10/2/04-The long night ahead...

From Bill's Perspective:

It's night-time and MJ's asleep. Anyone who knows me would have to know I would have a hard time sleeping on this night. I mean, if all the little stresses in life and work have kept me awake in the past, why shouldn't the biggest day of my life. Tomorrow we go to the orphanage for the first time. Tomorrow begins the part I've dreaded the most about this process -- the choosing. As most of you are aware, one of the differences with Kazakhstan is that you come here and choose the child or children you are to adopt. There are some aspects of this that are appealing. Since we don’t get to go through the stages of pregnancy and birth, this will enable us to see if we truly connect with our children. The problem is that we have to do this in a room (or rooms) full of children.

We went to dinner with 3 other couples tonight. Two came over on our flight and go with us tomorrow. The other couple came on Tuesday and today made their choice. They were very relieved. They said the first half day was very chaotic and they went through all the rooms, sat with the children, took pictures and notes. After that, they were able to narrow it down to five children that they spent more time with. Then I think they were able to narrow it down to one. Tomorrow they get to go to the orphanage to visit their son. Listening to them helps me know that it does work out, but it doesn't make feel any easier about tomorrow. I tend to connect with children. I'm a big baby flirt. How will I get past that and be able to choose among all of them? I guess that is the big question. I will have to wait and see how it goes.

With all this "dread", let me also say that I am charged with a great sense of excitement. Tomorrow I go to meet my children. I may not know exactly who they are at the start, but in the end, I will know. This is day I've longed for. A few years ago, I gave up on this ever happening. Then MJ walked into my life and doors started to open. I'm ready to walk through this one.

Though we were really hoping to go to the orphanage today and get things started, it may have been good that we waited. Today was an acclimation day. I spent a part of it sleeping. At different parts of the day, I just found myself falling asleep, still trying to recover from the long trip. I made my first trip to a Kazakstani Supermarket. I think things have changed quickly over the years. We've read all the websites and the lists people made about what you can get and not. Let me say, they pretty much have everything we have at home. Of course, most of it is in a language I don't believe I will ever comprehend, but they do have it. I bought some essentials -- water, bread, juice and some non-essentials -- beer, and brought it back to our little home in the hotel.

As I said, we had dinner with some other couples here on our floor. (I believe the fourth floor is in all the tourist brochures as "Adoption Central".) We went to a nice place called the Johnny Walker Pub. I know I will probably used the word "surreal" many times in this adventure, but nothing beats being served Fish and Chips in Karaganda, Kazakhstan by a waiter in full Scottish kilt who doesn't speak a word of English. The food was decent. MJ got a pizza. (So much for our fears of never eating pizza again. We've now had it two days in a row.) I think it helped to relieve some of our stress to spend the night with three other couples who are going through some of the same things. After dinner, we came back to the room for another video -- tonight's selection was Uptown Girls -- then off to bed. I read for a while and thought I would fall asleep. As I said at the start, that was pretty ambitious of me. I think I sit here, play a little Spider, and try to sleep in a little bit. Not having an internet connection bars me from my usually late night haunt of browsing the web.