11/16/04-Day 1 of the Journey Home

informed, “Bolat got you an apartment, like you asked.” Now, either there is a complete lack of communication between the folks in Karaganda and the folks in Almaty or the folks down here just do whatever they want. I will let my readers make their own judgment on which is true. I then asked if he at least got us cribs the answer to which was in the negative. At this point, the stress in my head was pushed aside by a slow simmering anger.

We arrived at our apartment building, which had a little less “scary” look to it than our previous experiences. After walking up the stairs to the third floor (see above discussion of my only two concerns), we entered into our apartment. The apartment is nice. It is not as large as the one we had in Karaganda, but it is a step up in quality. Anyway, I asked Bolat’s father more about the cribs and he said we would just have to construct something using chairs. He also said that the hotels don’t have cribs either, which is not what we were told. We dropped the discussion and he left, letting us know that Bolat would be by later.

Let me take a moment to rant about the cribs. These kids are 10 and 11 months old. They crawl everywhere, especially Jack who gets into everything. They have spent their very short lives learning that when they go into a crib, it is time to sleep. Yes, sometimes they get angry at us and let us know they are not ready to sleep, but they understand what the crib means. Now, we are being asked to deal with them for 3 days with no way of signaling to them it is time to sleep. I have always been prepared on this trip to deal with conditions below what I am used to. Gma and I have accepted and adapted to the lack of modern conveniences like a washing machine, bathing in water with the stench of sulfur, shopping for food in an unfamiliar market without English and dealing with the isolation of being far from home. However, I never thought we would have to force these kids to make the same adaptation. It has been baffling and shocking to me that this program does not have arrangements to provide cribs for this stage of the journey. Maybe other families have accepted this as “part of the experience”, but I don’t find it acceptable. I just don’t think it would be hard to be prepared to provide this. I mean, it is an adoption program – you know – usually of toddlers. I mean, it’s not like we called the night before and said, “Hey, we’re coming to Almaty tomorrow, can you get us somewhere to sleep.” This trip has been scheduled for two months. Well, enough of my rant – back to our story.

So, where were we? Yes, in the apartment waiting for Bolat to arrive. Well, Gma, ever the resourceful grandmother and even more the MVP of the trip, looked around and pondered alternative sleeping arrangements for the kids. The apartment has four rooms – a “master” bedroom, living room, kitchen, and spare bedroom. She looked in the spare bedroom and realized it was, for the most part, baby-proof. So, her first idea was that we could put comforters on the floor and shut the door. They may not go to sleep, but at least they couldn’t get into things. Later, Gma refined her idea and realized we could build a “crib fort” using chairs, the couch in the room and one wall. Then we could lay the kids inside the fort when it was time for bed. You will find pictures of the “crib fort” in the pictures page.

During the afternoon, Bolat called to check on us. We had a short discussion on the cribs where he said they did have cribs in the hotel, but four other couples are using them. Apparently, there is only one hotel in all of Almaty, but I rant again. He also asked me how many pictures of the kids were in our packets. I checked and there were two. He informed me that the Embassy now required three photos and we would have to go out later to get another picture taken. Apparently, they’ve know about this for a couple weeks, but it was decided that it was easier to do this the night before we had to hand in our file. He said he would be by after 5.

Bolat came over around 5:30. We made he wait a few minutes while we fed the kids, then we bundled them up and took them to the Kodak Express store. This took about 15 minutes and went with little issue. Lucky for them, Jack was exhausted so he sat quietly while they took the picture. While we waited for it to develop, he fell asleep in Gma’s arms. Grace was also very good during the short trip. We took Gma and the kids back to the apartment so he and I could run to the market. I asked him if he could show me a place where I could get “take-out” since we didn’t want to do much cooking in Almaty. Well, wonders of wonders, readers, Almaty has pizza delivery!! We got pizza from the same place – The Patio – that we had pizza at when Mary Jo and I first came to Almaty.

Bolat and I went through all the paper work. There were a few more forms to fill-out. He had to have them all turned into the Embassy by Noon the next day. We finished it all and then Gma and I ate our pizza. After that, we hung out with the kids in the hopes they would fall down in utter exhaustion so we could put them to bed. Such was not our luck, so by 9, we decided we needed to put them in “bed.” We put the kids to bed in the crib fort, Gma choose to sleep on the couch in the living room and I went to bed in the bedroom – my first night in a real bed in a month. It took some time, along with a couple trips into the room by Gma, for them to settle down, but they did eventually go to sleep. Thus ended our first day in the journey home.

Check out the pictures.