"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