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.