The Den Hartog Stork

2006-12-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

"It's going to be a long 18 years."

Goodbye and Good Luck

2006-12-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks for participating in our blog and our adventure. We have gone on to quieter, more domestic things, and have involved almost zero Members of Congress and Senators in our daily wants and needs lately. That is nice for everyone.

Hope you enjoyed the ride.

See you 'round the Internet

Bobi

Nearly epilogue

2006-10-27T13:46:00.000-06:00

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!

2006-10-26T08:18:00.000-06:00

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"

2006-10-24T06:55:00.000-06:00

"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.

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

Free to go!!!

2006-10-24T03:48:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-23T23:30:00.000-06:00

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.

2006-10-23T23:12:00.000-06:00

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!

2006-10-23T22:44:00.000-06:00

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!

2006-10-23T22:34:00.001-06:00

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

2006-10-23T05:41:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-23T01:05:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-23T00:51:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-23T00:44:00.000-06:00

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

Free Aigerim

2006-10-23T00:36:00.000-06:00

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...

2006-10-22T21:52:00.000-06:00

[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

2006-10-22T09:39:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-22T03:43:00.000-06:00

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"

2006-10-22T02:52:00.000-06:00

"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.

2006-10-21T00:16:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-20T21:27:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-20T21:26:00.000-06:00

...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)

2006-10-20T21:22:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-20T21:21:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-20T21:16:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-20T21:15:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-20T21:10:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-19T23:19:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-19T22:36:00.000-06:00

[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...

2006-10-19T15:33:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-19T06:56:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-19T06:55:00.000-06:00

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

Touch down! and some blood shed

2006-10-18T01:40:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-16T13:08:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-16T08:59:00.000-06:00

the wonderful Nugget of Kaz

September 1 to 4, from Santa Fe to Karanganda

2006-10-07T17:28:00.000-06:00

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.

Snow Leopard is coming home

2006-10-06T08:07:00.000-06:00

Holy buckets, just how much money can one person spend at Target in a week?

OK, that's out of my system. But how much gear can one tiny little baby actually need?

Since we had less-than-success at staying out of bad water on the first trip, a sterilizer for her bottles and all has gone into the luggage for the second trip.

Obviously one can buy formula, Pampers, diaper cream, teething gel and wipes in Kazakhstan. One has already done all of this and proven they are the same as you would get here. The NAN formula is the same as the older formulation, Nestles Good Start Essentials, and in fact you can buy NAN in stores with a Latin American market.

But ohhhh noooo. I'm not sure we'll have time for a store run before we meet up with the baby in Almaty, so GOTTA HAVE IT ALL WITH ME JUST IN CASE (so says my inner anxious mama).

As if we won't be going to a store ever. With Grandma and Tsum? The giant state store is easy, full of individual interesting booths and mayhem. And its indoors so the weather isn't a factor.

Everything is a 7-11 with everything you could ever want in it. Stalls, booths, kiosks are everywhere.

Anyway, the luggage is now packed so that if we were to rendezvous, say, on the face of the moon, I would have everything I need to arm myself for baby care. She will have her familiar formula and she will have rice cereal and that is enough disturbance in her diet for the time being.

Poor thing is going through many disturbances. Strange surroundings, noises, sights, smells, people, clothing, food, schedule, bedding - bless her little heart. Imagine if you were taken hostage (after all, Nugget doesn't get to vote) and plopped someplace alien with some probably-benevolent handlers. Or just recall how Mitch and I as fully functioning (You stay quiet) adults failed to successfully deal with the changes in food and water, shelter and clothing and weather. So I am trying to limit the disturbances and keep things as familiar and simple for her as we can. She has to handle enough change as it is.

The airplane arrangements are in process but here's a guess. Mom and I leave ABQ on Monday October 16; we spend 20-some hours touring airports in North America, Europe and arrive in Asia at Almaty right before midnight late on Tuesday October 17.

We plop out two A-Tickets in the Currency of the World - US $20 bills - and get taken to our hotel. We play Almaty hotel roulette. Do you remember waaaaaaaay back when in Disneyland when you bought categories of tickets to correspond with the thrill/popularity of a ride? Nowadays you just pay to get in and that's it. But back then, like a regular carnival, you used tickets for the individual rides. There was the A-ticket, the basic ticket, used for things like the tots' mad hatter tea party ride. The categories went all the way to E ticket, which gave us the great phrase "like an E-ticket ride at Disneyland".

Now you just get the tepid horror of an e-ticket ride on Southwest. Never mind.

Anyway, in World Travel Parlance, the interpreter and the driver each get an A-ticket to take us to the hotel. Conveniently, every airport-hotel transfer ever is an A-ticket, no matter the length or time. Don't ask what the locals pay because you are not a local. Just whip out the USD $20/ A-ticket and be done.

A nineteen hour train ride will start my daughter's journey to America. I don't kno what time the train arrives in Almaty, but my packing list above is based on "ASAP" in the morning. Have a nice new bottle of formula and dry diapers ready to go. Oh, laugh at me: as if the nanny wouldn't have that done when she presents me with my precious daughter! Again, like I said, if we were dropped out of thin air on the fac of the moon - that is my current packing regime.

We visit the US Embassy and do something. At some point, Marie Aigerim gets a medical inspection and now an HIV test. So the blood-drawing will bother me. She's been through medical exams before and blood tests: I haven't as her parent! I think I'd better just follow her lead and be a trooper.

Guess I should do that in general.

Wednesday, thursday and friday are supposed to be enough to get our business transacted. The US visa is supposed to be issued Friday afternoon. We are supposed to be outathere much later than evening.

And "home" on Saturday October 21. I put quotes around home because, for Aigerim, there will be absolutely nothing familiar and comforting about it yet. How strange. Poor dear. Even newborns have heard the household sounds when they were in utero, know the dogs bark; and the household members, in turn, had some idea something was happening.

Ah yes snow leopards. Friend Pat "spotted" the Ty snow leopard (hee hee). And Aunt Crystal provided us with the perfect outfit for the baby Snow Leopard!

Wahoo!!! News!!!

2006-10-04T10:38:00.000-06:00

Just got my baby-marching orders (tentatively, to be fair) from Don: be in Almaty October 18-20!!

Aigerim!!!!

And in time for Halloween dress-up even :)

Hee hee hee hee hee hee.

What "work that I was supposed to be doing"? Oh yea. Back to work. Pay the airfare.

GET THE BABY!!!

Snow Leopards can't purr

2006-10-03T08:57:00.000-06:00

Did you know that? I didn't. They can't roar or purr. Nor do they "breed all year round", unlike, apparently, some rumors would have it.

Smithsonian photo of Snow Leopard - big tail!

Coat of Arms of the City of Almaty

Marie Aigerim needs a stuffed toy snow leopard.

Winged Snow Leopards are Cool in DC too

2006-10-03T07:04:00.000-06:00

A Kaz statue was just unveiled in Washington D.C. by visiting Kazakhstani President Nazaybaev (attended, you'll note, by the US Secretary of Energy). This is a copy of a statue in Almaty, which we saw only from a cab. It is "Golden Man" of the Issyk Burial Mound standing on a winged snow leopard. [Need to get my own photo: Meg?!]

Lots of places have gold, even Saddam Hussein and Geraldo Rivera can own gold, but how many places have winged snow leopards? That is just cool. But I don't see how the Golden Man stays aboard, the physics look all wrong.

A more educated person would tell you the symbolism of said statue. We tried to become educated. We even went to the Museum of Archaeology in Almaty to learn about the ancient history of Kazakhstan.

Print this picture out for the address, 44 Dostyk, if you would like to try this yourself some time. As usual, it did not go quite like we expected.

We had an easy time finding the street location, and clued in with a nice statue of a musician out front. Again, a more educated person would know who said person is and why his statue is there. Can't learn everything at once or your brain will explode, and besides, then you won't have anything left to do. I suppose.

This was once a gem of a place, a nice statue and beautiful running water (we're from New Mexico) and a graceful pond.

Hey, no lines! Um. Is it open?
We're still not sure, to tell the truth. The lights were off but the door was unlocked so we went in. [If they wanted us to stay out they would have locked it, is my thinking. I have learned much from my mother. She is bolder than I am, but sometimes I channel her when I want something.]

A small man came out of a watchroom, where he had been on a sofa watching tv. His English and our Russian were not communicating anything. I figured if he didn't make motions sweeping us
toward the door, we could stay. It's an archaeology museum, for crying out loud, and we only have this one day to try to see it! Let us staaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy!

The lights weren't on but he seemed to think we were harmless and didn't shoo us out. We glowed.

He did explain that the lights would come on tomorrow. We know the word "zoftra"- "tomorrow" from Vladimir the driver in Karaganda. His Russian tutoring paid off!
At least, we think he was talking about the lights. He pointed to the unilluminated fixtures and said tomorrow. Didn't matter to me as long as he wasn't herding us toward the exit.

A lot of guidebooks (so-called) say there is little history to Kaz, etc. I saw this map and salivated. The information it contained was so dense and well presented and organized and rich. It shows sites and types and names, all good clues to new threads of investigation and hunting. Ohhhh. I want all this information for myself. Ohhh I must have a photo. I turned to the docent/guard/tv viewer there on a Sunday afternoon: can I take photos?

I showed my camera and Mitch and I actively worked at looking and sounding encouraging and harmless. Without any common spoken language. In a flash of time-honored nonverbal entrepreneurial clarity, two satisfied parties parted ways: I was free to photograph whatever I wanted and whoever that man was had 200 tenge more than he had before.

We ewwed and ahhed as if we were watching fireworks. We saw actual artifacts and we saw models of what once was.

And there, not missable, was the "Golden Man". We aren't sure much at all about
him except that this suit is like one (or is the one, or is copied from pictures of one, or...) found
at a burial mound near Almaty.

OK OK I did some research (sat on my tail and Googled)

Now we know what The School of Russian and Asian Studies says about "The Golden Man":The Golden Man has become Kazakhstan’s symbol of strength and independence. This suit of more 4000 intricately decorated and fitted gold pieces was found near Esik, about 70 km outside of Almaty. Its origins are debated. Officially, it is said to be from the 12th century AD but the latest research places it in 5th century BC. The artwork, depicting animals both real and mythological strongly resembles Scythian carvings. There are several replicas of the suit on display in Almaty, including a stone version atop the Monument to Independence in Republic Square, but the original has been deemed too fragile to display and lies in the vaults of The National Bank of Kazakhstan.

Click here to see him on top of a monument in Almaty. (picture is copyrighted and I'm cheap)

Click here for beautiful detail of top with statue.

The name seems to be "Monument to Independence in Republic Square" so far. describes the square and the monument, the square being the site of the December independence riots of 1986, and the monument's architect being Shota Valikhanov.

There is another "Monument to Independence" in Almaty that is a postmodern porcpiney thing and has no winged snow leopards at all.

For bonus points, someone can translate this into English for us. We think it is about The Golden Man. It might not be. But it looked like Information so I had to capture it for myself. Preciousssssssss.

Considering we didn't think we were going to be in Almaty and hadn't done any research except read the Air Astana In-Flight magazine that mentioned the museum, we did pretty well at visiting this museum. You may choose to use better information like Museum of Archeology: 44 Dostyk at Zhambyl. Tel.: 918585, 918632. Open Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00. This museum contains a collection of shards and ceramic artifacts from the 3rd century AD, as well as a life-size replica of the Golden Man, a 5th century BC Sacae warrior found in tombs near Almaty. Ticket prices: 50 tenge (adults), 25 tenge (kids). Call in advance to order an excursion (100 tenge; bring your translator).

Hmm. Says nothing about Sundays now does it.

Ah, yes, so much for the story of Golden Man on the new D.C. statue.

Now, to go find out where one gets a winged snow leopard...

Geek Baby/Geek Mommy/Kaz Movie

2006-10-03T06:02:00.000-06:00

Mitch, who reads blogs, found this link about a new movie about Kaz nomads and history and action.

It sounds great, and the description of the blogger's epic to buy tickets is a perfect hoot. For those of us snapping away, I was glad to see:Plus you find out who all the streets are named after, and who all the people on the statues are. Maybe there will be one less mystery photo in our collection. Maybe :)

The blogsite also gave more Kaz history than I've found in months of trawling. So obviously I printed it out.

Last night, I brought up weather underground to see the weather on Aigerim's birth day . The high on January 24, 2006 in Karaganda was -4F. Someone took care of her. The low was -38F. I thought I was hardy, the day I graduated from college it was -27F ambient (i.e. not counting wind chill. The wind chill numbers sound like science fiction.) Maybe I am "hardy for an American". I think my brother in Minnesota only broke that record in the past few years. Of course, he has also enjoyed shoveling snow off the roof of his house, but that is another story. So basically Nugget was born in more extreme cold than I've ever been in, and for spending 30 years in the Great Plains of the US, that's saying a bit.

Ya know, if we had on three layers of clothes and a hat when the temperature was 40F, what on earth do they look like when the temperature drops another 60 degrees?

And how can you tell what the kid herself looks like? Wow.

So of course I printed out the weather information and stuffed it into the baby book (which is currently a baby box, but at least it exists). And the weather for the rest of the winter. Ew.

I swear my Mom didn't print out web sites for my baby book. I guess we're in a new era.

I am still very geek-validated that someone "googled for the baby's blog". My credentials are bombproof.

At least until technology changes in six months.

My baby has a blog.

I am so proud.

Saturday night, I went out with some friends and the "practice baby", Jack. Jack was amazing, as usual. He put down a whole container of pears and part of the paper table covering. I adore that kid. He was very nice about complimenting me on the new noises I've learned. Then he had a sympathy blowout for my health condition. Told you he is a nice guy. (Hmm, I suppose there is some etiquette about blogging yer friends' kids information on the internet...)

I told his parents Kris and Tari about the iPod-ready stroller I'd seen that day. They were speechless. It's even more appalling because it wasn't at someplace you'd expect like Sharper Image or SnootyBabies.com (may not exist, but should) : it was at plain old Sears.

We're waiting for wireless for our stroller.

I am ashamed of myself.

2006-10-02T12:45:00.000-06:00

Well, my little brain cells work slowly, but this morning while driving to my own doctor's appointment and thinking of things medical, I had a "Doh" moment. And then I felt ashamed.

If you've been around me, you now know that the US Embassy process will take an extra 24 hours in Almaty than it did, say a month ago. The reason is that each child must now be tested for HIV, it takes 24 hours to get the results, and, the only part that causes me discomfort (except for the drawing of Aigerim's blood, of course) is the delay because nothing else can be done on the processing while this 24 hours passes. You now know that I am worried about staying well for yet another 24 hours with Aigerim in a far-off hotel room, and that I have had my lifetime exposure limit of bureaucratic whims.

Friday night we visited our neighborhood religious establishment, the Catamount Bar and Grill, and caught up on all the baby news. Gabbie's baby won't show his face on the ultrasounds and Anthony leaves tomorrow to meet (and pick up!!) his new baby daughter in China.

Anthony spoke of how quickly the US Consulate was going to be able to turn around his daughter's visa application (otherwise he is caught in a week-long Chinese holiday). Hmmm, I wondered. That sounds quite different than the process in Almaty.

This morning it hit me. And I am ashamed. We heard about it in Kazakstan, but stupid me, I didn't put the situation together until this morning.

A horror has taken place in southern Kazakstan: so far 55 or 60 children have been identified as being infected with HIV through bad medical practices. There is uproar but no one even knows how many people were infected. The number could be very high, especially proportionally for a country with only 15 million people. You can Google for yourself but here are some glimpses into the story:

So my newest delay is not just bureaucracy this time. The new step is actually catching and, in our country, triggering treatment for a terrible disease.

I will remove my fat HIV-free foot from my HIV-free mouth and still wish the 24 hours could be run in parallel with some other processing. I am not worried at all about Aigerim's results. But for the sake of all the kids in the country, I realize I can't think of a better way to spend 24 hours.

So just delete all that latest whining from your ears, if'n you would. Thanks.

America, Without Her

2006-09-26T10:49:00.000-06:00

Hi Again

Thanks for all your dear emails and phone calls. It was really fun to know y'all were out there, part of our adventure, via the blog.

Just wanted to email to let you know that now I am back in New Mexico. Marie Aigerim is still in Kazakhstan. We are waiting out the court-mandated waiting period after our OFFICIAL DECREE on friday. After this period passes, folks in Kazakhstan can get her official documents reissued in her newly decreed name, blah blah blah, and after that, then I can go to Almaty and ask the US Embassy there to finish processing my application for her to enter the US as my child and a US citizen. Less than a month before Nugget is here for good!

She is my sunshine and I can't believe she is 12 time zones away. What was I thinking?! She will be watching the doorway during the twice-daily visiting times and we will not be coming through the doorway to get her. That was one of the greatest treats of my life - watching her go from general happiness at being greeted to knowing and recognizing US. Of course, I also got a kick out of kneeling down and waiting for the little speedracer to zoom her walker over, grinning and giggling (both of us, of course) so we could hug and coo and squeal together. No room in the little Santa Fe house for speedracer's walker, but I suspect someone is going to be speedracing without the walker pretty soon. The day we had to get her a snowsuit, we could only find the "bag" kind not the kind with actual individual legs and feet. This will be interesting to see what Little Miss Crawly Zoom will think of that. It also seems like a great idea to keep me from actually losing her during the 7 hour layover in the Frankfurt Airport.

We went 32 hours from arriving at the Almaty airport to arriving at the Albuquerque airport, without leaving airplanes or airports. I should blog most of this I suppose but I can always cut and paste. After not enjoying, but getting quite good at coping with, the boorish borises, we boarded the Lufthansa airbus in Almaty and it flew two or three hours north to the new capitol, Astana. We did not disembark; instead we were instructed to leave the aisles clear and to undo our seatbelts. The pursers and attendants walked around checking ( at 3:30am just so you know) that all seat belts were unfastened on the passengers. With typical Germanic nonalarm, one purser explained "So we can get you out quickly if something happens." The plane was being refueled. Never done that before.

It's another 6 hours or so to Frankfurt. It's as far from the US to Frankfurt as it is from Frankfurt to Kazakhstan. The route goes right north of Moscow (according to the fine blue video screen I enjoyed for the flight).

It's an amazingly long flipping haul. And we'd already had to spend an extra 24 hours in Almaty on top of the usual 17 it takes to catch this flight - 2 hours flying from Karaganda, 15 hours until the flight to Frankfurt leaves Almaty.

So you can imagine there were several reasons I was GLAD to see Denver yesterday. Water and sanitation and health weren't the lowest on my list either. But one reason was clearly the top of my list.

I almost cried with joy coming through Denver immigration yesterday, knowing that next time, she will be with me and when the wheels touch the tarmac, she will be a tiny little brand new US citizen.

And I will get my sunshine into my life again!

Hurry, calendar, hurry!!

Sappy Happy Mommy
Bobi

Administrative trivia

2006-09-22T01:13:00.000-06:00

Aigerim's medical documentation arrived translated today and (of course, nervous mother) matched exactly what Dr. Olga and translator Olga had explained to us on day 2: this is one "active" vigilent "positive" mood girl with "good appetite" and "has interest to toys" Oh doesn't she!

The Air Astana office revised our tickets per our travel agent's reservations in about five minutes - we leave Karaganda KGF for Almaty ALA tomorrow morning.

The Lufthansa tickets must be reprinted at a Lufthansa desk, which we will not reach until Almaty tomorrow. Then we can check if seats have opened up on the next morning (Sunday) flight, otherwise we will reticket for our reservation on Monday morning flight and have an unexpected exploration of a new city for an extra day.

It has been strange to leave Malutka. I can't imagine how it will be for Aigerim. We traded some new baby clothes for her famous purple jumper today, to bring it with us to her new home and keep for when she wants to remember her baby days.

The other new families are our families too in a very special way. Very few people get to watch the miracle of a child and an adult turning into a family, and it happens here in such a relatively short time.

Aigerim, clever bug, knows something is up. Mitch was out sick for both visits yesterday and I was sad that it was my last "regular" day at Malutka with her. She bawled each of the two times I left (though informants say she found something else promptly...)

Clever little one is also strong little one. She stood up in her crib yesterday. This morning, after court, we went right to the Baby House, to visit Aigerim and have a little party with the doctor and the director. It was very very nice. When it was time to return Aigerim, the dear caretakers took her from me and tried to engage her since she was starting to cry. No tears. We've never seen tears yet. Just unhappiness. But Mom was about in tears :)

I didn't dare look back inside, for fear of setting her off again. Mitch looked. He came back grinning: she's in the playpen, watching another baby, and standing up.

That's my girl. Now we reset the timer to 15 days and watch yet another countdown.

What an amazing blessing.

Marie Aigerim has a real mama.

2006-09-22T01:10:00.000-06:00

And I have a daughter.

So said the judge today.

Love to all.
Bobi

Eenie Meenie...

2006-09-20T11:06:00.000-06:00

The kitchen sink has cold water.
The bathroom sink has hot water.
The loo has no water.
Place your bets on the bathtub.

We love 'KalGel Gel Zubnoi'

2006-09-20T10:46:00.000-06:00

When Aigerim gets fussy Bobi puts a little drop of "Kazakh Anbesol" on her finger and rubs it over the baby's gums. Then Aigerim starts trying to eat the anesthetic.

Then Mom makes a funny face because it feels weird having a baby's numb tongue milking your finger.

(Sorry, we didn't know how to phrase that so it didn't sound weird...)
[Added 2006/10/01]

dis organized

2006-09-20T09:16:00.000-06:00

[Updated September 30 to add photos]

Hi all. There are some fun photos but they are on the cameras still.

The Ministry of Education interview apparently went well enough because court has been rescheduled for this Friday. Talk about a quandry. We can leave as soon as court is over but I hate leaving Aigerim.

We've had a good day with her today. Yesterday was good but she was not so well. No one is well. All but one of the Spanish families, I think, have had at least one casualty this week and we are pretty lucky to have skirted the worst so far.

One photo you would see, had I moved it here, is of Aigerim's "neckline" yesterday: three layers of regular clothes. And a hat. For us to go the the neighboring music room and play. All the families are in one playroom now, the sunniest warmest one. The orphanage has had no heat, electricity or water for two days now. Half the city has no water. This is something that was planned but I don't know what. Somehow the caretakers are still making hot formula for the kids.

We also discovered today that Aigerim has been graduated to a new, bigger crib. It was vacated by the little nugget that kept visiting us while Aigerim ate or kept checking out Mitch's watch: he has gone to Astana to be united for good with his family from Spain! So, Aigerim got the bigger (read: taller sided) crib. We are pretty sure it's because someone is not going to keep from standing up for much longer. Go baby!! (Note to self: before returning for Aigerim, lower the crib mattress. All the way.)

I have not paid any fees here yet, nor given any of my papers to Larisa yet, have not seen the written translation of the baby's medical report (so I can ask questions of Dr. Svetlana while we are all still here) yet, and am not sure when it will all happen. I am sure it will happen. I am just not good enough at doing all my own stuff ahead of time so that "the last minute" is available for other people - that's for my own stuff!! Can you hear me hyperventilating? What a drama queen. Just Deal With It.

Packing. Oh boy. I have shopped for souvenirs for nugget which is why yesterday Mitch had a hat with a feather on his head.

Mommy got a little crazy on the shopping. Can you say "overweight charges" for the airplane flight?

Mitch was trying to teach Aigerim the word "auto-didactic". She grinned and blew bubbles at him. Seems right.

Our return flights seem to be also disorganized. We can get to Almaty on Saturday, but not onto the Sunday flight toward ABQ; we can get on the Monday morning flight to ward ABQ but cannot get into Almaty on Sunday. So we will go to Almaty on Saturday, spent 36 hours there, and then go onward. We might be able to get on the Sunday ALA-FRA-DEN-ABQ sequence if something magic happens, but who knows.

So if this trapeze act works, Mitch and I will be back in NM by Monday night. It will be horrid to be without Marie Aigerim, but the earlier court date also means an earlier return date so I will have to keep my eyes on that prize.

Our time at Malutka has been so special. It will be sad to remember their warmth and enthusiasm and dedication and to not see them again. Marie Aigerim will be brought to me in Almaty so I will have no schedule to return to Karaganda.

OK that's what I know and I wouldn't ask anyone to stick by it.

Talk to you later gator
Bobi

Feeding the baby, take two

2006-09-18T09:29:00.000-06:00

Every day the caretakers have given us a bottle of kefir (yogurt) to feed to Aigerim. But only twice have they let Bobi feed the baby her first meal of the day.

The first attempt didn't go too well :) This morning she got another chance, with much better results.

I'm not sure how this is supposed to work. Each baby is expected to eat a bowl containing cream of wheat, porridge, an egg, bread and shaved cheese. That wouldn't be too hard, but the bowl looks like it's about half as big as the baby. How much food will fit into those little bodies? And (we still haven't figured this out) where does it come out?

Somehow, it does work. Today Aigerim even tried to cooperate with Bobi instead of squishing her hands around in the bowl. Still, after a couple of minutes of spooning she just couldn't take in any more food, and it slopped out over her chin.

My best guess, offered freely from a safe distance across the room, was that when the food comes back out, it needs to be thinned out with warm tea. This actually worked a couple of times.

It's amazing all the things a 7-month-old can already do: standing up, making noises which are more articulate than anything I can produce before the first cup of coffee, eating semi-solid food and drinking tea from a cup.

Aigerim couldn't quite finish the bowl. She tried -- she's such a sweet-natured little baby, and she loves sitting with her mama even when porridge is involved. But there was just too much food.

Galina was funny as always. Toward the end she came over and started calling Aigerim "deyavuchka princessa" (girl princess), probably because of her "leisurely" dining style. Then with much repetition and pantomime she predicted that Aigerim would look the same on her first birthday as she did today, with small bits of food in unexpected parts of her body. Then she helped rinse the baby, and we were off to play time.

well

2006-09-18T06:00:00.000-06:00

I don't know how it went. Some of the questions were easy to answer (does anyone in your family need body parts) and some should have been expected (how does your family feel about the child's Asian appearance) and some would have required a team of accountants to answer (how much did you pay and to whom for this adoption).

The folks were quite nice in general. There was a young man, a woman and then behind the boss-desk was someone high up in the Ministry. He asked the hardest questions. Then, as we were done, he spoke and Olga translated:
"He says that you are skinny for an American"

I turned to look at him, and sure enough, he was grinning, had his hands spread wide to indicate size and he repeated, "Amerikanska".

I really don't know how it went.

Ministry of Education Meeting

2006-09-18T05:06:00.000-06:00

(This a quick update from Mitch.)

Bobi has just gone off to her meeting with the Ministry of Education, set for 5 pm. Please keep her in your early morning thoughts!

There are only two significant hurdles left in the adoption process, and today's is the big one. A representative of the Ministry of Education will ask Bobi some hard questions, checking one last time that she's a good prospective mother.

Once that's done, the last hurdle will be the court appearance. As I understand it the person who interviews her today will appear in court as an advocate for Bobi's adoption. That's why today's interview is the big deal.

Needless to say, Bobi has been a bit nervous. But she has her eyes on the outcome; after all of the paperwork and home studies she's done, this afternoon should be a formality.

Despite the jitters I think she looks very composed.

Question

2006-09-17T20:43:00.000-06:00

Do they still sell these wheeled-walkers in the US?

Commenting back at ya

2006-09-17T20:32:00.000-06:00

I love your comments. It is so fun to hear from you. It is so neat! I love the "Computer Internet"! I can't thank you enough - Mom, Kevin and Dee, Suzanne, Meg, Jan, Crystal, Diana, Kris and the strangers who are so familiar! Nope, we haven't quite found a bakery with an English speaker yet. It sounds very nice, Candy and it would be welcome. And Laura - didn't you have a blog? I think you did?

(And thank you Crystal for making me feel less criminal for enlarging the hole in the bottle nipple!)

Kevin and Dee, my brother and sister-in-law, mention Lucy - born in December, and Kris and Tari mention Jack - born in February. So Marie Aigerim has ready playmates and it couldn't be better. I hear Jack is standing up in the crib - ha ha, Mom and Dad! Can you imagine what they will come up with when they have accomplices!

I show Marie Aigerim the photos in the baby book you gave me, Kevin and Dee, and it's not like the content really seems to make an impression at this point, but your daughters and Grandma are in the photos. So Marie Aigerim sees Lucy and Lily and Holly and Grandma Den Hartog every day!

Her dear name, she is Aigerim to us but this might not work well in America. Even Galina calls her "Marie Aigerim" (Have I mentioned how much I respect and adore Galina?!) to help her transition.

Thanks for the comments, I really appreciate and enjoy them. Sorry if I missed anyone - oh, like Pat who gave us a pun (how could we go so long without a pun from you?!) - and hope to hear/speak with/see you all soon.

Bobi

Day Fourteen - Sunday September 17 2006

2006-09-17T20:05:00.000-06:00

Day Fourteen (Sunday, September 17, 2006)

[These photos go with yesterday’s blog but didn’t get transferred between the computers in time.

Did I mention that we “met” Harry Potter?!]

Sundays are the worst days, we parents visiting Malutka say to each other. Why? Because we only get to visit in the mornings. The afternoon is eerily laughter free.

We make the best of it and plan outings for the empty afternoon. But first, let’s show you some of the morning visit!

There are other pictures on Mitch’s still camera and on his video. We laugh and laugh watching the babies in the walkers move so easily. I call to Aigerim across the playroom of Room 4, and someone sooner or later turns around and lights up! Then the toes paddle and the hands go into the air and the “ha ha” hooting noises start and Mommy drops to her knees in laughter with her arms around the little bit of sunshine. We cuddle and laugh and greet each other. While Mitch videotaped this yesterday, we also were visited by other babies in their walkers, making a big happy interested cluster of noise and activity!

We are getting better at baby maintenance. Aigerim was uncomfortable, so cleverly we thought maybe she needed to get a bubble out. Oh yea. On videotape. And my foot. I bet you can’t wait to see videotape :)

And oh boy I knew better but I tried to free the little nugget from the layers of clothes and leave her in one thick sleeper. Like the lightning bolt of God came Galina. Three layers. Stop goofing around with the baby.

That is why her new outfits are on top of her existing outfits: I was not going to dare take off any clothes just to help her get familiar with the clothing I’d bought her for her trip home. I DID dare take off the outer layer of socks, or perhaps she did and I just didn’t dash to put them back on.

Aigerim put up with the new sleeper and the new frilly outfit (yes, I did buy her a frilly pink outfit. One. The frill made her look like Queen Elizabeth or something.) (Elizabeth I, not the current Queen of England, whom I have never seen in a frill, I think.)

You asked for it, you got it – photos of me with Aigerim. The deal is that, not only do I not take pictures of myself with the kiddo, but we tend to do quieter cuddlier activities. Which means no great big lit up grin from the baby. Rolling around on the floor with her is the best way to get her to light up – our little climber.

In the afternoon, we went to the Karaganda province museum. It is packed with bones, prehistory, animals, history, technology, costumes. We found a reference to a “Khaness” whose name was spelled almost the same as Aigerim’s. Hmmm. Our Russian obviously limited us to guessing a lot of stuff but a few things had English titles and we could recognize a lot. Saturday, I asked Olga about some things we wanted to see in the area – the maternity hospital where Aigerim had been, the mines, the churches, all that and she proposed an excursion for next Sunday afternoon. Then I asked about Karlag. The response was a flat “oops”. The museum did not flinch about showing Karlag, the Gulag camp and showed photos of the still-standing administration building and memorials to entire nationalities that we wanted to see. We saw what the photographer saw on arrival in a Nazi concentration camp. We saw the story of the pilot whose statue still tells his story, how he put his plane into the oncoming German tanks after he had run out of ammunition. We saw certificates and photos of shock workers – workers recognized for their extremely high dedication and productivity. We saw space rockets and the Kazakhstan cosmonauts and gold and bronze and iron from 2700 year old burial mounds. We saw a telegram from Stalin congratulating a theatre troupe. We saw goats with faces like nostril-less moose and a very frightening hunting bird, complete with photos of one of its kind taking down a small wolf.

We stopped at the grocery store on the way home to reload. I drank a whole liter of gassy water last night. I feel better, remarkably.
We aren’t sure if this is a logo or a content indicator. Whatever, it sure tastes good.

Day Thirteen - September 16 2006

2006-09-16T20:26:00.000-06:00

Day Thirteen
Saturday, September 16, 2006

First of all, Friday was not a great day for baby. She tried to smile but the tiredness from being sick was too much. So we left the camera in the bag and just held her and walked. She was a sweetheart even when sick.

Between visits to Malutka on Friday, we worked on our tourist shopping. I’d seen nice stamps at the Post Office last Sunday, so we returned Friday during working hours. We got some very nice stamps of Kazakhstani wildlife, sports, music, people, space program for Aigerim. Something bizarre (but harmless and entertaining) happened with a stranger who asked if either of us spoke German. I said, in horrid German, only a little. This apparently means "open the firehose" in some protocol I don't know. His name is Enrico, he is fifty-sixtyish, he lives in Karaganda with his wife, has two sons, one of whom lives in Hamburg, his father was half Italian half Polish (hence "Enrico") his mother was Russa, he studied electro-physics in Tomsk, he and his wife lived in Germany (she doesn't speak German) , they moved to Karaganda for a better climate, he emails someone in German or maybe English, and he found my German a little substandard (THAT'S WHAT "only a little" MEANS) but decided I forgot because I learned it so long ago. Mitch could contribute in Swedish and electro-physical terminology, which was stirred without question into the mix. The stamp seller, another individual, was doing something for us the whole time.

We left, spun, after having had a discussion in pseudolanguage with someone who had explained to us that he had studied Maxwell's equations in Siberia.

That was fun.

If Aigerim was not well, neither of us was feeling all that great either. I am tired of the feeling in my stomach (you are tired of reading it, doubtless) and surprised at how many pharmaceutical products I miss from my house. I have not had this trouble traveling before. Until this trip, ibuprofen, pepto bismol, benadryl and immodium have been the only over-the-counter aids I’ve ever carried, and the immodium has only been pulled out in very rare situations. Dear Mitch coughs. We are fortunate that the apartment is warm, the bath water is hot, and our schedule is pretty simple and allows for a lot of time to recover.

The apartment is really nice. The city hot water (turned on, as you heard, last Monday) not only provides a nice shower, it silently heats the radiators throughout the apartment. If anything, the apartment is too warm when we return home! The updated windows can provide some cooling if we need it: we don’t need it. The cleaning lady comes twice a week and our hello/please/thankyou/goodbye repertoire of Russian is used earnestly. The apartment is quiet and clean and warm and comfortable.

Vladimir, the driver, got tired of our repertoire and added “home?” (Dom) and “good evening” (Dobria vaycha) just to shake it up.

We spend a lot of time in the little kitchen, at the table. We can watch the washing machine, brew up coffee or tea or bouillon, and get something out of the fridge all without moving more than one step any direction. It is convenient.

As far as bouillon, I’m still stocked thanks. The smallest container had 48 blocks of it. Only 42 left as far as I recall.

The washing machine is quite conscientious. It runs for about three hours. Of course, we have little idea what settings we told it.

Our afternoon with Aigerim was again spent indoors. Some of the other children are showing sickness too, just little sniffy colds, but it sure makes them uncomfortable.
Friday night, I wanted to indulge my stomach and got a grilled half chicken with cooked vegetables and hot French fries at “Johnny Walker Pub”.
On our way there, the sun broke through the damp clouds and lit up the Palace of the Coal Miners stunningly.

At Johnny Walker Pub, the waitstaff wear kilts, and bring you the pub menu as well as a sushi menu. The bigscreen tvs played “Patch Adams” silently. We decided that a good actor is one that doesn’t need to have his or her dialog heard to convey what is happening. Robin Williams certainly qualifies. I still cringe over the “Mork” days but we all have things we wish we hadn’t had to do.

For our homies at the Catamount in Santa Fe, we tried the local version of the margarita. The photo is blurry. It sort of suits. The salt is table salt, the garnish is a lemon, and while the menu said Sauza Gold and Sauza Silver, it isn’t clear if either made it into the mix. Something alcoholic did, doubtless, and the greenish liquid had a somewhat familiar sweet and sour taste to it. Here’s to the Catamount.

Saturday went GREAT at Malutka. We walked in to see Miss Great Big Grin who came paddling toward us and put her arms up. Oh yea. What a dear.

Remember the big pink snowsuit bag? We figured it was either going to be child abuse to put her into it, we thought it was so big, or as Mitch called her “checked baggage”: nope! Still a little quiet from being sick, she loved the softness and warmth and HELD STILL in it, loving it. I am no longer embarrassed to take it to the nannies as it will not look like I have zero idea of my own daughter’s size.

We went back into Room 4 after everyone was settled and the nannies weren’t so busy, and asked to take their photos with Aigerim. I call the lady on the left “Kondarush” which is not anything like her name, we know this from the giggles in the background, but my Kazakh stinks: I do hope to get her name properly spelled at least by the time we leave.

The nanny on the right took over and took Marie Aigerim through her paces. Oh my goodness! We got the “operations” manual for that baby!

She is a treat!

We shopped more at lunch, finding a child’s book of Kazakhstan (I have been able to translate ten Russian words – one hour’s work – so far – only about a thousand more to go…) and stopping at Aladdin restaurant for lunch.

Mitch, who does not live in the rich cat-like fantasy world I do, surprised me by stepping into Aladdin, looking around at the geni and lamp and gaudy painted walls and saying “Oh, our friends aren’t here – let’s go”.

What? Oh! I get it. We had already been sighted by the staff. We did not feel up to the purple clouds and the funhouse 1001 Arabian Nights décor. Dinara had told us “good for children”. We saw now what she meant…

We walked back in the direction we had come. We had heard of the pilot statue, and Mitch had found his story. In WWII, this pilot had run out of ammunition when he saw a tank column heading for his troops. The statue pretty eloquently shows his decision and his trajectory. A brave man.

There was a grill on the corner we had passed, and it looked like a place ordinary folks were having an ordinary lunch. No lurid turbaned fantasy creatures looming on the walls. It advertised Efes. It also said “grill bar” in English.

Efes is the brand of beer made at the factory we pass every day on the way to Malutka. In fact, on one side of the road is the Efes Beer factory, on the other, Karaganda Confyet – confections – candy! (We also had found a shop of Karaganda chocolates and got a test box. Oh, those are just fine! )

No English, so we laughed at looked at the Russian menu. Mitch recognizes Myasa as meat, so we sort of at least got onto the main dish pages. The waitress was really kind and helpful. I flipped through the menu book and she returned me to the pages of things proper for lunch meals. We tried “meat Kazak” to be told no, meaning there was none. We looked at some other things and the waitress pointed at an entry and gave it a thumbs up and we ordered two of them. Then what to drink. There was an Efes poster. We pointed. We spent the time waiting for the food translating the details of the dish we had ordered. “Mayonnaise”, “Egg”,”Garlic”, “Onion” – and then it arrived. Wowee it was tasty!

Other folks had metal cafeteria trays, but maybe that goes with what you order. You can see the pretty presentation and the variety of things on the plate. The rice and the meat were delicious and I can’t recall every greeting canned peas so warmly ever in my life.

Malutka afternoon was marked by trying the “new” bottle – a Playtex thing from the States, with the 3-6 month “fast” flow nipple. As if. It took half an hour to down the 4 o’clock bottle, the one we once clocked at 2 minutes. Before I boiled up the nipple last night, I enlarged the hole a little bit (of course it says not to. It also probably says don’t leave your kid in an orphanage.) and we will see how this goes. I am not looking to match the speed of the milk-bong but something in between would work.

We spent a lot of time watching Aigerim, wondering if the kefir was thin enough to even go through the opening of the nipple yesterday. She didn’t complain and kept at it until it was gone.

Yesterday, Olga told me I would have my Ministry of Education interview at 5:00 on Monday afternoon. She prepped me with some questions. I don’t know at what point I started having anxiety attacks about bureaucracy. My heart starts up and then I get my breath and slow it down. Maybe it’s because of my dismal experience with the USCIS.
It’s not so much that I fear the outcome as I fear the ordeal. I will survive. I know this :)

The MoE interview is the big test. It is another step forward. We keep taking steps.

Day Eleven

2006-09-14T21:05:00.000-06:00

Day Eleven (Thursday, September 14 2006)

Day Eleven went well, with new challenges. The weather has turned cold, down to the 40s F in the daytime, and rainy, and the sniffles have come to visit.
Mitch is prepared. Note the surgical mask and big pack of tissues. And the pained look. He is a trooper. I am just drugged.

Marie Aigerim has the sniffles too. The germ is making the rounds with the babies and doubtless the rest of the families will soon have red noses. We all play in one large room – about seven families. It is a tremendously special time. Each family plays with its own baby, but walk and run through the areas and say hello and push a toy through. The rain means that no one can go walk around the grounds. The bigger kids love the ball pit and the indoor swing and slide, and the little kids are riveted by the noisy toys that the bigger kids can use.

Marie Aigerim is a very tolerant, goodnatured baby. Only a few times has she raised an alarm and those have been due to parental botchups that were quickly resolved one way or another. Today she tried to be happy, and managed it almost all the time. The hardest part is when she gets sleepy and we can’t walk outside – the carrier and the rhythm let her relax and fall asleep. In the room with all the families, there is far too much to watch and listen for and not a chance of the sleepy girl falling asleep. We tried the carrier and pacing in the room for a while. The carrier tends to block out some of the stimulation, cocooning her, so it helps her to shut down.

Mitch took a lot of photos and then told me that what he was photographing was the wonky way her legs were sticking out of the carrier.

Nugget drifted a little while, but happily popped up to see who had opened the door to the room, what squeaking toy had just gone by, or the toddler and his mother who had gone by, each with his and her own toy train on the “tracks” made by the patterns in the carpet. I do not know how we are going to keep this level of stimulation for her, where we are going to find other families and children to watch. Probably never at this density again. Everyone is very nice and kind.

Yes, I DO hold my baby! But I can only run my camera when I am not holding my baby, so most of the photos are of Mitch and Marie. Mitch is a gem with her and she lights him up too.

Here is a very unrepresentative photo of Marie. The moment was here and gone before we knew it, her head back up and her little self ready to climb and rock and vocalize some more. But she was hurting a bit and every once in a while her head would go down.

She does seem to give me a bit of preferential treatment, looking to me to see if something new is ok, or looking to see where I am, and so far, comforted when I hold her. She is a dear baby, what a great personality. We play long-distance peek a boo: one adult holds her, the other walks away with great drama. Then the distant one turns, meets Marie Aigerim’s eyes, makes a great show of recognition and play-runs back to her with a big noisy kiss and greeting. She squeaks and jumps and lights up with a grin and some sounds.

We found some more indoor games yesterday. I played “dip” with her, lowering her head and bringing her back up with big eyes and exclamations. Mitch made a bigger game of “dip”, bringing her in from a short distance, down and to me for a noisy kiss and big theatrics. We play with socks, toes, fingers, the tag on the blanket; the most interesting items are of course used tissues, any camera, and Mitch’s eyeglasses.

In addition to sniffles, she has moderate drool. No teeth yet, but she chomps hard on my finger and sometimes likes to have her gums massaged. Poor bug. The Albertsons grocery store teething cloth has been one of her favorites, though until yesterday she didn’t use it much for teething.

On Wednesday, Olga gave me a list of items needed for Aigerim’s trip to Almaty when I return to Kazakhstan to retrieve her. Here is the list just FYI.

List of clothing/gear to provide for her escort to Almaty:
1) 1 warm outfit
2) 1 light outfit
3) bibs(2)
4) diapers (10-12), wipes
5) diaper bag
6) snowsuit
7) socks(2 one light pair one heavy pair)
8) tights(2)
9) hat, scarf
10) body suit (2, longsleeved)
11) t-shirt (2)
12) bottle, toys
13) shoes if snowsuit doesn’t have pockets for feet.

We went shopping at Mickey House, a series of individual countertop shops specializing in baby gear. Quite a girly selection, no?! Mitch was very tolerant of our shopping, and helpful considering he couldn’t look downward without his nose running. He actually felt much better by then and we went to Tsum store to get a new internet card and to print some more photos, this time for the caregivers. I tried several more booths to find a hat that tied under the chin and a scarf that all went with the new pink snowbagsuit. Mitch decided to wait on the internet card because he decided that the booth selling the internet card also did other things and that the person in queue ahead of him was applying for a home loan.

So we went to queue upstairs at “Bravo” the Express Bar, see-the-food-before-you-buy it lunch place. We had the usual tourist chagrin at figuring out whether or not we were actually in line, which line we were in, what we could and could not get in this line once we were at the counter, and so on and so forth. The man behind us was quite taken with us and looked at us when he thought we weren’t looking. We are a curiosity, come to think of it, we haven’t run into any other foreigners in our outings (as far as I know) and people watch because we’re different. No big deal. While waiting, I saw a cup of tea go by that wasn’t made with water – it had been made with milk. I wanted that. Before we could work up the nerve to try “what is that called in Russian?” the customer had taken it away. We are not ready to talk about abstract items in Russian yet, so without the concrete example, what could we do. We knew the word for milk and the word for tea. The man behind us was still interested but didn’t speak up. We looked at all the meat and vegetable and bread items in the first case, the salad (any vegetable dish, basically) and fried chicken and mashed potatoes in the second case and Mitch did a good job of pointing to what we wanted. My big language lessons for yesterday: one (adeen) and two (dvah) and to actually use da and nyet to guide the clerks in our purchasing hunts. I could explain that we wanted one coca cola (easy to order) and one “milk tea”. The clerk looked at me and changed the word order and possibly the word endings and probably asked what size we wanted. A big cup came out. A man ahead of us reached to his order of meat pie, and past the small cup of milk tea next to it to the big cup of milk tea the clerk had just put out. She watched him in surprise, and then looked at us. She turned to her colleague and laughed in disbelief while saying “man” and some other things. We all laughed and shrugged. The other clerk went after the man to bring back the big mug (he did) and take the size that he had ordered.

The milk tea was nice. We saw some men at the next table having a meal of bread and beer – or rather, white-label Karaganda beer bottles – now we know those are nonalcoholic! A lady with a stroller asked us in Russian to please move so she could get through the aisle – there is no presumption that we are English speakers, very little English spoken at all. We read the tea bag tag (we read lots of labels these days), one side in English and one in Russian, and I couldn’t pronounce one of the words. Mitch could. A clerk came to clear our table, and I whipped out the phrase that had finally returned “how do you say this in Russian”? and the busgirl looked like that was a question a baby could answer. Well, a Russian baby probably could.

She said something, and I didn’t get it and so I kept asking her to say the word in Russian and Mitch finally said to me “She is saying it.” Oh. We smiled and bobbed and said thank you and she took the dishes away and said “Bye bye”.

Mitch tried again at the booth for an internet card, and it happened to be just across from the first booth we’ve seen that actually has “souvenirs” according to tourist expectations. Things that actually say “Kazakhstan” and “Karaganda”. I got a wooden plate that says “Karanganda” (Russian spelling) and has the coal miners’ statue painted on it. I like that statue, it sort of represents the heart and heritage of Karaganda, and this is the first item I’ve seen anything other than the postcards with it. This was only the second shop in which we’d seen the postcards of Karaganda as well.

Of the ten-pack or whatever of postcards, at least four are of the shopping area around Tsum. No Lenin statue. Modern buildings like hotels, circus and some vividly painted children’s park.

The souvenir shop had an interesting figurine, the winged panther figure with a man standing atop it, the man wearing a conical hat and carrying an eagle or falcon on his right arm. This is apparently a monument in Almaty. I wish I knew what it was. And what the winged animals are called. We’ve seen winged horned things on the Afghanistan War Monument, and winged big cats on the Kazakhstan 2030 logo and I like winged mammals. (Ok maybe megafauna, not bats.) I could have owned a plaque of this monument for 160USD but it seems like I should at least know what I am buying before I do that.

Speaking of knowing what one is doing while shopping - do you see the snowsuit bag on the back of the chair? It was the smallest size available and we could put two of her in there with room to spare. I would like to get a hat and scarf to go with it, those are about the last of the items needed after yesterday’s shopping blitz. We have another week to get prepared.

Speaking of getting prepared, anytime now I could have the Ministry of Education interview. I am not exactly sure what this involves but apparently the MoE is the final word on adoptions in Kazakhstan so it is quite important.

Decorations and Romance – a tour of the apartment

2006-09-12T20:16:00.000-06:00

The apartment and the stores have pretty, romantic figurines. Our entry way has two artistically lit large cubbies in which little figurines lead a blissful life. My (Mitch doesn’t get any dresser drawers :) ) dressing table has a figurine of a woman enjoying her dressing. The kitchen window has a fish.

The fish may be a decanter. I am not sure. It has a glass plug in the top and it is hollow. Quite decanter like.

In the living room, a column of builtin cubbies uses the space quite nicely. A set of drinking cups in the shape of small fish dance neophytically around their large priest fish the decanter. And a painting of a horse occupies the cubby below.

Elephant pictures somehow go above the bed. Can’t explain the allegory for that one. Could be a leftover.

There are leftovers here, too. English/Spanish language Dawn dishwashing soap. Shampoo for treated hair, in Russian. El testamento and Un pasado de amor (genuine Harlequin) promise something in a large white plantation mansion and a modern man plus woman on their covers, respectively. For instance, page 63 of El testamento offers the phrase “Sexualidad. ?No es eso, tia Betty?” for our subtitling/speculation/complete guessing entertainment.

Some embossing kits for notecards and some wrapping paper suggest the ritual of gift giving and other adoptive families.

I doubt that the fiber optic party toy centerpiece is part of the standard apartment supply.

The tiddly winks game has not drawn us in yet, and being only week one (although gone already!) the horridly insipid kitten face jigsaw puzzle hasn’t gotten a second look from me.

You do realize that the computer plays movies and has jigsaw puzzles on it as well. And as long as the recharger (and the anyDVD license) holds out, I can ignore the fantasy kitten.

I would never throw it out however, and have sighted a place in City Market that sells jigsaw puzzles. Just in case.
With bonus garden gnome.

Around Karaganda

2006-09-12T19:50:00.000-06:00

As you know, we are staying in an apartment like any regular Josef or Josefa.

(F Y'all's I: HOT GUSHING WATER. Sometimes. We ran the clothes washing machine. And actually had showers. Just as Larisa said it would happen!)

And it turns out that Larisa and Olga placed us in a great spot, right down town. So we are having the greatest experience, not just with the baby (though that could not be better and I have never been happier) but even in our explorations and outings. Here are a few of the sights we see.

Karaganda is a coal mining town; this is a monument to the coal miners.

Many streets (downtown at least) are named after people, and the street has a plaque describing the person. We have so much to learn!

To provide some entertainment, the Soviet era built a beautiful theater and called it the Palace of the Coal Miners. Along the top, these statues tell their stories.

Sunny beautiful day for a wedding at the fountain.

These are not Chinese foo dogs: they are griffins. Snow leopards and griffins abound. We like them. Maybe Mitch will carry back a pair of foo griffins like these for me :)

Kazakhstan is the site of Baikonur, the Soviet Cape Kennedy,where the cosmonauts launched into space. This mural adorns an apartment building by a major intersection.

We pass by this church also on our way to the orphanage.

And no tour would be complete without the statue of Lenin.

More later, gators.
Bobi

What's in a Name?

2006-09-11T20:10:00.000-06:00

Oh yes, and as an aside in the hallway on the way out of the baby house yesterday afternoon, Olga brought me some papers to sign: the petition to the court for me to adopt Aigerim Norlanova. I also had to sign swearing that I was in sound health physically and mentally. You may withhold your comments on that until after court, thank you :)

One more paper. You saw her name on the crib plate, last name first, in Cyrillic. Norlanova is her birth family name, Aigerim the name given to her.

The papers, in Russian, also included the petition to change her name legally: to Marie Aigerim Den Hartog.

You bet I signed that too.

One of the families, Ron and Nancy and daughter Adriannna, go to court today to become legally bound together. Our day will come!!

Water World

2006-09-11T19:46:00.001-06:00

The apartment saga revolves around water; hot,cold,lacking.
We have never had hot water from the tap, and never really had water pressure : until yesterday.

And yesterday, after our Dodge City style bucket baths, we had no water. Whatsoever. At all.

We returned from the morning at the baby house; no water. As long as we did not want to cook or bathe, this was ok: we purchase drinking water in 5L jugs. The refrigerator does a great job and a drink of cold clear water is terrific.

We increased our drinking pleasure by spending almost the equivalent of 3 USD on new mugs - the doll sized amenities in the apartment are, in general, just fine but drinking out of dixie-cup sized cups and mugs is getting tedious.

But no water from the taps. Not the kitchen tap, not the bathroom sink tap, not the bathroom tub tap. The toilet kept working but we didn't want to know any details of that.

The water was on in time for "dinner" last night. For the first time, we actually purchased vegetables and boullion and made up a soup of potatoes, onions, garlic and tomatoes. Mitch got out the Langenscheidt's dictionary and found out that, in our explorations of Karaganda's own brand of beer, we'd tried the one with the white label and made a mistake. No alcohol. No more white label Karaganda brand beer. It was like hoppy water and for a while we considered adding it to the stewing soup. The potatoes had purple streaks inside. Considering that there were once 4000 varieties of potato in the world, and that other people seemed to be buying these potatoes en masse, we figure it must be fine. We balanced out the white label stuff with "Khan" vodka, which led us to the word "potentiate" which means to leverage or catalyze something else. We decided, with no actual scientific basis, that the nonalcoholic stuff combines with the vodka to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Greater as in tail-kicking ability. We used the dixie-cup sized cups for the Khan and barely covered the bottom of them. Then we prudently put the Khan back into the refrigerator to molest us no more last night.
The soup stayed hot (we are not at 7000' altitude, obviously) and was good with fresh bread. We hadfound "sharp chili" in the supermarket - red chile with salt crystals in it - and occasionally added that to vary a spoonful.

Sometime during the night, I made a visit to the loo. Ordinary. But then the extraordinary happened. Water GUSHED out of the sink tap. And it was hot.

I considered waking Mitch to have him come see. You cannot imagine what a big event this would be, to have hot running water - we could actually use the shower handle and we could maybe even run the clothes washer. But the temperature settled back to just off-cold and my dilemma at whether to wake Mitch passed.

Now we have high volume brown water with flakes in it. We surmise that the outage yesterday was for switching the water system to winter state, and that the pipes haven't been used in a while and so they need to be cleaned out. This also explains why the inside of the electric kettle is brown, even though I wondered why anyone would be brewing tea inside it. Now I will go discourse with Mitch on whether shampooing my hair with the new water supply will be an improvement or not over my hair's current state. I am joking. We just find things to talk about to fill the time, since we don't understand the tv at all and there is only one internet connection. We have stayed quite clean and happy with the bucket method. It is the clothes washer that I long for.

So I hear Mitch boiling up a kettle and will now go see what is going on there (much like my daughter and her walker-colleagues when they investigate what is going on in their room) and see if he is making more tea or if he is boiling up for washing if we have no hot tap water...this life is not bad at all, I tell you!

More later...
Bobi, Aigerim, Mitch and The Khan

Inside the Orphanage

2006-09-11T19:21:00.000-06:00

Hi again. The days go by slowly and the time with Marie Aigerim goes so fast.
Today’s theme is “Inside the Orphanage” – with pictures at last.

The Orphanage is a very large building; we enter a side entrance, go up a flight of stairs to our area. Our area has a large sunny playroom with carpets and benches and toys, and a large sunny music room with carpets and chairs and a piano. It has an office or two, the office we went into the first day (translator-less) to speak with the doctors about what sort of baby I was looking for (Our low-grade Russian paid off and the people were – and are - soooo kind.)
It also has some baby rooms. Marie Aigerim lives in room 4, a microcosm where bathing, eating, playing, grooming, dressing, changing and sleeping all are performed in a large suite. The largest room is the playroom. Everything but bathing and sleeping happen here. Marie and the other active babies spend their active times off the floor, in walkers – we snuck in yesterday morning so we could show you the scene. It’s hoot.

The four walker-nauts on the floor are swarmed around the changing table and are riveted by the visiting Spanish families. The little boy looking to face us over the walker is Esen (S E N, pretty much how that is pronounced). He’s an alert little gem.
Marie Aigerim was quite busy on task and one of the caretakers took pity on us amateur parents and turned her to get her attention: then her little face lit up.

I don’t know if blogger can take video. Mitch has video of Marie Aigerim scooting right for us, face alight and grinning and babbling and toes paddling the floor. It’s a dear hoot.

We met another one of the Spanish families yesterday, they have the only baby girl of the group Sabina, and spoke with the mother Pilar. She told us that their son, Maksut, who will be three in November, came from Malutka two years ago. She spoke so gratefully and glowingly of Malutka and said she saw no reason to risk it by going anywhere else for his little sister.

The place is clean, kind, bright, sunny. The maintenance man stops and waves up close to Marie Aigerim when he passes us, most nannies give her a funny face and a noise and some fast Baby-Russian that makes her smile. They seem to know that giving the child (ok any human being) recognition as an individual and squirt of happiness is what really makes them different than just a place where babies are fed, washed and changed.

The women who work in Room 4 are dedicated and know what they are doing and are absolutely dear to the children. Here is an angel on earth: Galina. We hope to get video of her interactions with Marie Aigerim, first of all to soothe Marie Aigerim if she gets homesick for this dear woman, second to remind us what great folks they are, thirdly to keep social services from taking me away when I do things that soothe Marie Aigerim with familiarity (the porridge story comes later), and lastly, just because it makes us smile.

After any baby maintenance to be done, we go to the play room or music room and play for a while. Mitch takes Marie Aigerim “flying” or she makes good orangutan noises while rocking back and forth (we laugh, I love that sound and am doing nothing to discourage it), and we “walk” and play and chew and talk and rattle and look at the photo book and climb and roll around. The visit time overlaps with the start of the babies’ nap time, so Marie Aigerim starts to fade. This makes it a great time to go for a walk.

The grounds are good for walking and the promenade is a nice way to see the other children and caretakers and families and the drivers and the delivery man and the grounds cat and all the operations. Lots and lots of laundry. There must be a patron saint of laundry. There should be. Whoever put the high capacity washers in room four (we see them when we peek through the caregivers’ station) did a great thing.
Electric/gas dryers are not here yet. I note folks on the street and what they are wearing, now assessing it for suitability for line drying. Pretty much everything is a form of polyester, probably for the washing and drying. And folding. These women must fold about a billion pieces of clothing and fabric a year. The babies are clean and cared for. We are lucky to be here.
Marie likes to see everything while walking, and now, even though she twists her head around, I don’t try to put her forward-facing in the carrier (Mommy learns, not real fast, but she learns). She looks and listens and loves the walking, and dozes away.
Our visits end too soon. Sometimes when she is awake we put her back in a walker to continue walker-trek and her explorations, or sometimes we hand her to a nanny in the doorway who helps wave bye bye (“paka, paka”), but this time we took her right to her bed.
The sleeping room refuses to be photographed clearly.

Each baby has his or her own bed, and the mattress is flat in the foot-side half and slanted on the head-side half. Marie is happily habituated to her schedule, when it is time for a nap, it is time and she is generally satisfied to lie down and say goodbye. I think she is still too young for separation anxiety, and still too new to us to realize we are anything but exuberant clumsy caretakers (getting her dressed is a bumbling blast for all three of us), so the leave-taking is not too traumatic. It was once when we dawdled too long, and now we do not dawdle: we put her down and once she is settled, we bolt like a bomb has been set.

Only 2 hours and fortyfive minutes before Vladimir comes to drive us to the Orphanage again. I count the minutes.

Love to all,
Bobi

Happiness

2006-09-08T20:14:00.000-06:00

Hi again. Wonderful days with Marie Aigerim. She is so alert and so happy.

Yes it looks like she likes me. You do see the bottle in my hand, don’t you? :) She is such a happy baby, everyone stops and makes her smile and I am so glad.

Yesterday we asked about the babies’ daily routine. Mashed potatoes and two baths and stewed fruit and two naps and I wrote it all down. Dr. Svetlana was glad to tell us.

We’ve seen miracles this week. Too much to process for now. You wouldn’t believe it. Of the children we met on Monday, we knew four by name: Idar, Aigarim, Anastasia and Esen. Anastasia was the first one we met, a beautiful blue eyed girl of three years. Esen is a big strong boy, healthy and dear. Idar has eyes and a mind that captivate, he was one I had the hardest time leaving. But Aigerim it was to be, and I feel I could not be any luckier. Maybe that’s why I’m not writing much. It’s a very happy, special private time.

When we arrived on Monday, we saw one adoptive family in a glimpse down a hallway – we haven’t seen them since, and by Tuesday we had met the other two families at Malutka. Both are American. The “senior” family has been here for almost three weeks, adding the tiny princess Adrianna. She is small and a fighter and they are the perfect parents for her – having already five children, they are veterans! Her skin is so clear it is almost transparent and her eyes are pure blue. The other family arrived the Saturday before we did, and are lighting up the world of their 20 month old daughter, Anya.

On Wednesday, the Spanish families came. Five or six families, a dozen or so people, and the babies went into grateful arms. When we walked into Baby Room 4 to get Aigerim on Thursday morning, Esen looked up at us and GRINNED. The gentle little boy had been comforted when sitting in one’s lap or arms, but had showed no expression. This same little boy looked up and grinned! You could tell something wonderful had happened to him. Sure enough, he had a family. Wow!

Aigerim, by now an old hand at parent-wrangling, also turned in her walker at our voices and grinned. We grinned back: guess which baby had a drawer open and was trying to reach inside. That’s my girl!!

The sight is hilarious in the baby room. When the babies are active, they are placed in the wheeled walkers and they are masters of the device. They crowd themselves up around the feeding table like a school of circular plastic fish or follow the caregivers or come to see what is going on. A sandbag-like pad is laid in the doorway to the anteroom to keep the young drivers inside.

We spend the first part of each visit inside, crawling and playing and making more stupid noises than we ever thought we could make. Pretty much the only way to make Aigerim unhappy is to set her down when she doesn’t want to be set down. Well, ok, I found another way to make her unhappy but we’re not there in the story yet. One of the other families said: have you heard, Idar has a family! You can’t imagine how happy we were, maybe, unless you’d seen the wanting look in his eyes. What a great kid. You can see how many good kids there are, and somehow I got exactly the right one for me. A little bit of yourself goes into each kid you see wanting a family, and so it feels like a little part of you has gone into that new family as well.

The second part of each visit, we try to walk outside. Aigerim, Miss Fussless, found the baby carrier to be just fine. The caregivers load her up with bonnet and another layer of clothing and out we go to do the circuit around the grounds.

Kind of like the old-fashioned promenade, you get to see and be seen. We saw Esen and his family, and then Idar in his new mother’s arms! We saw other families from the new group as well. Happy new parents holding the kids, still stiff and new (the parents) and kissing their heads. We are of course old hands by now :) at least in Malutka days.

On Thursday, I went alone to the orphanage in the afternoon. Aigerim, on only day four of knowing us, doesn’t really know that we are supposed to be there – I think – and so it is a delight for her if we are but perhaps not a disappointment if not. She is also only 7 months old so I suppose words like separation anxiety and not having it yet and stuff could be used. But it’s probably more that she has so many caregivers who come and go and tickle her fancy that we are just two more, albeit clumsier.

And after all, I have the afternoon bottle, so she may have missed Mitch but food was at hand and there you have it.

There are several caregivers in each baby room, but with laundry and food preparation and all, not every one is with the babies all the time. Mealtime, with a dozen babies ready and waiting hungrily for their food, is a speed drill. I fed Aigerim her bottle and there was no doodahing that day. Yet in the time she put her mouth around the nipple and worked it dry, the nanny on the other side of the table had fed two babies - at the same time. She hiked one baby into the crook of her left arm, popped in the bottle, propped it with her left hand; she held her right hand out with a bottle to a baby in a walker and he latched on. They were both done before Aigerim. (I timed Aigerim yesterday. Two minutes flat, start to end on the bottle. There is no goofing around when it comes to food.)

After the bottle, we played indoors. I found out I’d been had. One of the American families kept saying, oh, we saw her (Aigerim, before we arrived) and she was crawling all over the room.

Aigerim? We’d say, oh, no, she’s just learning to crawl, it’s so hard, she rocks and distresses. Maybe, we’d say to ourselves, they meant some other baby.

Nope. I’d been had. Someone has been funning us on the difficulties of crawling. Playing the “pick me up” chorus instead. Without Mitch as a potential picker-upper on the other side of the blanket, off went Aigerim. In fact, all my photos of her since then are video. Excuse me?, I said, proud as punch by her, “what are you doing?” Big grin.

She lolls over into movie goddess pose, then back onto hands and knees, then up to hands and toes. Not sure where hands and toes pose leads one, but she does it. I dared take off both sets of socks that day and saw that the baby actually does have toes. Nice ones. Five on each foot. The babies are kept pretty well bundled up, and if bathtime goes anything like mealtime, there is no doodahing around time to explore one’s toes. So she checked out her toes too. No replacement for Mitch, of course :)

Needed Mitch too to get into the baby carrier. One of the other families buckled me in, and out I went. In back I came to get the bonnet and the extra layer, grateful that I hadn’t been busted for child endangerment in the warm autumn weather. Previously, I’d carried Aigerim facing me, and the little thing looks like she’s going to twist her head off trying to look at what’s going on around us. So, brainwave for mom here, maybe I should try to put her into the carrier facing forward?

The carrier is not a Baby Bjorn, for little babies, it is an Ergo for babies from smallish to large. Facing inward works fine, her legs reach toward either side of my body. Facing outward, the back-now-belly pad is too wide and the baby ends up with her hips splayed about 210 degrees. That can’t be good. So, worming her around, I tried to pull her legs to cross in front of her inside the carrier.

And that’s when I learned what Aigerim sounds like when things are not just morally wrong (as in setting her down) but are WRONG (as in getting all mashed up in the baby carrier.)

We will travel facing inward now. She doesn’t mind twisting her head to look at things and is not mashed up in the carrier.

Walking time is very special. Cleverly, the program schedules parent visits to overlap with nap time, so the babies are tired and sweet and calm. I’m not ready to give up one minute of my time with her, so walking is a good way for us to be together and for her to fall asleep when she needs. It is so sweet to feel her against my chest, and listen to her breathing relax and deepen.

Photos would be nice for this story, no? They are on Mitch’s camera. Perhaps I should ask for them :)

Talk to you later, love to all
Bobi

PS to Jacqui The clothing says "Baby Gap size 3-6 months" -- and has firetrucks on it. The "boy" wardrobe you have already provided is going to be put to good use!

At last

2006-09-06T08:31:00.000-06:00

Oh thank you to all of you who posted comments! It is so great to hear from you! And they are all going into Aigerim's baby book (just as soon as I make one. By the time she is 21 perhaps) for being so kind. (Well handled, Suzanne, for the cat wrangling. And _everyone_ gets suckered by their 'let us outdoors pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease' routine. _everyone_)

Today at last we had a "normal" day - just a little family hanging out together. No medical reports, no choosing, no paperwork, no waiting no nothing. Our first "real" day together.

Our normal routine is, and will be, to visit from 10-12 and from 4-6. The time goes so quickly! The babies nap at noon and at 6 so the ends of our visits are very sleepy and quiet. This morning, we had some tummy time and Aigerim accidently figured out crawling for a few minutes, then went back to some frustrated rocking. But she is quite motivated to reach things - the baby photo book that Uncle Kevin and his family gave her is the best right now. So sometimes she forgets she is frustrated and sprawls out toward the goal line like the best NFL quarterback - if your fingers touch the goal, it's yours! Bling remains compelling. My jewelry, Mitch's watch, the camera all motivate the precious to fight her way forward.
We finally introduced ourselves to her main caregiver today, Galina - she is a dream with the children. She gets in their faces and calls them by name and lights up her eyes and face and grins - and so, at least Aigerim does in return. Galina showed us the baby's breakfasts - porridge and fruit compote and tea and then a bottle of kefir (yoghurt). Don't count on my translations being too exact - this is all done in our version of Russian, which, at best, is horrid.

Our driver, Vladimir, is working on our Russian. We have tried new phrases out on him on each of the visit and he encourages us by bellowing the phrase back at us. It is encouraging that he at least recognizes what we are trying to say!

For lunch, we had no English menu at "Rainbow" restaurant so I just answered "Spasiba" and "Pree-vee-yet" alternately whenever the waitress stopped talking. She finally led us to a table and Mitch recognized "shashlik" (not spelled that way, mind you) -- kebab. We had delicious kebabs, chicken, and shared a liter of Coca Cola. Coca Cola is easy to order.

Things are going very very well. Aigerim is happy, healthy, strong -- and likes us! In the afternoon, we packed her into the baby carrier and went for a walk outside the baby house. The weather was cooler today, nice, or so we thought : when we stopped to get a sun bonnet, like she wore yesterday when we went outside, Galina took the sun bonnet away from the under-nanny who was bringing it, put a second suit onto Aigerim and a thermal cap, tying it snug under her chin - making her laugh the whole way. The stories are right, the nannies keep the babies warm. It is their defense against colds that will run through the whole nursery.

The wind make Aigerim blink and turn her head but she didn't complain. She looks at everything, and every sound interests her. It is gratifying to see.

I see Grandma has moved faster than the internet - yes, Aigerim's first name is going to be Marie, just like Grandma! The names sound really nice together. We call her Aigerim, though sometimes it comes out aberdeen or eigenburg or something not quite right yet. Aigerim is not an easy name for us but it is her name and she recognizes it and we will go with that as long as she wants. I figure the kid's already got a tough last name, why bother to simplify her middle name? Her Grandmother's name is just as important to her heritage and I am tickled that Grandma said it was alright to name the baby after her.

The internet was pokey earlier tonight so I thought I wouldn't get to post - and so I didn't transfer the photos from my computer to Mitch's. Mitch's computer is hooked up to our 56k (true) digital internet connection. The apartment has internet and no hot water.

So tomorrow I will have to transfer/prepare photos to tell you about our "regular" days. It is so nice to not be waiting anymore, to be doing, to just being with Aigerim. She is a joy and she is a tough one and I am very very lucky.

Again, thanks a thousand times for your posts - or, as my limited Russian goes, Spasiba a thousand times. It is great to hear from you. AOL is not serving my mail tonight, same as last night, so I am not ignoring anyone, just not able to read.

More photos tomorrow, and an update on how to bathe with a bucket and kettle (but probably not many photos of that, I think :) )

Love ya all
Bobi

Done waiting?

2006-09-05T09:24:00.000-06:00

Well, big news first: - here she is. The little precious is Aigerim (pronounced “eye ger-eem”). We met her yesterday and she was pretty insistent about meeting us:

. The babies are wonderfully cared for and the caregivers are the best. Aigerim “let” me meet the other babies but wasn’t going to let go of one of us - except to go to the other one of us. She was pretty insistent.

She makes eye contact and laughs and smiles and has had lots of practice. Aigerim’s pediatrician, Dr. Svetlana, and all the caregivers make her laugh and giggle every time they pass her by.

When we returned to the Baby House for our second visit, destiny became pretty clear that the little firecracker and I are meant for each other. Her particulars? She pretty much pincer-gripped the “Denver Development Assessment” and rolled away with it, explaining it to us the whole way and making sure we listened. She’s not quite crawling, though she could make a big fat liar out of me in the next few hours. She rocks back and forth with fiery determination, frustrated. Then one knee leaves the ground and moves forward, then the other. But not deliberately yet, it seems. So I stand a little chance of getting acclimated before she’s mobile.

Aigerim’s name is Kazak. She was born on January 24, this year. She enjoys jewelry and hair and a dozen normal things that it is a privilege to take for granted. We are getting to know each other. We will have more to report on our social and cultural and housing adventures but our priority is Aigerim and our new relationships. And that is going very well!

Night before the launch

2006-08-31T22:17:00.000-06:00

Whirlwind of a week. Airplane tickets, doctor's interviews, fees, financials, fedexes, clothes, laundry, cat care, cat worry, transport to the airport, transport to the site where we pick up the transport to the airport, mowing the weeds (it _rained_, the nerve), organize organize organize. Put everything into a pile then onto a list. Move everything from the first pile into other piles. Add some more stuff. Remove some more stuff. Wonder what stuff you actually should be taking.

Wonder what exactly does 20kg weigh. The final leg of our trip is on Air Astana, between Almaty and Karaganda and the checked baggage weight limit is 20kg per passenger. Hoping for a loophole, we checked on the limits for carry on. 8kg. Obviously someone saw the opportunity before.

Mitch ditched the travel iron and one of the computers he needed for his work. The primary one remains. It is in his checked luggage. I think he doesn't want to see it again, perhaps. He likes his work actually.

Thanks to everyone for the phone calls today. More phone calls in one day than in many months. It was great to hear from my mother, my Aunt Ann, my cousin Greg, my former coworker (and father for a fourth time, his 21-day old son!) Christos, Jacqui and my boss and my coworker.

Well my coworker was actually asking about work, as was my boss. That could be going more smoothly. Somehow I really did have to pack today instead of work. Sorry, Russ, about that crappy code I gave you. What do you mean, you want numbers to add up? Oh. I would love to do something about that.

It looks like travel restrictions are the same as two weeks ago for my last trip - just no liquids on the plane. I would like a bottle of water to tell the truth on a transatlantic flight, but it could be worse: folks on the Belgian flights are still bringing their cabin materials aboard in clear baggies.

Chris, and Don, and Larisa and Lola from Reaching Out have been scampering to put this trip (and adoption) together. Larisa, I will bring you those papers Chris told me to bring. Chris, I am almost positive I can remember those instructions for a little while longer. Though it might not be guaranteed soon.

OK thanks again to everyone who is wishing us well and who is helping us along our way. We bounce through a couple of airports and hotels before visiting the baby house on Monday and landing in our apartment in Karaganda on monday night. The internet could be waiting for us there to blog. I hope your blog visits are rewarded with something.

Best wishes, and signing off from the US
Bobi

The Plan (as of this moment)

2006-08-30T09:07:00.000-06:00

On Friday, we leave ABQ and fly to Chicago (3 hours) then Frankfurt (8 hours). Wanting to look and smell and think my finest (or at least not as badly as possible) when I meet the babies, we will overnight in Frankfurt to recover and start changing time zones. On Sunday, we fly another 6 hours to Almaty, Kazakhstan. We arrive at midnight and do something until the flight to Karaganda leaves at 7:55 a.m.

Karaganda time is about 12 hours ahead of Santa Fe (Mountain) time. So while you sleep next Sunday night, I will be meeting the babies (as if this plan will go on any schedule.) It's possible that when you wake on Monday, we will have updated the blog with the day's report. Or that we have just gone to the apartment and passed out/freaked out. The very idea of "selecting" a child is preposterous.

On the up side, any choice will be the right one. This is the time to take your hands off the wheel and let destiny and fate and faith take over. Fate is sometimes confusing, but never wrong.

Most programs, some clerk somewhere takes a piece of paper of the baby paper stack and a piece of paper off the prospective parent paper stack and voila, Family! And that method seems to work too. So there is not much to sweat.

But this IS a dang lot like having the best Christmas present ever underneath your fingers and not being able to open it yet. What is in there? WHO ARE YOU [sing]?!!!

So by the time you awake on Tuesday, here in America, there might just be a name and a birth date and -- oh if the world were to spin just right - a photo on the blog.

Or not.

The bonding-period-clock starts ticking then. By law, I have to see the baby for 21 days or so before I can go to court and swear to the judge that I intend to raise this child exactly as if it were my own biological child, and that, in addition, I intend to raise it safely and lovingly and healthily. Bio parents aren't necessarily safe, loving and healthy, how babies need adoptive parents in the first place.

I should go work/pack/prepare something now. But now you know as much as I can crystal-ball for the logistics of the next week. Your crystal-ball results may vary.

Introducing the 2006 Den Hartog Baby Team #1

2006-08-30T08:55:00.000-06:00

On the left, with a 30" waist and a 34" inseam, Mitch Chapman! (crowd roars) On the right, wearing the blue jersey, Suzanne Sloan! (fans scream). In the middle, dazed Mother-to-be!!

Mitch is videographer, external/backup memory/brain, luggage finder and general hero for the first trip. Suzanne, while staying in the comfort of her own home, must face two irked cats for a month.

I am so grateful for these friends.

Launch Day Minus Two (Or, Babies are Scarier than SARS)

2006-08-30T08:01:00.000-06:00

Why is it that five minutes in a meeting can be excruciating, and yet yesterday the minutes just fell off the clock every time I turned around?

Things are sort-of ready. We get on the shuttle to the ABQ airport in 49 hours (note to self: actually arrange said shuttle.) and off we go. I have cash, my toothbrush, a basket of gifts, a pile of documents and Cipro. It's funny that things on paper can be worth so much more than paper itself. It's just ink and paper, technically.

Speaking of Cipro reminds me of a former boss, Terry. He carried Cipro in his everyday briefcase. And it wasn't for the flu. We had good work, analyzing reports on chemical compounds to see what was likely to be active against various conditions and diseases. And we studied HIV resistance by drug and genome. So Cipro for him seemed normal. I thought it was funny.

What ARE you going on about, Bobi, you could ask? Well, that study was going on exactly at the time I was preparing for an off-the-beaten-path trip. It would have been my third visit to China. Between working on genomic virus data and having some experience in China, the news was not adding up. I am no prude about some things - I was in the air to China in 1999 when the US State Department travel warning was lifted (Belgrade bombing of the Chinese Embassy). My friend Meg, who is part of Den Hartog Baby 2006 Team #2, was working in China during those riots. I visited her and had a great time.

But viruses, and new ones, are a whole different matter. And five days before another friend and I were to leave for the Three Gorges trip, I pushed the big red emergency stop button on the trip. I actually was much more diplomatic about it and found a really nice alternative - Melbourne, Australia - nice, nice! We'd already arranged time off of work. Current events also meant that airlines were scrambling to refund/reroute passengers without additional charge. One of those events was war in the Middle East. But that was not what had waved me off of southeast China.

Later that same day I called off the trip, Saturday March 29, 2003, Dr. Carlo Urbani of the WHO passed away. I've never been so validated about a decision in my life. Dr. Urbani died of a virus that was sequenced in a worldwide scientific community effort, the likes of which had never been seen before - and would be dwarfed should bird flu jump to humans or another aerosol influenza rage again. He had leapt into action, identifying, isolating and treating patients and it had cost him his life. You can go to the NIH genome libraries online and look at the series of alphabet letters that made up the genome of the SARS strain that killed him.

As someone once told me about the Eiger, you don't want a feature there named for you. Similarly, having a SARS strain named after you also means epitaph. You can tell Dr. Urbani is one of my heroes. And what it takes to make me not travel :)

So, now you know a) I am a geek b) I should know how to pack a suitcase.

b) is so proving to be not true.

Thermometers and masks (use HEPA not surgical) are an easy packing list of preparation: baby bottles and toys and caretaker gifts are another. Guess which one scares me :)

The baby thermometer REALLY scares me :) (I suppose I could imagine how the baby feels.)

I am too scared to think about the actual baby. One week from today and this little undefined entity will be exactly defined in the form of one tiny little human being with exact eyes and ears and toes. And permanent. So close to knowing, but so unknown. Off to hyperventilate now.

Oh wow!

2006-08-19T11:38:00.000-06:00

Did you ever ride a roller coaster? The old classic kind where the first long seconds are spent chugging skyward, really slowly? You can't tell when you're going to reach the dropoff?

Then you feel the car start leveling and then start tipping forward?

And you get that delicious safe terror from knowing something huge and fast is going to happen, and that you can't turn back?

I don't think roller coasters would be half as much fun if it weren't for that moment of realization and of no escape.

I of course have no interest whatsoever in escaping. But I can tell you that the car is starting to level off and the dropoff is getting near.

The visas are in the passports and the passports are in the lockbox.
The BCIS (INS) fingerprint clearance was renewed last week and the I-171H is in the lockbox.
The flights between Albuquerque and Almaty are booked, the overnight hotel in Frankfurt is paid, and the tickets are winging their way to me via FedEx.
The catsitter has come and gone, knowing which fish and cat members of the household get fishfood (all but the black cat) and which members get thawed frozen peas (all but the Siamese cat) and shaking her head.
The neighbor is on the alert for unneighborly things.
My travel companion is on top of everything.
My employer is worried.

The mail is not yet stopped. The employer is not yet soothed. The bags are not yet packed. My will is not yet rewritten.

But I'm going.

I'm going to be presented to the babies of the Malutka Baby House in Karaganda, Kazakhstan on September 4th. Through the miracle of adoption and the grace of about a thousand social workers, notaries, public officials, and private sector guides, twentyfour hours later two humans will have gone from being absolute strangers to being lifers together.

We'll still be strangers, of course :)

God gets alot of thanks, too, for bringing this about. I just have had to pay fewer fees and stand in fewer lines and get fewer ornate and translated pieces of paper for Her office.

The placement agency thinks they can arrange Internet connectivity in the Karaganda apartment they have rented for me. So Mitch and I can blog from the comfort of our own temporary home. We expect to be there for three weeks. Nothing is guaranteed.

I have expectations, I know, hopes and beliefs, and these can be my worst downfall. But how do you do anything without some kind of expectation guiding your decisions and actions? If you step into the kitchen, at some point you should expect that you are making a cake or grilling a steak. So I think I am being reasonable when I expect to become the parent of a healthy child under one year of age.

I have reasonable, I think, expectations of what constitutes "healthy". A little underweight, a little understimulated, a little short of what we consider standard medical care. Nothing that can't be made up though. Nothing that will stand out still in ten years.

Young, too. Under a year. Still ready to bounce back, to relearn how to eat, be dressed, be diapered, be with an adult who is not just a professional caretaker.

That's what I expect. But I know better. I know that all I can say is that is what I am hoping for.

Anything can happen. I know this. If I were alone with any child on a desert island, I would be the greatest mom to that child. It's when we start comparing them to other children, other families, ourselves to other parents that the anxiety comes in.

So me and the mirror (sic) are having to work this one out.

I am going to be the luckiest and the most blessed of mothers (Sorry Mary, but I think it's me). No matter what.

Kaz News: Program to improve child welfare

2006-07-30T08:46:00.000-06:00

I am not sure what or who the "specialists" are - are they the directors of orphanages and the nannies and the administrators? At any rate, more attention is usually better By the year of 2008 it is supposed to increase staff of child welfare agencies. At present Kazakhstan numbers only 178 specialists.

Kaz News: Computer Science Jobs...hmmm

2006-07-30T08:39:00.000-06:00

The Kazakhstani government announced a program designed to bring computer competence to more Kazakhstanis. One of us owns a Ph.D. in Computer Science and speaks just about zero Russian. ("Koshka") ("Female cat"). Oh, and might need a job in a few years. Hmm. Exciting.

Kazakhstan is an exciting country to watch in general right now. It has a very strong leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has a strong vision of Kazakhstan's future and has the power to drive it there. He, and his country, are doing an admirable job of walking the fine line between internationalization and strengthening the Kazakh culture and standard of living.

It would be rewarding to be part of something with such enthusiasm.

Kaz News: Old Problem, Still Not Gone

2006-07-30T08:33:00.000-06:00

A UK article on the continuing human devastation caused by nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk. The separation from the Soviet Union also ended any pension or recompensation programs for the victims of the Soviet-era exposures. The genetic effects continue to be seen in newborns.

Kaz News: Archaeological Sites

2006-07-30T08:19:00.000-06:00

Alot of Kazakh history is not recorded. Having a nomadic heritage, few permanent buildings remain to provide a historical record. There are no ancient cities like those built in the Silk Road countries to the south and west. There are, however, ancient tombs and ancient mines.that can tell about long-ago Kazakhs.

Where is the LOI?

2006-07-30T08:14:00.000-06:00

The Letter of Invitation has not yet surfaced. This piece of documentation gets telexed from Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, to the Kazakstani embassy in D.C. It gives them permission to give me a business visa rather than a tourist visa. Without it I can not get a visa or set dates for travel.

But the tentative plans are still to be in Karaganda on September 3. It seems so far away, and yet the calendar is completely booked between now and then.

THE phone call

2006-07-18T14:32:00.000-06:00

Came today. You know what phone call that is. _THE_ phone call.
OH MY GOSH, OH MY GOSH, OH MY GOSH!!!

September 3, I am to be ready to be presented to the babies for inspection. Oh my goodness!! What a day!!!!

Bless that hard-working stork. He has fought his way out of yet-another "In" Box.

Diary of a July adoption trip

2006-07-15T14:40:00.000-06:00

The Sinclairs are my agency's newest family, bringing baby Tristan to the U.S. just last week. I have tried to learn everything I can from their blogs. And I wish I could write like they do!

The Karaganda Baby House

2006-07-12T11:20:00.000-06:00

The city of Karaganda is where my baby was born and currently lives in a Baby House attached to the Maternity Hospital.

The following links show weblogs and photos of the babyhouse. Not all of the children in the Baby House are available for adoption. Sometimes they are staying temporarily and still have contact with their families. All of them must be placed on a register for six months before they can be internationally adopted. During that six months, friends, family and neighbors can come for the baby.

Photos

Diaries

This woman,Mikel, traveled to a Karaganda orphanage in March of 2005. She stayed for six weeks and then brought her beautiful new son home. I wish I could write like she has. Click on the "My Trip" button for the diary of the trip to see a first-hand account of the process.

C-Attica / Ceniza's Life Goes Bad

2006-06-28T11:22:00.000-06:00

"And for your birthday, I'll bring a cake with a file hidden inside"

Same cats that go over an 8' concrete wall to get to the neighbors' dogs, birds, yards, cats, plants, children...

Moo's Life Goes Bad

2006-06-28T10:59:00.000-06:00

Meet some family members. Here are Grandma-to-be (and Baby-Usurpee-to-be) in the nursery.

What baby?

2006-06-28T10:57:00.000-06:00

Intro to Kazakhstan

2006-06-15T08:34:00.000-06:00

Kazakhstan was a mostly-nomadic country until its next-door neighbor Russia came calling about 200 years ago. The country changed drastically in the 20th century as it became the USSR's chosen location for nuclear testing, for space launches, and for hundreds of thousands of political prisoners sent to work in the coal mines of the Soviet Gulag.
It has been an independent country since 1993.

The population numbers 15 million.
It is the 9th largest country in the world.
Ethnically, the population is about half Kazakh and a third Russian.
Religious loyalties lie fairly evenly split between Sunni Islam and Russian Orthodox Christianity.
It has been independent from the USSR since December 16, 1991.
It shares borders with Russia, China, Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan and Tukmenistan.
It has great reserves of oil and iron.
Nearly half of its exports go to its neighbors and trading partners, China and Russia.

It might be inauspicious to start a baby book by quoting the CIA, I suppose. But check out their World Factbook - here, specifically for Kazakhstan: what the CIA says about Kazakhstan.

More country information is available from the Kazakh Embassy in the US

And a daily feed of Kazakhstan news in English can be obtained from KazInform

Den Hartog "Stork"?

2006-06-14T07:55:00.000-06:00

We tell kids, these days, the biological truth about where babies come from. And, biologically speaking, it is accurate. But not all our kids come to us via our own bodies. And so we need a different story for describing the non-biological process that makes a small person into a child of a family, and a grown ups into parents.

For an easily recognizable metaphor, I like revisiting the stork story. I started thinking one day, while waiting inside an airplane. I was just glad to be _probably_ going where I meant to go, and _probably_ getting there when I expected to get there, and _probably_ going to have all the luggage I originally gave the airline.

Because, as all travelers know (or anyone who even visits a grocery store), things don't always go as expected. One spring, in my monthly flights to Lincoln, Nebraska, storm conditions forced the airplane to land 50 miles east, in Omaha instead.

After this happened two months in a row, I decided to save $150 in airfare and just deliberately buy myself a ticket to Omaha the next time. After all, it seemed like I was going to have to drive to Lincoln from Omaha no matter what my ticket said.

On that flight, the plane was diverted to Des Moines.

So the best-laid plans of mice and men and all the rest of us don't always go as planned. And I figured what if a story-book stork, while delivering its mythical cargo, got caught in the same conditions. Where would it land and what would happen to the baby or babies in the bundle? What kind of story would this make? What if it got caught in a snowstorm, or the knot on the bundle came loose and it had to land before it was at its intended destination?

And I decided that that is as good an analogy as I can get, to why babies are born to people who can't or won't be parents, and why parents sometimes don't produce their own children biologically. Those of you who insist on the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth are welcome to come up with a story that equally demonstrates how innocent the child is of the whole event, and is equally swallowable. (or storkable. I guess)

So in the summer of 2004, I decided that yes I did want a child and that that child was somewhere out in the world and that I needed to go find him or her.

I decided it was time for me to go see where our stork had landed.