Nearly epilogue

We are home in Santa Fe. We arrived in freezing rain, and Mitch had already come over and turned up the heat in the house. Nice.

Aigerim is still well and happy and still confused by when her body and her mom want her to sleep and eat, not to mention still tired from the 36 hour hotel-to-home endurance run. Who says mommy doesn't camp. She just does it in hotels, airports, and on airplanes.

We have some photos, I know this now.

Mom made spaghetti last night, Mitch delighted Aigerim (and the rest of us) by coming over, and Kris stopped by on his way home from airline purgatory to see Aigerim. We can't wait to get with Kris and Tari's baby, Jack, and see what everyone thinks of everyone else.

Speaking of thinking of everyone else, Aigerim is terrified of the cats. Never heard her or seen her do anything like this before. It's not that she is psychic and can see Ceniza's blood-red spikey drippy aura, because she is frightened of Moo as well. The biggest danger from Moo is fur with static cling.

Off to get Mom's shuttle to the airport arranged. She will be happy to get to her own house.
What a full two weeks its been for everyone.

Home!

Last night around 10:30 pm the Den Hartog caravan finally reached Albuquerque. They're home!

Marie Aigerim was in good spirits. But one of us (hi) had the bright idea of taking a group photo only after she had been insulated like a passive solar house. This tater's cooked:




I did get some happier photos, but none of them had the whole clan:



We drove through light rain and sleet on the way to Santa Fe. By the time we got her all the way home, the poor baby was really tired. Too tired to sleep in a strange new house with a lurking black giant cat. (Mr. Moo -- he must look different when he's almost as big as you are.) I left at 1:45 am, Aigerim lying on her mama's chest, unable to hold her head up, and unable to stop peeking every ten seconds to see that Bobi was still there.

Well hey, who wouldn't be tired after 34+ hours of traveling? Soon enough they'll all be rested and recovered. For now, it's just great to have them home.

"National Meat" Means "Horse"

"Just FYI," says Bobi.

Tonight the Den Hartogs had dinner in the hotel restaurant. Bobi ordered the National Meat Assortment. When the dish arrived she noticed the different cuts and asked the waiter "Kakoi?" (Which kinds)? He reared up like a horse and whinnied.

---

1. The Mongol heritage is alive and well.
2. Ask Bobi about "fleisch" sometime.
3. Or ask Meg and Bobi about "burro adovada".

Free to go!!!

IT WAS ALL DONE AND WAITING FOR US! I walked in and said we were here to finish my daughter's visa. The clerk asked my name, nodded and left. Vice Counsul Baker came, wearing a natty long silk brocade trouser jacket, and gave us the great news.

The she handed us the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow: The sealed packet for the US CIS when we arrive, and the IR3 visa to America in Aigerim's passport!!!!

She was so nice. She asked about our flights.

Yea, our flights. Should there be no more landing on those squares in Monopoly that cause you unexpected delays, we will be on the 3:20 ALA-FRA flight tomorrow morning; the 1:50pm FRA-DEN flight and the flight that arrives from Denver in ABQ at 8:50 pm on Wednesday night.

Yipppeeeeeeeee skippppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

More thank yous

Lisa, of the Washington DC BCIS

Norah MacCuish, asking for recommendations locally for an immigration attorney

there are many of you, I don't even know who all has jumped to get us out of here.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

I hope this is it.

My shoulders feel like I've been through the greatest massage in the world. The relief is profound. The gratitude is amazing.

To all the people who have jumped when it is their responsibility, and to all of them who have jumped when it hasn't been but they have cared --

Thank you so much. You deserve more than those four words. I can only start with them.

I hope this is the last blog of DHS uncertainty. I hope in the next one I can tell you that I am holding a Kazakhstani passport with the most hilarious photo of a wideeyed chipmunk - and it has an IR3 visa for entry and Citizenship to the US in it.

Thank you List!

Mitch Chapman, Miriam Rand, Chris Ivins, Senator Jeff Bingaman, Representative Tom Udall, Mr. Jason Shaffer of the Senator's office, Robert Vasquez of the Representative's office, Jacqueline Snyder, Don Smith, the Utah branch of the USCIS, the New Jersey branch of the USCIS, the 1-800 number branch of the USCIS



Vice Counsel Anne Baker of the US Embassy in Kazakhstan, and, I bet you wouldn't have guessed this one - the Moscow branch of the USCIS.

We have phoned the Embassy, things look in order, please come at 3pm;

We have phoned Svetlana, the student who is covering for our adoption agency's translator Lola while dear Lola leaves us per her new assignment from Reaching Out, escorting two children to Atlanta. Svetlana has arranged for our driver Leonid to come and take us to the Embassy, wait for us and return us to the hotel. She is very sorry but has to write three midterms examinations today and cannot go with us. She wishes us well and will phone after her examinations to see what we must arrange next.

We have phoned Lufthansa City Office, and I don't know which of the three agents was on the other end but she knew right off who we were and what to change : you want to change your flights on 10/27 to 10/25?! YES WE DO. Please. We don't have to announce our name anymore some places. Counting one trip to the Lufthansa City Office from the first trip, we have already traveled there four times for ticket changes and to buy Aigerim's lap ticket. It was nice to change this over the phone for us. The cab fares for the trip range from $8-$20, another little easy but hidden cost. And the time and stress of the cab trip add up too.

The dear woman at Lufthansa, said, "oh I am sorry". [Bobi's mind races: no bassinet? who cares. via Bangkok? who cares.] "The Denver to ABQ flight is full, you will arrive in ABQ at 8:50pm instead."

I could have kissed her. THAT connection was the one item on the "concerns" list when I started this trip (that, and that Aigerim had changed her mind about me being a good idea as a Mom, of course. But then, she's not a teen yet)(yet...) - only an hour and a half in Denver to go through customs, plus Aigerim's DHS processing, switch terminals, and make the next flight. Mitch and I barely did it last time, without the DHS processing, and with an extra 10 or 20 minutes. So we figured our tails were going to be on the later flight anyway.

And now they are not only on the later flight, but we do not have to worry about whether seats will be available, together, whether we should stress and race through the processing (as if one has a choice of the speed, to be honest), whether we should tell our friends to come early or wait for a phone call or what....

So. If all goes as is on the current, collectively approved plan, WE WILL ARRIVE IN ABQ WEDNESDAY OCT 25 AT 8:50 PM!!!!!


I can't tell you all how differently this morning feels, after Mitch's phone call got through. The local calls listed above, you see we have kind of figured out how to make local calls. The phone has been mayhem. We have finally figured out that when you dial the front desk, you have to bellow "ENGLISH" or they will hang up. You have to bellow mostly because the connection is whacked. Last night, we had such despair and distress trying to dial ("dial"?!) that we finally phoned 0, did our "ENGLISH" thing, refused to listen to the instructions (9-8-10...) one more time, and insisted that someone come up and dial the dang thing for us. God bless them, they asked Mom where we wanted to phone - America, then "where in America"? I heard "New Mexico" go by and wondered what beautiful international telephone rathole we could head down now. I wonder what is the country code for Mexico?

Dear Svetlana tried to explain to the front desk again yesterday afternoon but I think people aren't used to trying calling cards, so we never communicate that part of the problem. We got the a) dial 9-8-10 (I KNOW THAT) then b) they will ring you in ten minutes in your room to see if the phone is working. We let it go at that. Yes, it rang, it worked. The phone rang at 11:20 last night, on schedule, we bash out of bed in a sound sleep hoping to God its our salvation, the baby wails (she's not upset, just left out), we pick it up (the phone) , and it goes beep beep beep beep beep beep.

Beep beep beep.

The baby goes gah gah gah and bonk her heavy head falls back asleep. Mom turns to me and says, "Who was calling us?"

There are alot of things I don't know.

Oh yea, back from the Embassy and Lufthansa and baby is overtired and overhungry and we burdened by bad news and I go back upstairs and try to telephone Mitch. Mitch, as you can see, needs to know the update so that he and everyone else know where we are in the battle so that they can take over and try to make progress.

Too many failures. The bellboy comes up at last, (Mom's favorite. He circled the location of the post office on our map for her, and comes over to say hi whenever we are in the lobby. We live here now.), and it takes him button, hook,wait; button, wait, button button, hook wait; you have to get access to about three lines in order to get out, I guess, you have to know when to wait, when to push a button, when to fold. Kind of like that Kenny Rogers song about playing cards.

God bless the folks at the desk, though - he came up with "8 -9 - 10 - 1 - 505" on a sheet of paper for us - the hotel exit code and international access code and the area code of the number we did want to call. It was the same set of numbers we were calling: we just didn't know how to play the phone lines like the delicate fickle instruments that they are.

It took him several minutes of hanging up and retrying, and then...Mitch was on the line.

We thanked the bellboy profusely.

Heroes!

Miriam M Rand, M. ED, LPCC
Family Matters: Adoption Resources
PO Box 7990
Albuquerque, NM 87194-7990
505-344-8811 Office Phone
505-343-1919 Office Fax
Rdabusines@aol.com Email Address

Attached Message
From:
Jason_Shaffer@bingaman.senate.gov
To:
Rdabusines@aol.com
Subject:
RE: (no subject)
Date:
Mon, 23 Oct 2006 11:58 PM

Fingerprints were sent this morning. If you need anything else please let me know.

Jason Shaffer
Constituent Service Representative
United States Senator Jeff Bingaman
jason_shaffer@bingaman.senate.gov
(505) 346-6601 phone
(505) 346-6780 fax
From: Rdabusines@aol.com [mailto:Rdabusines@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, October 23, 2006 10:20 AM
To: Shaffer, Jason (Bingaman); Wunder, Marc (Bingaman)
Subject: (no subject)

To: Senator Bingaman

Dear Sir:

I am writing on behalf of <...>, who resides at <...> in Santa Fe. She is trapped in Almaty, Kazakhstan, with her newly-adopted daughter. We desperately need your help in getting them home!

They are trapped because, according to the U.S. embassy in Almaty: the embassy has never received a transmission of the I-600A approval from Bobi's August, 2006, re-fingerprinting; and the original I-600A transmission was unusable because, although the document's approval date was 21 October 2005, it stated that Bobi's fingerprints expired on 6 October 2005.

At the Albuquerque INS Bobi's case has been handled by Officer Peter Rechkemmer. His telephone number is (505) 241-0422.I and several other people have been trying since Friday, 20 October 2006, to reach Officer Rechkemmer and to get her new fingerprints re- transmitted to the embassy. He has not yet answered his telephone.Bobi visited the Albuquerque INS in early August of 2006, believing that her original paperwork had been correct and that her fingerprints needed to be re-submitted, since they were about to expire.Officer Rechkemmer assured her at that time that her new fingerprints had been transmitted to the embassy.

On 4 October 2006 the U.S. embassy in Almaty confirmed via email to her adoption agency that they had received the new fingerprints and that all was well.

Had it not been for these confirmations, she would not now be in Kazakhstan.

Anything you can do to help resolve this matter would be very much appreciated. If you need any other information, including corroborative documents, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Mitchell S. Chapman

Worse

Today we visited the US Embassy. Vice Counsul Anne Baker was very kind and very appalled at the lack of response from BCIS. To be ignored, she says, does not happen.
She explains that

* there has NEVER been a transmission from the August refingerprinting, AND
* the original visa transmission was unusable because of wrong entries

We saw a copy of the original visa transmission, apparently backdated and goofed on (compare the approval and preparation date, never mind the expiration date) when Mr. Udall's office intervened to get it out of BCIS 8 months after I submitted it.

The "Date Prepared" is 10/06/2005. The "Form I-600A Approved On" date is 10/21/2005. The "Fingerprints Expire" date is 10/06/2005.

Secondly.

The August 2006 reprinting results have never been received in Almaty.

She was so kind and informative that I only weakly asked why someone at the Embassy thought the paperwork was in order when they told us that before this trip. I said it so that we didn't look like completely bumbling idiots, we really did try to have our ducks in a row. Somewhere.

She advised we reschedule our flights for friday. The whole if-nothing-is-resolved-in-the-US on Monday -then-we-run-into-the-Kaz-holiday-on-wednesday thing. Day of the Republic, it is.

We have had the Lufthansa people put new stickers on top of the old stickers on top of the original flight dates. They have given us their phone numbers and said to just phone next time, we do not need to visit them anymore to rebook this itinerary.

You're sick of reading this. I'm sick of writing it. Baby is upstairs and too tired and hungry to eat or sleep, she pushes the nipple out with her tongue and just wails a quavering back-arching wail, and Grandma is luridly postmorteming , and won't come brave the women at the business center to ask for a scan and email so I am torn up and down here trying to do the business and my usually-so-brave baby is upstairs with real tears on her face.

There were another 2 gyrations in the phone thingy and for a moment the MCI connection worked. But I thought it would be just rude to wake Mitch up at 5:30 in the morning, especially without happy news.

Tomorrow is Nugget's 9 month birthday, if I haven' t botched that math either.

Phone

Mom went up to the room earlier today when I was on the internet. The door was open as she approached. Two hotel men were inside, scratching their heads and examining the telephone.

A waitress who helped bring us a high chair this morning looked at Nugget and asked, "Aigerim?".

While Mom was upstairs (with the telephone repair team, who were, bless them, still trying to figure out what the Amerikanskas are having problems with), Aigerim and I were in the business center. One of the women came over and got the unhappy strollerized baby and walked a happy unstrollerized baby up and down while I printed out some pdfs Mitch has sent of (other) fingerprint/AFIS/FBI fingerprint clearances.

More randomness

I am nattering nervously on the Internet because we go to the Embassy in 3 hours. Then we either go to the airport to America or go to Lufthansa and reschedule our flights again.

We have at last figured out, perhaps, the elevators, though a new nuance appeared to me on the way down to the business center. Each car is about half again as large as a telephone booth (remember those?), there are three cars, and they run on separate call buttons.

A call button has a red light, but no up or down signs. Maybe the red light means available, maybe it means in service, maybe this light is how you pick which of the three buttons to push.

You get yer own personal car. Good, nonstop (Mom's word) service. It's a time saver from Just In Time, etc, philosophies: three little cars running independently instead of one running like a bus and stopping at every floor up and down.

Heaven knows we've been balling up that system, pushing all the buttons :)

Our outing this morning was the fourth attempt to find KazPost for postage for post cards. Yesterday, on the third, we found a KazPost office and store hours that did not include sunday. So we confidently toodled back there this morning, Mom whipped out her filled out post cards and the man at the desk quoted some number. I didn't understand it and made the 'write it out please' sign.

He held out a laminated card. "nye" was all I could say. 6500 kzt is about $50 USD. Per card. Not quite the $1 I recalled from Karaganda. He pointed at a sign and said "Express" (it transliterates if you can read the Cyrillic alphabet.) Ah!!!!

No....

He pointed us the right direction, and we all laughed, and smiled, and trucked the baby and the stroller out (separately of course), and got into the right post office. 140kzt I think per card, Mom handled it all herself so I may not get the precise number right from memory...we had a success!

OK I'll go calm down with more caffeine or something. I don't know whether to pack or not. I packed last week and that had a devastating effect. Partly because it rearranged everything in the room and in the ensuing disappointment I still haven't found the little kit with the leatherman in it, and it took a few days to figure out where other things were, things that were half packed. It was just one more disorganization to fight. So I organized but didn't pack. I will be so happy to be going home that I will have Nugget's food, diapers, toys and all our documents, and anything else can get dumped in the bags (ok not the cameras) and we will go.

I hope that by the time you awaken in America I will have been able to write you that we are coming home...with Aigierim on an IR3.

Later gators,
Bobi

Mom's windfall of cash

Hey, what great timing! Mom's WorldCom stocks are going to pay off :)

Free Aigerim

We could maybe get out of here with Aigerim on a tourist visa. After all, we can explain what an enthusiastic tourist she is. We have proof. Movies of her at the war memorial, at the park, at the Zhenkov cathedral, at the zoo. Sleeping, of course, but she has toured.

I would have to really be won over to do that. Because the reason we have dinked so long with the BCIS is to get her, not only into the US, but CITIZENSHIP. You and I as US Citizens have the right for our spouses and children to become US citizens. You have to do a potload of paperwork. I have done a potload of paperwork. You pay a bunch of money.

Then you hope someone sends the information correctly to the US Embassy in the country where you are.

This magic visa for a baby is called an IR3. We want an IR3 visa. We need an IR3 visa. It converts to automatic US Citizenship when those ten little tiny toes hit US soil (or are suspended happily in my arms on the Denver tarmac, whatever).

So if the BCIS can't make us a priority now (NOW?) and get the paperwork right, I'd really dread taking another type of visa and getting sent down a we'll-fix-it-later rathole. Like we'd have any priority at all then.

Baby is sleeping. Grandma is watching CNN. We are betting on the sentencing for Ken Lay junior (whatever his name is) .

The highlight in Kaz news is that the out-of-country printers misspelled "Kazakhstan" - not in any reasonable misspelling, either, they put a period in place of the leading K. Well they misspelled it on the new currency. Some of which is already in circulation. So there is much brewhaw and debate and crafting of a statement in the legislative branch that will be sent to President Nazarbaev indicating the displeasure over said thing.

Nothing like good QA in the receiving department. Hey, kind of like the folks at the US Embassy, which come to think of it were clerk level and thus probably Kazakhstani, who accepted my biometric reclearance and told my placing agency they had received it - without checking that the expiration date wasn't 2 years ago.

That's a lot of quarters...

[Bobi asked me to post this, since the computer she was using today was uncooperative.]

Mom is betting on Officer Reskimer having listened to his phone messages and resent the form with all the correct information on it. And our being on the flight tonight. I would bet something on the latter.

Also, tried to check on the phone bill. I have spent at least 40 minutes on the Spanish-English language BCIS 1-800 number, some to Officer Reskimer's machine, some to Don Smith of Reaching Out's, some to Chris, and maybe two or three hours with Mitch telling him what papers are where, and getting updated on the efforts on the home front. Chris too has kept me updated.


The lady at the front desk couldn't look up my specific bill. She estimates, though, that the cost is about $5 a minute.

[That sounds about right. My long-distance bill for September was about $360 for about one hour of calls back to the states.]

Virtual Tour of Karaganda

Bobi posted lots of photos of Karaganda from our first trip. Back when we believed this second visit would be short, I thought it would be fun to use her pictures to build a virtual tour of Karaganda.

Have you downloaded Google Earth? If so, you can go on walkabout in Karaganda, see where Bobi's photos came from, and read a little background about each place. See the baby house from space. See the apartment. Read about the statues and museums and department stores. Look at relics of the Cold War. Etc.

It's like those vacation slide shows we all used to endure, but you can escape from this one when you run out of chips.

Here's a KMZ file to serve as your guide:
Kazakhstan Trip.kmz (2006/10/18)

To use it: download, open with Google Earth, and start double-clicking on placemarks.

Let me know if you have any problems. For starters, I may have screwed up the link to the KMZ file :)

PS

Oh yes, why would the first rescheduled flight available be on Thursday morning?
Because if we miss Monday's working day in Kaz, which we should because nothing has been resolved from the US and the next US working day Monday is Monday night in Kaz, we have to try for Tuesday working day in Kaz.

__________[Bobi: Monday, Oct 23 here: I thought Sunday was 23. Holiday is 25; Aigerim's 9 month birthday is 24th. It doesn't help that I can't figure out what day it is...]____-
Tuesday is Independence Day in Kaz. Or Constitution day. Or something.

So the next working day in Kaz is wednesday. Which makes the first possible exit on Thursday.

Which, if Quantum Legalities happen, is irrelevant and we will be out of here late tomorrow; but until that legal wormhole opens, is why everything I can know or tell you or speculate or beg for got blasted onto the web last night. And if we miss the thursday working day in the US, "Alot of people in BCIS don't work on friday" was one of the notes of hope(?) offered up last weekend to explain the latest nonmovement.

Which means you will be getting a new scandal sheet from my hypertense self next saturday.

We have found places with brewed coffee, not nescafe. I will stoke before typing. That will save the emergency fund something at 8 cents an internet minute :)

We are starting to settle into seige mode. We now have tea, beer, dish soap, new pampers, more baby shampoo, more baby clothes in the room upstairs and are truly starting to move in. Housekeeping is starting to look worried.

And if tomorrow goes to crap (ie: does not get us all out of Kaz with A on an IR3 visa), hey, at least now we know where to go for the celebrations at Republican Square!

Jacqui has suggested I check out Almaty real estate.

Tomorrow is Marie Aigerim's 9-month birthday. It is the first month-day she will have had with a family.

We will celebrate no matter what any government anywhere says.

You will all be in our thoughts.

"Hi Mrs Paar"

"This is Kari. Thanks for sending the replacement baby sitter."

Maybe you like The Incredibles too. I feel sort of like poor Kari after her increasingly
frantic calls to Jack-Jack's mom. I feel especially like her since the overall situation was not only not resolved, but far worse.

You all are so great at offering help. Can I just ask that instead of a baby gift you could help with the phone bills at our shower? We can have a free-the-hostage-baby welcome-baby event instead? I am terrified to ask the front desk about the bills. I was going to pay our $450 hotel bill in cash, I will switch our new $900 hotel bill (lodging only) to the credit card. Oh, and that's $900 only if we get out Tuesday morning. Which would take some inversion of the time-space continuum, or a sudden waiver by a dozen bureaucracies. I'd bet on the Einsteiny thing first.

OK the phone bill. I asked that people try to phone in to us because it should be cheaper; Chris Ivins can work it out; Mitch gets hung up on at the front desk; local drunks phone about once every night when we are sound asleep, and while most hang up when I say hello, sometimes someone wishes me a goodnatured something or another.

We tried to figure out how to use a calling card, because we did in Karaganda, and because it should be cheaper. I think I have tried every possible combination of hotel exit numbers and calling card access numbers. Mom said to explain the problem to the front desk. I tried to call the front desk. They hung up on me. I think I may have reached the same front desk as Mitch! Mom said to go downstairs and explain the problem to the front desk. I said my Russian can't do that any better than hers can. She went downstairs to try to explain our phone troubles.

Yup.

Someone came up and switched out the phone in our room for a new one.



We are still paying hotel rates if we want to actually connect and talk to someone....

So, the telephone fund is probably the most runaway of the financial problems - at the moment. By Monday COB in the States, I'll know if I need an immigration lawyer.

Mitch is standing by to FedEx more of our prescriptions to us if we are stuck much longer. We should have arrived in Abq 8 hours ago. How did they say that at Cape Kennedy, T+8 hours? It makes me sad. Mitch, please add my Lorazepam to the list. If it is empty, we need to make another phone call :)

The strain comes from not knowing when, if ever(? not possible. Right?!?) this logjam will break free. I WISH I HAD MY LAPTOP. Damn it, the first trip I take without it in YEARS. I may console myself tomorrow by going after the Embassy appointment, if it fails (and after we go change the plane tickets ...to THURSDAY) and buy a damn computer. And more HD tapes for the camera.

Let me at least tell you a couple of stories about our days, we are fighting to stay calm (hence blasting every piece of information and speculation I can to you all and hoping someone can fish through it all for an answer), and keep baby happy.

She is a hero. Mom is a trooper. You know we brought a sterilizer for Aigerim's bottles and utensils. You know it seemed to go on the blink, literally. Well, I've been paranoid about hygeine for her bottles, go figure after our Karaganda experiences. To get clean water, we haul 5L jugs ("a pints a pound the world around" gave Mom and me a discussion all the way back from the grocery store about how much then the 5L bottle weighs. We will probably discuss it again the next time we have to haul the next one up and down the stairs of the underground street crossing.

Lola loaned us her personally electric teakettle, so between the kettle and the jug, we have hot drinkable water whenever we need. Don't think about boiling the tap water in the kettle, we tried in K and maybe now think that just bringing it to a boil (automatic shutoff can't be overridden) might not be enough to kill things that you want killed. The hotel provides water at 40 cents per half liter in the minibar, which is a damn site better than the Frankfurt Airtpot $3.50 for a third of a liter, but still we haul the 5L that costs $1.25 and we are set for days.

This still doesn't quite get the bottles and all as nice as I'd like. Also, between some mayhem between kefir and formula, the nipples for the playtex dropin bottles are all set for kefir: we are feeding her formula. Like Victoria Falls. So skip the platex bottles. This leaves us the one bottle we bought in Kaz for her trip from Almaty, and it can't use the playtex nipples, the bottle mouth is too small.
Back when I thought we were going to be on an airline with an infant still on formula (we'll be on steak by the time we leave now...) , I fretted about how to sterilize the bottles en route, and considered how to get around the $3.50/.33L water price for the 8 hour layover in Frankfurt.

The Kaz nipples fit exactly over the mouths of water bottles.

We make up the formula using mostly room temperature water, then add a bit of boiling water to bringing it to warmth. On goes the nipple, down goes the formula, out goes the dirty bottle and no fear of using a contaminated bottle or ring. Every shop on the street or in the airport has small bottles of water. Clean bottles. We are golden.

The nipples still require cleaning properly and I work on those. But those are easier than carrying a bottle brush (and cleaning it as well) and using unsure tap water.

We have had another flash that keeps us in clean baby utensils. I take down her bag of cereal with us to breakfast in the morning. I pour it in a coffee cup, add hot water, stir with a demitasse spoon, cool with some of my bottled water or the kefir and voila. We have baby cereal and clean dishes.

Mitch: Kefir is buttermilk. It's GOOD. Or else we're just feeding her buttermilk and not kefir. That could be true too.

So yesterday, we could keep nugget on her schedule while out and about. We grocery shopped, and then went around the corner to a bench, whipped out a bottle of water, a baggie of formula and a clean nipple, and had a very happy fed baby. As we were feeding her, the young sacker who had helped us came running around from the store: he had forgotten to put in one of the two new packages of nipples we had purchased, and was bringing it to us. He was so glad to have found us. He was so sweet.

There are alot of thoughtful people in our world. You, our friends who follow this blog, are comforting to us -- thank you thank you. It is like throwing the bottle with the message into the sea - but knowing that someone will get it. From us maroonees.

We enjoy every kindness shown to us, every speck of responsibility and courtesy.

I was determined to get out of the hotel today. We negotiated our own private vehicle-cum taxi and joked down his original bid of 800kzt to the local price of 500kzt.

Then, rather redundantly given our legal situation, we went to the zoo.

It was a nice way to spend some time, a nice park. More on that later, I must get back upstairs and find a way to warm a bottle of kefir using an electric kettle that can only boil water.

When it was time to return from the park, we found another private-vehicle-cum taxi and showed him our map and asked about going to Astana Park (I figured I could pronounce it) near our hotel. There was some confusion, but it was a taxi, and he bid 400 kzt so in went went.

Off we went. Mitch, we went down Dostyk Street, past #44 the Archaeological Museum. Hey did you know that it is closed on Sundays :) What was it, only four weeks ago, five weeks ago you and I visited it? Time becomes meaningless when you're in the joint.

Hmm, Abaya Street went by, four blocks south of the hotel, where Line Brew served Mom and Aigerim and me a fine steak dinner the other night. And we're still going south. Hell, I'm excited I recognize any of the streets and figure we can either walk or get another cab if we have to.

The dear man pulls over next to the Monument of Independence, the winged-snow-leopard golden-man thing in Republican Square. People massed in this place to demand independence from the USSR. He points southward and calls it Astana Park. Different than the Astana Park Mom and Aigerim and I have walked through a few times, and different than the one I pointed to on the map, but ok then. I agree with him about Furmanov street's location, something Kan street's location, and Abaya street's location. So now I know where we are and that the hotel is directly north, some blocks, and we can stroll if need be. We get out, pay him, and I figure we should grab a photo with Aigerim and the monument while we're here. So its probably herky jerky and horrid but the photo is supposed to show me holding Aigerim, and her hand in the handprint representing participation on the bronze page representating the constitution of independence.

We are still shooting photos when the driver comes back. He looks kind and apologetic, and now points north to to indicate Astana Park. Da, da, da, I say in relief. We go back to his car, he folds the stroller for us this time, and makes a gesture with his hand at his head to say he was confused.

We get in and the dear takes us the 8-10 blocks. It is nearing time for A's bottle, and we have our road-bottles at hand if needed but I would like to add warm water for her if we can, and let her into her crib on time. It was nice to have that ride. I offer him another, small note for being kind enough to come back when he didn't have to, and for saving us the walk. He refuses, we protest, he refuses, and gets out and unfolds the strollers for us. Drivers don't usually handle strollers. We bow and bob and smile and say thank you and put our hands over our hearts and smile and he smiles and waves.

We restrollerize Nugget, and that is never popular. Beep beep beep. I look up and the driver has backed down the street to stop beside us, holding up something.

My sunglasses.

You all must be sending some parts of yourselves this way. We appreciate it very very much.


Grateful for your warmth this far around the world,

Bobi

Update - trying to contacting the ABQ office in person.

Enter Miriam Rand, social worker, homestudy doer, social justice fighter - and the last one, she's going to get some practice.

In the football parlance, she just made a brilliant effort and got some great distance and then got wacked out of bounds and the play got called back. I think that's football parlance.

The way you get to see the ABQ BCIS in person is to use infopass.gov. You cannot walk in without an appointment. People without appointments are a threat that is too big to risk. You cannot phone a live person. That would be a waste of someone's time, or perhaps a security threat to the nation. (I am being cynical. But what other reason for all these barriers?)

Miriam, God bless her, has already tried to get an appointment through InfoPass, the official channel. There is no way to know if Officer Reskimer will be in on any particular day, so it is a crap shoot anyway as I was often told that no one else could help me, I had to come another day (ie make another appointment sometime in the distant future - and try my luck again)

Oh yes, speaking of distant future, the earliest date Miriam could get on InfoPass for the ABQ BCIS:

November 2.

Postnote - DHS rules say that you can go in person and ask for the District Officer in an emergency and you are supposed to be seen. Miriam did this at the ABQ DHS and was refused. Twice.

It is nice that there is alot to see in Almaty. Mom just tipped the housekeeper in US bills to keep the clean sheets, towels, and everything coming, they have been coming wonderfully and now we are in even sweeter position for our stay here. Since we are now entering longterm relationships with the dining room people, the business center people, the bell captain, the woman at the money exchange, the bar/coffee tender, the housekeepers and the laundry people.

Our earliest exist possible is wednesday and I'm keeping my hopes, as another American said at breakfast, a man experienced in the dealings of international business and politicals, "modest".




We are learning that countries in which you can pay for services mean you can get services.

How you can help

Officer Reskimer, adoption officer in ABQ BCIS, the man who can/did send the reapproval to the Embassy. Add yours to the messages we've already left. See if you can make the answering machine catch fire. Phone number is (505) 241-0422.

Congress Member Udall, the hero who got the I 171H out of ABQ BCIS before it completely expired, and who is my greatest hope for help. Even if you can't officially make a request, your calls can help get me some attention in order to hopefully skip the normal mailed-in application for help route.
Mr. Udall's Office, ABQ : 505 984 8950
DC: 202-225-6190

http://www.tomudall.house.gov/feedback.cfm?campaign=Udall

Maybe let the ABQ Journal, SF New Mexican, Thrifty Nickel, UFO Daily, whoever know about the blog site and if they are interested in the story to pony right up now by applying some attention and making phone calls. Maybe they can find out what's going on inside the Department of Homeland Security. If anything.

Don at Reaching Out 609 965 4167 or 856 435 2222

Fire at will. Bless you all. My local translator/bureaucracy guide has to leave the country tonight and I have lost all chance of making the tuesday morning flight : please please please help me get cleared so my family can try for the wednesday morning flight.

Who can help me. BCIS, State Department, Reaching Out, you. Your phone calls would be incredibly valuable. Repeatedly if you feel like it.

I am begging.



At least it's not Tehran, 1979.

Off to feed my dear daughter breakfast in the fancy dining room. She is a trooper and a sweetheart and I think I already told you that we discovered that keeping the baby well hydrated has implications for either larger diapers or hotel laundry. Mommy is learning!
And I am delighted to be with her. We are not leaving without her -- you think?!

The people at "1236 Laundry" know us now.

email, from Mitch, one of many

...your INS case #, and the case # for your previous interactions with Congressman Udall's office? Do you know of any germane documents that Miriam may have? She said (for me or you) to let her know, so she can go retrieve them from the storage unit. If you need encouragement, see Crystal's blog comments. She thinks it will make a good story, too. For how much longer is your visa valid? You probably know by now that Chris, Don, Miriam and I have been calling all over the place trying to find a way in to the INS. Miriam just summed it up best: The INS is impenetrable. I've called Mr. Reskiner four times and left two messages. His answering machine message says calls will usually be returned on Thursday and Friday. Unless, apparently, he doesn't feel like it. Don has tried to get in through his CIS friends in NJ and DC; they were able to dig up an audit trail on your fingerprints (I-600?), no problem, but couldn't figure out how to get the embassy to accept them. Miriam has also called Bingaman's office. I called the local office for Rep. Udall; they want me to fill out the papers (a letter and the Casework and Privacy Form) which you told me about, so it will take awhile. Even so, Miriam recommended I "get on that". Don wants to know why the embassy can't accept the fingerprints when the FBI said they were fine. You already know the bureaucratic answer, but it does raise the question of whether or not we can get a congressperson to lean on the embassy. Anyway, any ideas are welcome. Tonight and this weekend I may just go rifling through your papers to see what I can find. Hang tough! Try to enjoy the ride. Air sick bags are in the seatback in front of you. -- Mitch

my rent-to-own (ok a not so subtle plea to call me if you get a chance)

Tel: 7 (3272) 72 00 70
Fax: 7 (3272) 72 00 80

Hotel Almaty, Room 715

bdh2805@aol.com Maybe help with clear subject titles like "info about CIS 800 number" or "tea and sympathy" so I can get through to the new progress bits and let you all know.

I can get to email from 8a-8p.

Almaty is exactly 12 hours ahead of ABQ.

The internet is not free either. And size 2 pampers do not hold the amount of food this baby is going "through".

my email, to Reaching Out

Look, y'all went on what we'd heard about fingerprinting at the US Embassy - when I asked, as I told you, they said it couldn't be done. Then when Lola asked, they said it took a minimum of two weeks. My visa expires 11/3, which will then cost me another giant amount of money, not to mention two weeks more in Kaz, and the money is not the issue but all of this was avoidable and whoever made this mistake is not even contactable to fix it. Not one phone call from reaching out last night. Are you kidding me? Could someone keep me up to date? Or tell me my phone calls and emails have been even received? I emailed Udall but he can't do much. I can't spend hours on the phone and I can't fly home and dig through the old pain of his intervention last year and refill out privacy forms and submit them and wait for his office to send the letter to someone Sylvia Aguilar maybe and blah blah blah. Mitch, can you or Miriam get on infopass.gov something like that, get an appointment and go in live? Don, Chris can you FAX letterhead and pen-signed letters, not email, even notarized whatever it takes, to Mitch addressed to the INS officer asking him to let Mitch ask about my case and to please (damnit) fix the approval? I will pay bail for whoever gets thrown out of the ABQ INS office. They nodded the guards over to me after I was told the Adoption Officer was there, I asked to see his supervisor, was told he was busy, and then it was clear I was to get out or be arrested in the name of homeland security. Udall, you can see my email to him on the blog. THERE IS NO PROGRESS BEING MADE, I know you all are working and I know I have at least $400 in phone bills already. I cannot stay on the lines. What did the people on the 800 CIS number say? Did someone contact the agent I spoke with and who escalated me, but into a new 35 minute wait? Have you phoned anyone in ABQ? Can your local contacts at INS reach their contacts at the ABQ INS, if one is not allowed to give out their phone numbers in the name of national security, or in the name of inpenetrability. PHONE UDALL'S OFFICE, I will put this in the blog too, he normally needs privacy stuff to verify identity but I think we have enough credentials to prove I am real and need help now. Who has ID in a catastrophe anyway? Your calls will establish credibility and urgency and priority. PHONE RESKIMERS LINE until it catches fire. I know you are doing things but I don't know what. That is frustrating you have to imagine that. Are you leaving me here to work it out with my own Congress Member? I know Chris what a responsible and compassionate person you are, I talked alot with Lola yesterday and God bless her for being so right hearted and conscientious. But what on earth is going on, and what are you doing and how is it progressing? CALL in the middle of the night next time. How many US daytime/Kaz daytime cycles do you think I can afford to go through? Sure I have the money. We all do. But why am I being made to spend my money ON THIS? It is as rude and unilateral as robbery. CALL THE ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL AND THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN IF THEY WANT DISH.

my emails, to Mr Udall's site

To Mr. Udall's email site:

URGENT - citizen stranded in Kazakhstan by ABQ INS

DESPERATE in Kazakhstan, INS has botched the biometric reapproval for my adopted daughter's visa, no answer from Officer Reskimer in ABQ, you helped me last year, am desperate. Will have people in America try to fill you in, I can't afford the phone calls from Kaz that much - see denhartogstork.blogspot.com for some info, Chris Ivins
civins@hotmail.com 801 376 8951 is my adoption agency's US coordinator working on this, mitchchapman@earthlink.net is my
best friend, 505 995-1962 mobile 505 913 9852

I am marooned and desperate and there is no help from the US Embassy because they say they can't do anything until they get an accurate expirate date (instead of say something in 2005) in the reapproval sent a few weeks ago.

Before we flew, Chris checked with the US Embassy in Almaty and they told her they had received the refingerprint approval. THEY DIDN"T TELL US THEY WOULDN"T HONOR IT. I am running up hundreds of dollars in phone bills, my friends in the states rae jumping through hoops to get anything done, and we are paying for at last twice as long in the hotel as we expected. I am desperate. No one in the INS is able to do anything it seems. And no one else can fix the situation. And the Embassy says it is the INS' error.

I will try to phone you but the hotel rates and the lack of help is costing me much spirit.

My baby daughter is well, and sweet and bright and will make a great American and WILL be instilled with the value of being responsible to people who depend on her.

an email

HI Bobi,

I talked to Chris and I can’t believe they messed up like this!!

I already called and I had to leave a message for officials I know in the CIS in Wash DC. I will also call you HS agency in a little while, it’s to early there right now, to see if they have an inside number for your CIS office.

I just tried to cal you but I didn’t get an answer. I’ll try again later.

I WILL DO EVERYTHING I CAN TO GET THIS FIXED ASAP!!!!!

Hang in there. We are all working on this!

I TT Mitch yesterday. I’ll call him in a little while.

Sincerely,

Don

an email

Bobi, I have spoken to Lola twice tonight about your options to take care of this but for right now, I would suggest you have your fingerprints retaken , just in case no one can get anyone at INS in New Mexico to take care of this. It will take a week to get the results back and maybe they will rush the fingerprints at the Embassy since they did not tell us that they had an incorrect date on the fingerprints.I know it costs money to have them taken again, but it might be a step to make sure the Embassy will get fingerprint clearance. Either Don or I will contact your agency that did the homestudy to ask them to contact INS to get this taken care of. I am sorry the Embassy did not look at the date carefully when they emailed to me that they had your new fingerprint clearance. I will call you tomorrow after we speak to someone that can help you. I will be in touch.Lola is on her way to the hotel to speak with you. chris >From: bdh2805@aol.com >To: civins@hotmail.com >CC: zlola@list.ru, don@adoptachild.us, mitchchapman@earthlink.net >Subject: Re: FAmilies Coming >Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 23:25:19 -0400 > > Hi All, >PLEASE HELP!!!!!!! >Things are not right. I talked with Asyla at the Embassy this morning. She >says, yes, they received the updated clearance, yes they know to look under >Hartog and Den Hartog - but the clearance was sent incorrectly. The _new_ >fingerprint expiration date is October 2005. They cannot use the clearance >date they say. I did not know this was the problem until Asyla explained >it, or I would have told you, Chris, it would have made things look >differently. > >I don't have the ABQ adoption officer's phone number - it should have been >somewhere in the old emails with Chris and all from August, can you look it >up? Don, you too, it is the phone number you offered to help with and we >thought all was settled about. I do not have my laptop with my emails here >this trip and I thought I didn't need to bring that piece of information. >The recorded answering machine says he picks up messages on thursdays and >fridays but he didn't return any of the 4 phone calls in August. He may >have taken action per the message contents, and resent the clearance, I >don't have any way of knowing. > >I asked Asyla if there was a place in town I could get fingerprinting done, >she says no, sorry. She says I need to change my flights and that my >coordinator needs to change my Embassy appointment and that the INS in ABQ >needs to resend the clearance with an accurate expiration date. > >I phoned and left a message with this information with Chris, tried Lola at >home for no answer and the cell phone is out of range - maybe she is at the >Embassy now. > >What happens now? The only thing I see for almost sure is that I cannot get >us out of here before the weekend, which means at least doubling our hotel >bill, and unexpected hotel laundry expenses (so far the hotel charges for >minibar water and for email have been relievingly modest), and food and >outings because neither Marie is going to stay in the hotel for the next >three days waiting for an appointment and clearance - longer if I can't get >it for us by Monday. > >I don't know what I can do. Tell me if you can. I will see how many of >the expenses we can push off onto the credit card for now. > >The weather has turned nice. We will be outside sometimes to make the time >go faster. Email is a good way to communicate then. We can check between >8am and 10pm here in the hotel business center. > >Quite attentive to your responses, >Bobi > > >-----Original Message----- >From: civins@hotmail.com >To: bdh2805@aol.com >Cc: zlola@list.ru >Sent: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 8:02 PM >Subject: FW: RE: FAmilies Coming > > >This was the email I received from the Embassy on Oct. 4th. They have it >under Den Hartog so everything should be fine. >chris > > >From: "Adoptions, Almaty" <AdoptionsAlmaty@state.gov> > >To: "Chris Ivins" <civins@hotmail.com> > >Subject: RE: FAmilies Coming > >Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 11:35:09 +0600 > > > >Received under Den Hartog. > > > >Best Regards, > > > >Consular Section > >US Embassy Almaty > >Tel: 7 3272 504900 > >Fax: 7 3272 504884 > >Email: adoptionsalmaty@state.gov > > > > > >-----Original Message----- > >From: Chris Ivins [mailto:civins@hotmail.com] > >Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 10:30 AM > >To: Adoptions, Almaty > >Subject: RE: FAmilies Coming > > > > > >Hello, > >Would you check again under two last names: > >Den Hartog > >Hartog > >The Immigration office in her state of New Mexico says they sent the > >information to you over a month ago. Thank you for checking. > >chris > > > > >From: "Adoptions, Almaty" <AdoptionsAlmaty@state.gov> > > >To: "Chris Ivins" <civins@hotmail.com> > > >Subject: RE: FAmilies Coming > > >Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 08:57:29 +0600 > > > > > >Not received. > > > > > >Best Regards, > > > > > >Consular Section > > >US Embassy Almaty > > >Tel: 7 3272 504900 > > >Fax: 7 3272 504884 > > >Email: adoptionsalmaty@state.gov > > > > > > > > >-----Original Message----- > > >From: Chris Ivins [mailto:civins@hotmail.com] > > >Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 11:41 AM > > >To: Adoptions, Almaty > > >Subject: RE: FAmilies Coming > > > > > >Hello, > > >Can you please check again for the fingerprints for Bobi Jo Den Hartog? > > >They have been redone a month ago and her local office said they sent > > >results to you. Please let me know. > > >thanks, > > >chris > > > > > > > > > >From: "Adoptions, Almaty" <AdoptionsAlmaty@state.gov> > > > >To: "Chris Ivins" <civins@hotmail.com> > > > >Subject: RE: FAmilies Coming > > > >Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 12:28:11 +0600 > > > > > > > >We are so sorry, but we have received nothing yet. > > > > > > > >Best regards, > > > > > > > > > > > >Consular Section > > > >U.S. Embassy in Almaty, Kazakhstan > > > >Tel. 007-3272-504900 > > > >Fax: 007-3272-504884 > > > >Email address: ConsularAlmaty@state.gov For adoption inquiries: > > > >AdoptionsAlmaty@state.gov > > > >Website: www.usembassy.kz > > > > > > > >This message is unclassified based on the provisions stated in E.O. > > > >12958 > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >-----Original Message----- > > > >From: Chris Ivins [mailto:civins@hotmail.com] > > > >Sent: Friday, September 01, 2006 9:36 PM > > > >To: Adoptions, Almaty > > > >Subject: RE: FAmilies Coming > > > > > > > >Hello, > > > >Would you please check again to see if the fingerprints for Bobi Jo > > > >Den > > > > > > >Hartog have been sent. The Immigration office in Albuquerque said > > > >they sent them. Thanks so much. > > > >chris > > > > > > > > > > > > >From: "Adoptions, Almaty" <AdoptionsAlmaty@state.gov> > > > > >To: "Chris Ivins" <civins@hotmail.com> > > > > >Subject: RE: FAmilies Coming > > > > >Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:04:12 +0600 > > > > > > > > > >Dear Sir, > > > > > > > > > >We have not received them yet. > > > > > > > > > >Best regards, > > > > > > > > > >Consular Section > > > > >US Embassy Almaty > > > > >97 Zholdasbekov St., 17th floor > > > > >Tel: 3272-504900 > > > > >Fax: 3272-504884 > > > > >Website: www.usembassy.kz > > > > >This message is unclassified based on the provisions stated in E.O. > > > > >12958. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >-----Original Message----- > > > > >From: Chris Ivins [mailto:civins@hotmail.com] > > > > >Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 2:41 AM > > > > >To: Adoptions, Almaty > > > > >Subject: RE: FAmilies Coming > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >Hello, > > > > >Please check to see if Hartog's fingerprints were recently sent to > > > > >you from Albuquerque? > > > > >thanks, > > > > >chris > > > > > >From: "Adoptions, Almaty" <AdoptionsAlmaty@state.gov> > > > > > >To: "Chris Ivins" <civins@hotmail.com> > > > > > >Subject: RE: FAmilies Coming > > > > > >Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 13:42:15 +0600 > > > > > > > > > > > >1. fingerprints expired > > > > > >2. ok > > > > > > > > > > > >Best Regards, > > > > > > > > > > > >Consular Section > > > > > >US Embassy Almaty > > > > > >Tel: 7 3272 504900 > > > > > >Fax: 7 3272 504884 > > > > > >Email: adoptionsalmaty@state.gov > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >-----Original Message----- > > > > > >From: Chris Ivins [mailto:civins@hotmail.com] > > > > > >Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2006 11:00 AM > > > > > >To: Adoptions, Almaty > > > > > >Subject: FAmilies Coming > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >Hello, > > > > > >Please check to see if you have received cables for the following > > > > > >families: > > > > > >1. Bobi Jo Den Hartog > > > > > >2. Thomas Wickson and Francine Meyer thanks, chris ivns > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >_________________________________________________________________ >All-in-one security and maintenance for your PC. Get a free 90-day trial! >http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwlo0050000002msn/direct/01/?href=http://www.windowsonecare.com/?sc_cid=msn_hotmail > >________________________________________________________________________ >Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security >tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, >free AOL Mail and more. _________________________________________________________________ Stay in touch with old friends and meet new ones with Windows Live Spaces http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwsp0070000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://spaces.live.com/spacesapi.aspx?wx_action=create&wx_url=/friends.aspx&mkt=en-us

Aigerim

Yea, remember her? We took an outing yesterday.

The clouds were low, like to the street, but that keeps in alot of heat. We'd learned we'd cooked her the day before ( a few times), even though we had her dressed just like the caregiver had when she arrived at the hotel on Wednesday.

So we had on one layer, a heavier sleeper, and then tied Grandma's gold raincoat so it shielded her from shoulders past her toes. Aigerim had on a hat and her hood.

This is important. If you've read the bazillion other Kaz blogs, EVERY foreign parent gets scolded at least once for underdressing the baby. Wait, our blog too. And that was by Galina! We have the episode, inadvertently, on video and the only thing that is exactly clear to me is that it is strictly forbidden for a baby to have on only ONE layer. The problem is I don't then know when that rule holds, and for the times it is in force, how many layers you are then supposed to use.

The adults bundle differently than we do. They sit behind vegetable stands all day in the rain, snow, wind, cold. Hmm, more like we'd dress for a Nebraska football game or a mountaineering expedition than our normal commuter-in-heated cars to nearby parking lots garb. They can stand in line for the bus, for food, for the next walk to the forced relocation in what they are wearing, for hours, and must stay warm and dry. Mitch and I had what we considered normal clothes for the weather conditions in Karaganda, but when we walked for a mile, it was inadequate. People dress more like we dressed back when we walked to school or university.

So yesterday it was a major compliment when our stroller expedition got an ENTHUSIASTIC approval, AN APPROVAL, from a vigorous apple-doll babushka (who ought to know and who weilds the approval) who used hand gestures, arms raised high, voice high and approving, eyes sparkling, hands clapping, to indicate we were doing absolutely right by the baby.

We had the baby bundled correctly. This may be a first for any foreigner. If you aren't familiar with the baby dressing rules, this is nothing. If you are in the know on the subject, you know that we were just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for baby bundling.

Yay.

OK it is 11:22 am Lola has phoned and will be coming to the hotel. Mom received her phone call up in the room and Aigerim and Mom visited to deliver me the message. The women workers in the business center are very kind, getting sucked into flirting with baby Aigerim, which is great since this is our new Isla del Robinson Crusoe. We don't exactly know why Lola is coming to the hotel. She asked Mom if I had changed our air tickets yet, i.e., had I reached my US travel agent to rebook my tickets (it is nearly midnight on friday) and had I gone to the Lufthansa Office somewhere here in Almaty. Mom, who misses some of the subtleties of this business, had no trouble replying confidently to that question.

I gotta go. Aigerim is a dear and I am using up Mitch's HD video tapes during my nightly wakings (mine, neither Marie wakes at all during the night) to journal the days events. Even speaking, it takes nearly an hour. I will add new HD tapes to the shopping list.

Talk to you later
Bobi

Today In Sports

[Disclaimer. I don't know the facts or who did what or who's going to pay for what. But here is what the everychanging, hence sports match, situation looks like as far as I know at the moment, or how I remember things at the moment. So any misplaced blame is not intentional, just a result of the current Fog of Bureaucracy)


Welcome to today's match in bureaucracy football, and boy, fans, can I tell you it's going to be a good one.

On this side of the Atlantic (and Europe, and the Ural Mountains), we have the Kazakhstan geolocals. We have ...

wearing red white and blue, the US Embassy, who will be playing the position of "visa issuer" for Kazakhstani citizen Marie Aigerim Den Hartog so she can get on a plane and enter America and be a US citizen.

wearing the adoption agency Reaching Out's colors of I don't know what, junior coordinator Lola, playing the role of blocker and guide

Also on this side of the world, the major domo facilitator coordinator, Larisa, the quarterback.

Carrying the baby, wearing the same clothes she's worn for three days, Mom and US Citizen and running back, Bobi.

And now a big welcome for the OtherSideOfTheWorld team,

12 time zones away, let's give a big cheer for

the Albuquerque BCIS (INS) suboffice, in red white and blue but a different uniform than the state department;

Chris, the on-the-ball coordinator for Reaching Out, who has put up with hotel fusses and has had spot on information through out this process. The de facto Quarterback.

Then there's Don from Reaching Out. He supervises.

OK today's rugby ball, also known as Aigerim and her US entry visa, began its journey in January of 2005 with the standard submission of an I600A petition to classify an orphan as an immediate relative, advance processing.

Skip the rest of the tedious epic.

The permission form to issue my adopted child a visa is the I171H. It was issued last November from ABQ BCIS. Due to some delay of game penalties (all penalties are assessed to me no matter what team incurs them), the fifteen month lifetime of the background check, aka fingerprint clearance, had already ticked down alot. So it expired Oct 6 2006, after my first
trip to Kaz but before I would have the baby's visa done.

So in August, before the first trip, I went to ABQ BCIS and got an appointment and got refingerprinted on August 10. Sweet.

August 25, the week Mitch and I left to Kaz, Chris and Larisa checked and the reapproved clearance hadn't been telexed to the US Embassy in Almaty yet. I made the info pass appointment, drove to ABQ, and the adoption officer said, yes it had. That night, Chris checked again, with the team on the Kaz side of the world, who said no it hadn't.

What Ever.

First trip passes, Aigerim is awesome, time passes, Chris gets the Blessed Email that says, from the US Embassy in Almaty, yes the clearance has been reapproved.

Someone, possibly uber-quarterback Larisa, set the marching dates to Oct 18-20. During Don's traditional travel powwow, my inner coalmine canary says to him, that doesn't leave much slack before a weekend if something goes wrong. He agrees but says that's what he's been told it takes.

Last night, 5pm, Lola phones me here in the hotel. For those of you wanting to send me Christmas cards, Mitch has found the address and will soon have the phone number from me. I am prescienting the story, see, it's a good storytelling technique, foreshadowing I guess. Here's another bit of foreshadowing: there is hotel laundry in our future.

She says my fingerprint clearance has not arrived and I need to phone the embassy here and fix it.

What?

I try the phone number, am flustered, get several different people, but I keep getting the same wrong number, some goodnatured Russian bear. The third time, I just flat out ask "US Embassy?"

He says, at 5:15 at night, "Good Morning."
I'll bite.
I say, "Good Morning."
He says, "Good Morning. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten" and hangs up.

That was one of the best natured people I've ever bothered with a wrong number. God bless him for giving me some relief.

The phone rings, it is the front desk, the message for me is the nontransposed number for the adoption officer at the Embassy, and when I phone it the Embassy is closed for the day.

I phone and leave messages for Chris and Don and then email all with what I know.

Dear Chris phones Lola, gets the story, phones me back, emails the copy of the email in which the Embassy confirms receiving the clearance, is sure that yes the last name did get filed differently and that when I call in the morning or show them the email they will find that one was sent.

Ahhhh.



The coal mine canary, who doesn't belong in this unfleshed out analogy of a rugby match, is not sure. Its eyes are apprensive and dark with fear. It sits quietly and waits out the night.

8:40, the most clueless person of all in this arrangement (that would be me) tries to make headway and phones Asyla at the US Embassy.

She is kind, she is clear, she is gentle.
They DID get the reapproval clearance transmission.
The NEW expiration date is October 2005.
They can't use the transmitted clearance.
ABQ BCIS needs to send a new, accurate one.

And she says I need to reschedule my flights.

It is 8:40 pm on thursday night in ABQ. By the time I can reach anyone at work in ABQ, it will be 8:40 pm friday night in ALA, too late to make any progress on the business here before the weekend.

The coal mine canary no longer is squawking in distress, hoping for action that will save it. It is at peace because it has just plain fallen over dead. We are no longer suspecting a bad situation, we are clearly in one.

So there have been phone messages and emails. I was distraught last night, at how things have not worked out and how I am somehow in the magical center of blame. You should have called the INS and told them to send a new transmission.

So if one of you has the literary desire, and do not care to write about General Arresting Gear(a bullet proof vest and some dockers?), here are the reversals and handoffs that would make a very exciting football game.

Chris/etal ask the US Embassy if clearance received
US Embassy says yes.
Running back is sent to go get baby/football. Catches ball.
Blocker says, can't go forward. Embassy does not have your clearance.
Running back tries to reach Embassy, embassy closed for the night.
Running back calls US blocker, who says I have confirmation that yes the Embassy says they received your clearance. Working day in America passes.
Working day begins in Almaty. Running back reaches US Embassy. US Embassy has gone long for the pass of the visa paperwork, told the quarterback throwing the ball that they are ready to receive it, and then refuses to catch it. Why? Because sometime between the time they told the quarterback they were ready to receive it , and the time it arrived to them, they rechecked the paperwork and it wasn't right and somehow this information failed to reach any quarterback.
Pitiful little (poor pitiful me, hardly) running back, arrives out of breath, expecting to pick up visa. US Embassy enjoys the scenery.

Running back has baby but no visa. Because we need something from the US side, today's working day in Almaty is shot. Which means the next working day in Almaty, should everything get straightened out in the US today (place yer bets) is Monday.

Thank goodness the sun came out. Outside, I mean, you know, the kind in the air.
Nugget has been a trooper and Mom has actually somewhat adjusted from her "Nag Bobi to do something" strategy when Bobi is a situation where she's done everything she's knows to do. I've tried to follow instructions and communicate. When I told Mom that I had already just done what I knew to do, and instead could use support and empathy and rapport, she grew silent for a long time, lips pursed, eyes concentrating. She came out with "Unbelievable".

And "Digusting".

God, I love you Mom.

The soonest we will be home in Tuesday night. I hope my employer isn't reading this.

We will be touring in Almaty today. We'll wave from Kok Tobe. I am going to do some consolation shopping. Like for shirts.

Thanks for your comments and support and I hope to have better, or at least more accurate, news for you sometime.

Love ya
Bobi

PS Aigerim is a grinning awesome little hero. I will post about her separately. She deserves to be more than footnote to a paperwork trip through the looking glass.

About Your Last Name...

Bobi has lots of stories involving her last name. People can't spell it. Computer software can't handle a last name with two words. Reservations get filed under the wrong name. Chaos ensues.

I think it just happened again.

The Trouble is that the U.S. embassy says it does not have Bobi's fingerprint clearance. I just talked to her adoption agency, who said that the embassy acknowledged receipt of the clearance on October 4th. Then they filed it under "Hartog". When they looked for a clearance for Bobi "Den Hartog" they couldn't find it.

One of Bobi's friends (Hi, Jacqui) just suggested that she change her last name to Jones.

The agency has emailed Bobi a copy of the embassy's acknowledgment of receipt. They hope things can be sorted out once Bobi shows the acknowledgment to the embassy staff.

So -- cross yer fingers! -- I hope tomorrow morning we'll all see good news on this blog.


And just in case we don't: Jacqui has armed me with detailed instructions on how to sic our congressmen on the embassy. Thank you!

Trouble

Aigerim's visa may not happen. I am sick at heart. The paperwork was supposed to be cleared and done. I don't know what will happen. Maybe it can happen with great expense of time and money if I have to stay longer.

Maybe it will just happen the way we hope.

Dang you, Mitch

I am a single mom. My baby's first word is "dada".

Touch down! and some blood shed

It happened!!!! Baby Aigerim is in the happy little arms of her mother and
grandmother, and the business is proceeding appropriately.

We enjoyed our wait on the green leather couches in VIP Customs last night, which, up
until we arrived at Hotel Almaty an hour later was the nicest place I'd ever stayed in Almaty.

Lola and Leonid met us at the airport, and we watched as they did something not even my mom would do (maybe): they took a loaded baggage cart down a rainslicked marble ramp. This ramp isn't sloped like a ramp. It's sloped like a decorative arch. The cart, Lola and Leonid (and the baggage) made it halfway to the parked car before anyone had to push again.

The hotel -- MITCH!!!! You wouldn't believe it. Ahh.

Shades of the last time we flew from Frankfurt to Almaty, the night before we flew to Karaganda to meet the babies. Between the road buzz and the immensity of the situation, I did not sleep either night. I am in the internet center in the hotel because there are two Marie Den Hartogs sacked out in the room right now. I wish I could load photos. Maybe I will ask later.

They are up there, unsupervised, because I had to come back down to the lobby and fill out some applications for Aigerim's US visa. These aren't the most detailed documents in the world, her name, my name, our address in the US covers about 50% of the information you have to write. Fine with me. Lola told me what to write where and when, and wrote Aigerim's name in Cyrillic when needed - the first time. Then I copied it, and I'm sure it looks like Cyrillic written by a cave man.

Now she has all the documents she needs from me to submit the packet at the US Embassy. One more report is necessary, the medical report including the new HIV test result. We went to the SOS clinic this morning - Nugget is 7.24 kg, 64cm long - Mitch can translate, something like 15 pounds and 24 inches? Healthy too :)

Continuing in reverse chronological sequence, there was the moment of reunion!!!! Mom and I ate breakfast in the buffet with waiters with vests and tables with cloths and gilt decorated columns and giant spreads of food. Oh Mitch, you should be here. You deserve a good Almaty experience..

We knew from Lola that Aigerim's train would arrive at 7:30am, and Lola said to allow a 1 - 1.5
hours for Leonid to get to our hotel from the station, due to rush hour. So Mom and I popped out of bed long before the alarm went off and went down to breakfast at 7:30. At 8:15 we headed back up to the room, planning to get out the video camera and the other cameras and be all ready when the Star arrived! Flashbulbs popping! All we would have needed was a red carpet, which, well, the entryway here has. With bellman who really carry luggage and open car doors. Come to think of it, we came in to the front of this hotel, not the garbage can route of the other...never mind.

Mom and I are racing for the elevators, after a delay caused by her thinking I was still drinking my tea and my thinking she was still drinking her coffee, and Mom asks if she can change money now, the valut (exchange) is open. I say, no no no we have to get our camera's, she'll be here any -

Leonid rushes over to intercept us at the elevators, and we turn to follow his pointing arm.

There she was.

Bundled like an overstuffed animal, grinning, tongue out, laughing, eyes sparkling, it was HER.

We cooed and hugged and laughed and kissed. Urmilla (?) the caregiver who brought her showed me her documents, her snowsuit, and told me she had just eaten at 7 o'clock. She said alot more, I wish we had videoed it to interpret later but we had no video capability. Mom had the old faithful film camera, and we took turns taking pictures among Urmilla, Aigerim, Leonid, Mom and me.

She was in GREAT spirits. I'd forgotten how bouyant that little girl is. We went up to the room,
played on the floor, and enjoyed her babbling - she babbles, now, Mitch!! Since we had to go the clinic at 10:15, we laid down for a short nap. SHe protested over being laid on her back, but then I laid on the bed next to her crib and she just explored and talked herself to sleep.


We fixed her 10 bottle before we woke her up. From my experience in Karaganda, I wacked open truck-sized holes in the nipples. Note to self: formula flows much more easily than kefir. We'll be switching nipples soon.

The sterilizer pooped out last night, blinking on and off, just like my AA recharger did in Peru. I am doomed about electronics and travel. It is wattage, amperage, voltage? You tell me.


We may have set some new kind of record. Every Kaz story includes being told that the child is not dressed warmly enough. We cooked the little potato this morning. She was soaking wet
and rash red by the time we got to the doctors. She was happy to have some layers removed. I think the ergo baby carrier counts as another layer, since it holds heat between us and around her, as well.

So far, so good. We also got her Lufthansa ticket sorted out. All that remains is the Embassy interview at 3pm on Friday.

The stick for the blood drawing did not sit well. I saw what real tears look like. Which means I at least stand a chance of knowing when someone is faking it. It wasn't great to see her cry. The pinprick was fast, and the nurse and the phlebotomist were both trying to reassure her and sympathize wtih her and they did their jobs fast and as painlessly as they knew how. I appreciated that. Nugget may not have. Poor thing. The smile took a whole two minutes to come back :)

It is 2:00 now so I must go emulate some kind of feeding. Mitch can perhaps speculate aloud about what the nannies fed the babies at the 2:00 feeding. I think I should also feed Mom since we haven't had anything since breakfast.

Wish I could post pictures, will ask later.

Love ya all
Bobi

Off to get the Nugget, continued

At 10:30 this morning I dropped off Bobi and her Mom at the Albuquerque airport. They should be arriving in Almaty on Tuesday at 11:45 AM Mountain Time, i.e. about midnight their time.

If everything goes to schedule they'll meet the baby on Wednesday, and next Saturday evening I'll be back in Albuquerque to pick up three generations of Den Hartogs. Can't wait!

It's good that we figured out that whole child-seat installation :)

It's also good that Burnita finally got her luggage last night. Thanks to a problem with United's computer systems her flight from Lincoln on Saturday was delayed several hours. Her luggage was delayed even more.

Off to get the Nugget

the wonderful Nugget of Kaz

September 1 to 4, from Santa Fe to Karanganda

The trip from Santa Fe to Karaganda went pretty well, if for days. Neighbor Francine drove us to a local hotel with our seven pieces of baggage – two pieces of checked, each, and one carry-on for Mitch and a carry-on plus “personal item” for me. A shuttle took us on to ABQ where the driver pulled up the curb-cutout at the departures station to get us out of the pouring rain. It’s rained a lot this summer in ABQ, unusual to say the least.

The TSA folks were nice, and the people at the second airport restaurant we tried took our order. We dosed up on food before entering airline-food land, and we dosed up on green chiles. The flight to Chicago was ordinary. Mitch tried to watch “Over the Hedge” but had stuttering video and intermittent audio; I watched “Poseidon” from a seat with perfect video and audio and a pretty poor movie.

The flight leaving Chicago was delayed two hours for something that involved a) finding the problem piece and b) finding a replacement piece. The up side was that we didn’t have a connection to miss on the other end, in Frankfurt, and the pilot made up most of the time so that most of the people who did have connections did not miss them, and that the drinks were then given out complimentarily. We had some red wine with our Food From A Box.

From ORD to FRA I tried to sleep. However, I got sucked into the “X-Men” movie, and having always had a soft spot for Wolverine and having identified with Rogue, was stuck in it. I would have watched it a second time, but made myself try to sleep.

We collected our bags and went through passport control and customs in FRA at 11 Saturday morning. Hotel Airport Stiegenberger had a room waiting, we put down our belongings and got out. Our plan was to stay busy and awake and try to start readjusting for jet lag. We had a great plan – to go see theSenckenberg Natural History Museum. Natural History Museums read pretty much the same way no matter what language they are in. We asked the desk clerk about the subway/trains to get to Senckenberg, and had our maps and knew what to do after we took the hotel shuttle back to airport and its train station.

You could buy at least a hundred variations of tickets from the vending machines there. Mitch was pretty sure at least one of them would get us to Beconcon and we knew we didn’t want to go there by accident a second time. It took some time for us to find the travel center and ask a clerk, who had no idea what Senckenberg was, but did know how to sell us a day-pass for the city trains. 13e for up to five people for one day. Good deal.

The trains were easy to deal with after that. Our destination was the Senckenberg train station, which on one side of the street was very traditional looking.















On the other side, however, it was a modern cartoon.













The Museum was only a few blocks down, we paid 6e each and got an English language guide that I don’t think we used. The museum building itself is exquisite red streaked sandstone. It was easy to find, thanks to the big dinos up front.




































We didn’t need the guidebook much, as we were not trying to do a research outing. About a dozen kinds of ostriches and ostrich-like things met us. Among them: "Take my picture with the dodo".






























They had amazing things. And familiar things. Mitch checks to see how this one compares to its cousin we saw earlier this summer at the visitor’s center at Garden of the Gods:













The real reason we didn’t need the guide book is that Mitch knows all these dinos by heart. He once wanted to be a paleontologist. He named them all and we oohed and awed. Someday I am going to learn them too. I only knew the basic set – tyrannosaurus, triceratops and brontosaurus – from my youth, and even then one of those has been changed now. New Mexico has a state dinosaur and once I helped with a hunt for dino shell eggs in an area that was once ancient seashore.














Earlier this year, we visited Nebraska and Morrill Hall. The story there was that little horses and rhinos were from the New World – I think that was the story.













So does this match or am I remembering all wrong? Like there is an Ashfall site in Nebraska, a watering hole with population suffocated in place and en masse as ash fell from a prehistoric Yellowstone volcano, there is a site of little horses here in Germany as well - Messell. Do look it up!



The building itself was very nice. I loved the curves and lines and decorations.




The stairs were even used by some clever curator – as you rose on them, first a head came into view, then next from the case on the other side. Then more next.












Then the whole ostrich!













It was a delightful museum. Our time passed pretty quickly and while our bodies still thought it was the middle of the night, it was a good way to pass the time.

We purchased some oj and wasp-approved pastries for breakfast the next morning (giving a pass to the Steinberger’s 21E apiece breakfast). For dinner, we sat outside at a café and had pizza and salad and German beer (though Corona was offered, I believe) .

















We returned via underground to the aiport station and then by shuttle bus back to the hotel. After Mitch cleaned up, I took a long hot bath – luscious hot water and lots of it. Little did I know. Or maybe I did know…










The flight to ALA was my first view of Kazkahs. There was a man in Buddhist monk robes, the man ahead of us looked Mongolian with wide shoulders and face, and Russian flew everywhere. A tour group of Americans was waddling into place, complete with the harried and determined tour guide with name badge.

The FRA-ALA flight was operated by Lufthansa and the food and service were magnificent.

Wow. This flight was only slightly shorter than the ORD-FRA 8 hour flight, at 6 hours. The seats had foot rests and head wings. We saw the Russians drinking something and asked for the same thing and enjoyed our complimentary cognac. Forms were passed out and we guessed what to put on them. [So far they have worked, and apparently my Russian is either readable and the content makes sense – I just coped stuff from my visa – or it is unreadable and that doesn’t matter.]


VIP customs in ALA was a hoot. Bright green leather chairs and bigscreen tv. Someone took our baggage claim tickets to fetch the bags. We looked up at the camera behind the passport control booth and smiled for our photos. I paid $80 apiece for VIP customs entry, and then took up the offer to pay for the return as well. The “discount” turned out to be zero percent of $80*2 I think, and it is possible that my credit card was run more than once, surmised from the consternation of the three women buzzing about it and pointing to different keys on the credit card machine. My receipt however says I paid just once. But it is not the credit card receipt. [Update: yes, I did get a discount by paying for VIP customs roundtrip, instead of paying for entry and exit separately. No, I did not get to use VIP customs on exit because our driver dropped us off at the regular airport entrance, from which ,with baggage, it is impossible to reach the VIP entrance. A man helped me try to get a refund, and while I didn't get a refund for the unused portion, I did get to see the excited crowd waiting for Steven Segal to deplane September 25]

Olga and driver Slava met us at the airport, poor them waiting as we were the last ones out (not our fault – we came out as soon as our luggage was delivered to us.) and took us to a money exchange and a hotel.

The hotel in ALA was old and once grand. Wide stairways with carpets, sofas in the hallways. We arrived at 1 am and I slept not one wink in my twin bed. The bed itself was comfortable, with a nice woolen blanket and coverlet (the top sheet was folded up and stored underneath the pillow, we found later, I’m not sure why). Morning could not come soon enough. I could not sleep at all. I tried to figure out a hot shower but ended up rinsing off whatever parts of me I could bear to put under cold water, which was many of them but by no means all of them. Considering my outfit was coming back after three flights and three continents, I figured I was clean enough. I hadn’t reckoned on there being a problem with drying off. The metal towel bar crashed to the tile floor – good hotel neighborliness at 5:45 in the morning.

Mitch fixed the towel bar and we dragged our luggage back down to the lobby. The sleepy lobby boy unlocked the front door and Slava took us to the airport. We bumbled our way through one line after another, using our vast Russian “Pajualsta” (Please) and “Karaganda”(Karaganda) and “Spasiba” (Thank you) to get to the right lines to get to Karaganda. The Air Astana clerk who weighed our luggage noted we were 6 kg over, but said she would not charge us. That was nice of her.

We got a view of ALA in daylight then, on the bus to the airplane and from the airplane. It was very cloudy but huge jagged mountains shot straight up from the ground it seemed. Snow.








































The flight from ALA to KGF lasted one hour, during which time we were fed a dandy meal and drank coffee from the sympathetic attendants. The terrain went from farm land, to Lake Balkash, to San Juan valley vegetated arroyos to Cochito dry arroyos beneath us. Big black streaks appeared on the surface of the earth. We guessed that they were coal.

The KGF airport is a big flat thing in the middle of big flatness. It had some MIGs to break the skyline.









Olga and Driver Victor picked us up and Victor went to retrieve the bags. Off to the vehicle, after a stop for photographing Soviet art:













And whatever this says [Update: it is SaryArka, a traditional name for the area and the name of the airport.]













It is about 20 km from the airport to the city. We knew Karaganda is a working town, a coal town, and scene of some pretty harsh lives in the past. We passed a horseman and a herd of cows with some goats. We passed long stretches of tiny concrete buildings, maybe the trailers of their day, overgrown along with their little neighboring patches. Nicer farm houses came into view, after we passed a blue-domed cemetery on the left. These farmhouses had fences and windows and privies out back.

The city itself is a forest of dim high rises. Mr. Nazarbayev’s picture adorns billboards showing him accompanied variously by industry, agriculture and an eagle. We passed more blue-domed mosques and gold-domed churches. A tall statue of four horses and an obelisk caught my eye.

The cab twisted and turned and declared dominance at every turn. Victor pulled off the road, into a back alley of a set of inner-city high rises. Brightly colored metal basketball hoops and play equipment stood in some parks to the inside. To the street side, a mismatched pile of rubble and wires and trash and leftovers stood stacked five stories tall. The car stopped beside another car. Larissa waited for us in the other car. She greeted us and took us to the building. A metal door clunked unlocked and we stepped into an unlighted thing that looked like a very short railroad car. Then into a concrete stairwell, once painted Kazakhstani baby boy blue. Plumbing pipes stretched across the walls and up the stairs and through floors in oblivious retrofit. Things hung on hooks. The mailboxes hung on nothing. The marble stairs had short rises and normal runs, and up we went taking two half stories between each tall story. At the half story landings, large windows looked out on the cars and the park. Up we went. We were in Karaganda.