things. Fancy international designer perfume and clothing shops. And a few times people in the grocery store seemed to intentionally shove or at least bump me in a hurry to pass by (the aisle was plenty wide, but they needed my space). Our hotel TV gets both CNN Europe and BBC World channels and the buffet for breakfast had coffee, omelets and sausage included in the price of stay, so we’ll not lose weight as we did on the first trip May 3-April 8.
After walking around Almaty for just an hour this morning and getting some groceries, we’ve taken a long nap and are just in waiting mode now. Sleep was much needed but we have a new family member to go look after.
The flight in was smooth – the Germans love their cigarettes too much so the Frankfurt Airport was a difficult place to find 4 hours of rest during a 6-hour layover. We eventually settled on some padded benches at a colossal McDonald’s food court in terminal 2. Highly recommended if you, too, wish to avoid the $240 day rate at the Sheraton.
Our flight from Frankfurt went by surprisingly quickly, and we got in at 11:30, were picked up by driver Nicholai and coordinator Oleg – and whisked to the Kazzhol Hotel (we expected to be in the Hotel Kazakhstan but this place is just fine, and cheaper). They’ve put a crib in our room and we went to a large supermarket that had everything we could possibly want – baby food and juice in all flavors and sizes.
It’s a national holiday – I think it’s Victory Day – so many people are wearing green military hats with red stars on them and there are many icons of national and civic pride around. In Almaty (Alma Ata) this includes apples, because it’s the home of the world’s first wild apples. (Benjamin and Jacob, that’s for show and tell on Monday
For the last 4 weeks in Miami, I have had to pinch myself to believe that we ever left town and spent more than a month in Kostanai, or that we spoke Russian, or saw tractors and belly dancers. But today it feels oddly natural to be speaking Russian again, and reading Kazakh signs. It means I wasn't hallucinating about the first trip, and it seems we're actually in a far-away land doing fun things like adopting a princess.
The city is beautiful with lots of trees and parks (as leafy as Gainesville, Fla. perhaps) – I would be eager to spend a month here. But compared with Kostanai, it’s very urban. Many more cars. More vendors on the street. Expensive prices for things. Fancy international designer perfume and clothing shops. And a few times people in the grocery store seemed to intentionally shove or at least bump me in a hurry to pass by (the aisle was plenty wide, but they needed my space). Our hotel TV gets both CNN Europe and BBC World channels and the buffet for breakfast had coffee, omelets and sausage included in the price of stay, so we’ll not lose weight as we did on the first trip May 3-April 8.
After walking around Almaty for just an hour this morning and getting some groceries, we’ve taken a long nap and are just in waiting mode now. Sleep was much needed but we have a new family member to go look after.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
'Lettuce Ladies' protest meat in Almaty, Kaz.
Freezing Animal Rights Campaigners in Almaty
Chilly Vegetarians by tienshanMichael Steen of Reuters reported an odd happening on Almaty Square: two British animal rights campaigners wearing bikinis made of lettuce leaves urged people of Kazakhstan to stop eating horses and go vegetarian in a freezing -8 °C in Almaty.
Whereas Borat is ridiculing the country, we’re trying to come here with a positive message,” Yvonne Taylor, 35, told Reuters. “We’re saying that going vegetarian is the best thing people can do for their health and to stop animals suffering.” “We’ve got stronger immune systems because we’re vegetarian,” Taylor told reporters and photographers wearing winter coats in front of Kazakhstan’s independence monument”, writes Steen.
More: NewEurasia Blogzine
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