Getting There

Our last couple of days have gone like this:

11:55pm
Land in Almaty. I immediately notice how “Soviet” this country is. All of the airport security people wear fantastic olive green, military-looking uniforms with big hats and severe looks. The women all seem to work in five-inch heels, and pretty much everyone is beautiful.

1:30am
Check into hotel. You would never know this was a hotel from the outside. It is a non-descript building that is mainly a beauty salon that runs a hotel service on the side. The room is huge but everything is a bit old. Almaty is full of buildings that must have been built in the 1960’s. They are very much like the housing tenements built in Chicago –large, grey, concrete. Everything seems concrete. [And the air smells sharp and gritty, a result of industrial pollution, I guess. -- Mee]

10:00am
[We checked into the hotel last night with less than an inch of water left in our remaining water bottle. Woke up this morning dehydrated and desperate. At about 9 o’clock, we get desperate enough to drink a bit of tap water. We pray that we haven’t ingested any parasites or bacteria too foreign for our systems to handle.] Meet with agency at main office in Almaty. The people here are nice and professional. It’s good because Mee and I need some sense of security and normalcy. I think we are fine with the “be a leaf in the stream” approach as long as we can see that someone is controlling the stream. Someone is.

12:30pm
Eat pizza at local mall. This is our fist experience being left alone in Kaz, it is also our first experience with Tenge (the local currency). A bit scary at first, we don’t know if we are paying too much for things. [Not everyone is beautiful, but most people here do look pretty sharp. The women in Kazakhstan totally dress to kill with skin-tight pants and stiletto boots and the men either look like models or KGB agents from a James Bond movie.]

1:00pm
Go back to airport to board a 30-year old jet to Kokshetau [only 30?]. This was pretty neat for about 30 minutes. When the novelty wore off, it was just extremely hot at my feet, cold at my shoulders and impossible to find a position to sleep. [We were both experiencing crushing exhaustion by this point.] That pretty much describes the next four hours of the flight. Good cookies though!

6:00pm
Land in Kokshetau and head straight to the Department of Education to meet with someone intimidating. [Zac and I were met at the airport by our driver, Nursultan, and interpreter, Marina. Marina is an impressively capable, no-nonsense woman who only needed about 10 minutes to greet us, hustle our bags and tired selves into the car, collect and cluck over the paperwork sent by the agency in Almaty, and then briskly scold someone on the other end of her cell phone – at least it sounded like scolding to my ears. She could have been reciting a Russian love poem for all I know, Soviet style. Anyway, I really appreciated a take-charge woman at this point, especially at the meeting with the Department of Education man. When he kept leveling assessing looks at us, I got so nervous I almost cried. Or maybe it was because I was so freaking tired.]

7:00pm
Drop luggage off at cottage that will be our home for next four weeks (it’s nice)

7:15pm
Leave for baby house in Shu-shinks (how it sounds, not spelled) [Sweetie, baby -- Tchuchinsk, pronounced SHOO-chinsk.]

9:00pm
After a one-hour drive in the pitch dark, we arrive at the baby house and wait what feels like forever for a guy to walk down the drive and unlock the gate. [Apparently, they have to wake the baby for us. Because we have to get in a certain number of visits before we can apply for a court date and in order to meet our four-week schedule, we have to start our visits tonight. So yeah, WAKE UP THE BABY! What a grand beginning for her.]

9:30pm
Meet our baby girl. OK, so this is the part that is the reason for the trip. It was amazing and very scary. I didn’t know what to expect. Here is this little person who is going to be my daughter, but she doesn’t know that. She doesn’t really care. She has people who take care of her everyday; she doesn’t really need us interfering. On top of that, they had to wake her up to visit with us. I, for one, never like to be woken up for company. I figure they can just get along until I am ready. Anyway, she seemed to warm up to us after a bit of time. She especially took to Mee, she even let Mee hold her which was pretty neat. [Chloe wasn’t sure about us, but she sure was curious. She let me sit beside her while Zac crouched in front of her. And when he went to rummage in our bag, she’d lean forward to keep him in her sight. Smart girl.]

10:00pm
Just when little Chloe starts to not mind us, it is time for her to go to bed and we must head back to Kokshetau and the cottage.

11:00pm
Get a flat tire about 45 minutes away from cottage. The driver had no problem changing the tire in the complete darkness and approximately -30 degree wind chill. I didn’t want to be a schmuck and sit in the car while he changed the tire, so I stood beside him in the freezing cold out on the Kazak tundra. It was a bitter reminder that we are indeed in a very different place. Different place and all, I didn’t want to look like a schmuck. [I didn’t mind at all.]

1:30am
Sleep.