Day 1 The Farmhouse

We arrive in Kazakhstan just after midnight, Tuesday morning, November 9. All of our luggage arrives with us, and we are greeted by a friendly face after emerging through customs. It is our interpreter, Anna. She is a tall blonde, a lifetime resident of Kazakhstan and of Ukraine and Polish descent. She is shocked and gets a good laugh at the amount of luggage we brought for our stay. Always in good spirits, she calls for the driver Adil, a 21-year old Kazakh, who cruises up in a Nissan Maxima with a sweet sound system. How can 4 large pieces of luggage, 2 carry-on pieces, a full backpack, tote bag, and 4 people fit in this car? It isn't easy but it involves Monte sitting on my lap for 40 minutes as we drive to the house they had chosen for us The house is large with many rooms and we meet our regional coordinator Natalia there. Here is a picture of our adoption dream team.Adil, Natalie, and Anna in the Farmhouse Jungle Room

After moving our luggage in and up the stairs to the second floor, the dream team, less Adil who lives nearby, decides to spend the night with us since it is so late. Before going to bed, I make the mistake of trying to plug in my laptop which promptly brings the entire electrical system of the home to its knees. We are in the dark on many levels and decide it is a good time to sleep. This place is sweet.

The purple bed in the red room is like box springs on plywood. The concept of the mattress has not yet made it to Kazakhstan. This is unfortunate because the mattress is really the most important part of the bed. We are so tired, it doesn't matter. No mattress? No electricity? No problem. We sleep. In the morning, I venture outside and find the crusty old breaker box. Power is restored. Natalia fires up some eggs and the dream team is on a roll. However, the Kazakhstan government official goes AWOL, leaving us high and dry with no approval letter to go to the baby house. We decide to have lunch at the nice local restaurant, only a 5 minute walk away. A few details are that it is actually -5 deg C with very icy/snowy conditions and no one actually knows where the restaurant is. It turns out to be a 20 minute walk (brrrrr), across a busy highway, and not that great of a place. On the way, Monte decides to skitch the bumper of one of the local vehicles. Or maybe she just slips on the ice. In any event, she ends up on the ground, rolling around and unintentionally making snow angels on the icy shoulder of the highway. I have a flashback to our get-away to South Beach Miami when Monte broke her tailbone roller-blading less than 15 minutes into the vacation. That is story for another time. We pick her up and move on. The wrist is not broken but seriously sprained. At this point, it would appear things are not going very well.

We survive the Kazakh lunch which isn't bad at all and walk back home. We lock arms like we are heading up Everest and make our way. Back at the farmhouse, we realize that Internet has gone AWOL along with the adoption official. No Internet in the farmhouse, surprise, surprise, even though the landlord had promised and promised it. So we venture to the Internet café, hoping for taste of the year 2000. It turns out the Internet café has lost its Internet as well. I am looking at a room full of 1980-era PCs and Russian woman with a partial mustache who doesn't like me one bit.

The dream team decides it would be good to head to their homes for the night. Monte ices her hand with snow in a Ziploc bag. We sit there and look at each other. We had read blogs that the Kazakhstan adoption process was a lot like camping. They were right. We do not have any food in the house for dinner so we snack on scraps from breakfast. I had dry bread and hot tea. Monte had tea. We realize our Kazakh diets are starting today. Four more weeks of this? My thought is that we could star in a couples-version sequel for Tom Hanks' Castaway. Add a couple volleyballs and we are more than there.