Catching Up

It’s been a few days since we posted. That wasn’t due to a lack of news, but to a lack of time.

On Monday, we learned from our local coordinator that our final paperwork is a bit delayed. One of the reasons is that most of the city had a planned power outage that lasted for twelve hours during the daytime on Thursday of last week. So no government offices were open. That meant that some of the paperwork couldn’t be processed. Then Friday came and the weekend.

Our final Kazakhstani paperwork is being taken to Astana, the capital, for, er, finalization only on Friday September 25. As a result, we're not going to be able to come home on our scheduled flights. We were scheduled to fly out of Karaganda late on Sunday, September 27. However, our papers don't go to the Canadian Embassy until Saturday afternoon. But it takes 3 days for them to get there, 2 days to be processed, and 3 days to come back, or so.

As a result, we are attempting to rebook our flights for October 6, returning to Ottawa on October 7.

Alert readers will note that none of this explains why we had a lack of time to post to the blog.

Tuesday was quite dreary. The high temperature was only 9 degrees and it rained all day. John felt exceedingly tired and napped on and off. All was explained when he woke up on Wednesday with a cold and fever. We’re trying to keep Alexey healthy for an entire month, in an attempt to set a personal best for him. Therefore, Monika took over full-time parenting duties, with John only occasionally raising a point of order with the little fellow as required. Same thing on Thursday.

For a few days we had been planning with a family from France to have a party for the staff at the Baby Home on Thursday. Because John was under the weather, Monika also took over full-time organization of that event. In her spare time, she went downtown to TsUM (the department store) and City Mall to buy some gifts for the staff and our translators and coordinators.

On Thursday morning we went to the Baby Home and partied with the on-duty caregivers, doctors, translators, and of course, our two families’ little ones. We had cake and tea and gave out our gifts. The caregivers and doctors had a chance to play with the two babies and to say goodbye, and we took photos and promised to give them to the staff. A very happy occasion.

So, a few busy days.