Things are finally settling down here at home. We now have a routine. This is easier because John is finally feeling better. He's now eating after a full week of decreasing menu options. Rice, toast and bananas gave way to Alexey's baby biscuits and crackers. Finally, he was down to only drinking Gatorade and PowerAde for about three days. Doctors think he had food poisoning. John likely picked that up in Almaty, in a cafe (кафе) which was recommended to us. John had a few bites of undercooked chicken before he stopped eating it. There is a certain amount of irony here:
Alexey and Shiraz (our Beagle) have signed a non-aggression treaty. Shiraz tried to become Alexey’s mom one day when he was a bit too rambunctious for her taste. Shiraz circled him a couple of times, herding him. Then she sidled up behind him, opened her mouth as wide as she could, and was about to grab him by the back of the neck to carry him away. Fortunately, Dada intervened and had a few words of advice for Shiraz. Since then, there has been a bit more respect between Alexey and Shiraz.
Monika and Alexey went out for Thanksgiving dinner to Uncle Mats and Auntie Iza’s house while John and Shiraz kept each other company at home. It was a great chance for Alexey to meet cousins Paul and Emma as well as Uncle Mats. Babcia and Grandma were pleased to see Alexey again too, of course. He had some of Auntie Iza’s delicious potatoes, stuffing, and carrots to eat, along with a few spoonfuls of ice cream for dessert.
This past week, Mama took Alexey to WalMart and The Children’s Place to stock up on clothing, and Dada took Alexey to Metro to pick up some food. Alexey acted like a veteran shopper, sometimes picking up carefully selected merchandise to weigh its merits and disadvantages.
Yes. We’re still alive.
We haven’t had much time to blog because of a number of factors.
First, jet-lag is a big challenge for us right now. We’re trying not to nap very much during the day, but that’s proving to be difficult. That’s because Alexey disagrees with the medical literature about trying to sleep through the night to reduce jet-lag. So, he wakes up sometime between 2 and 4 AM every morning and is ready to go for the day. So, one of us has to get up with him and entertain him for up to an hour.
“One of us” in the last sentence really means Monika. Not because John is deliberately avoiding his duties. He has been afflicted with a very nasty stomach condition since we got home. High fever, a bit of nausea, and many, many, er… you get the picture. Since we don’t want Alexey to catch this bug, especially because he is quite small for his age, Monika has assumed about 95% of the parenting duties. Plus she has had to look after John, too.
The resulting drain on our resources (sorry) means that our house is a disaster. Suitcases are strewn across the living room. Two months worth of mail sits unread on our dining room table. Packages of baby food are taking over the kitchen. That being said, we’re still progressing.
Shiraz (our beagle) and Alexey are now getting along well together. They each try to play with the other’s toys. Shiraz has been rebuked several times for playing with the lovely caterpillar toy Alexey got from Kazik, Natalie, and, Gabriel. In the early going, Alexey was severely reprimanded for tugging on Shiraz’s ears, gouging her eyes, and pounding on her head. He has since learned to pet Shiraz nicely, though. Shiraz has been great. If she is unhappy with something that Alexey is doing, she just walks away.
That’s not completely true. She comes over to supervise when Alexey starts to play with her food dish. She frowns and snorts a bit, trying to figure out what to do. We intervene before the situation escalates, though. Alexey also likes to play with Shiraz’s water bowl. Splashing is always great fun! We tried not to laugh and became as stern as we could when he bent over and started to drink from the bowl, without ever having seen her use it.
We will soon post some pictures and some more information. Time to go. Have to feed Alexey.
We arrived in Frankfurt after an uneventful flight from Almaty on a Lufthansa Airbus A-340 jet.
The number of people touting taxis and assistance with bags at Almaty airport is fantastic. We fell victim to a couple of fellows who took our bags from our hands as we arrived at the airport. They put them on a baggage cart before we knew what hit us. We had to pay about 2000 Tenge to ransom our bags, about $15. One suspects that the government security officials at the airport are friendly with these sorts of people.
The check-in clerks helpfully assigned us seats right in the front of our section, so that a bassinet could be installed on he wall for Alexey and so we would have more space. The cabin crew was fantastically helpful. They talked to Alexey, played with him, and catered to our every need. Right after takeoff, when the Captain turned off the seat belt sign, a couple of flight attendants came and put in the bassinet. But this wasn’t just a basket. It had a real mattress with sheets, a blanket folded so that Alexey could have it under and on top of him, and a real honest-to-goodness miniature pillow. It even had a little roof over the head.
We put Alexey into the bassinet and he fell asleep almost instantly. He slept for almost five hours. We actually had to wake him up.
Upon arrival in Frankfurt right on time at 5:55 AM (ugh), we waited to deplane for almost 25 minutes because there were no stairs available for the plane. Passengers were growing restive, especially those with imminent connections. But soon we were underway, speeded on our way after a 15 minute bus ride to the terminal.
We had hoped to spend our 8 hour wait in the hotel attached to the airport. But a little oversight on our part meant that we couldn’t leave the security area. Alexey is travelling on his Kazakhstan passport. The German Immigration Police representative politely reminded us that citizens of Kazakhstan need a visa to enter Germany. Oops. We opted not to make a break for freedom given the presence of a second police officer toting a machine-gun backing up the front-line officer.
So we are now spending our time relaxing in a lounge in the secured area of the airport itself.
On the bright side, we are still able to feed and change Alexey here in relative civility. Alexey has been snoozing for a good two hours on Mama’s chest. Ivan the Bearrible is keeping them company.
We expect to be leaving for Toronto in only another hour or so. Then it’s a short two-hour wait in Toronto before a one hour flight to Ottawa. Then our 41 hour odyssey will be over.
And then a new one will begin.
It’s about 7:00 PM in Almaty, Kazkahstan on Tuesday. It is already completely dark outside.
After some tense moments, we left Karaganda Airport right on time at 10:10 AM and arrived here on time at 12:30. What tense moments? When we checked in, we discovered that Alexey was not registered in the computer system as being on our flight. After some discussions with the special airline ticket agents in the special office for special people, he once again existed and was granted permission to board the aircraft. We went back to the check-in counter, only to be sent to the excess baggage payment office. We were 24 kg overweight. After settling up there, we returned to the check-in counter for a third time, and got Alexey’s boarding pass and our baggage tickets.
Our flight to Almaty lasted just over two hours. We were in a Fokker 50 propeller plane. The kindly check-in agent gave us seats in the first row, so we had a bit more space and could watch the right-hand propeller go around. The left-hand propeller had to be a matter of faith.
Alexey flew like a champion. After a bit of settling-in time, but no crying at all, he provided some play-by-play commentary as the airplane made funny noises and the flight attendants moved about. After an hour he fell asleep for about 45 minutes in Mama’s arms. We actually had to wake him up when the Fasten Seat Belts sign came on as we began our descent to Almaty airport.
Even though the air pressure changed a fair bit, Alexey never uttered a sound, but watched with interest.
We believe (pray?) this is a good omen for our next flight. It’s on a Lufthansa Airbus 340 jet and takes seven hours to go from Almaty to Frankfurt, Germany.
Almaty is a big city with a population of well over a million people. The architecture here is mixed Tsarist-Soviet-European. Some houses and small apartment buildings definitely appear to be old-time Russian style. Huge blocks of apartment buildings and some office buildings are built in the Soviet box style. Some store buildings on the main streets would look at home in Paris.
We visited St. Michael’s Cathedral, a Russian Orthodox church built in 1908. It has golden onion domes and is painted in white and yellow. To enter, we had to have covered arms and Monika had to cover her head. They had scarves available to put on in a room as you entered. The Cathedral is full of icons, paintings on the ceiling and walls, and triptychs. Some golden artefacts were in evidence, including crosses, candlesticks, book stands, and the like. Hundreds of tapers, slim candles, were all over, with people lighting them as they prayed. The Cathedral itself is fairly small, with benches providing seating for no more than twenty people. You could fit in a few hundred people standing, though. The congregation is expected to stand throughout the entire liturgy.
For lunch, Monika had a cheeseburger platter and John had a hot chicken salad. We shared Monika’s French fries, the first we’ve had since we left Canada. The lettuce in our cheeseburger and salad was also a first.
In restaurants and stores, we noticed that prices are definitely in the range of those in the big cities in Europe. They appear even worse because the prices are in Kazakhstan Tenges (TT). A bowl of soup in a nice Thai restaurant would cost a startling 1,800TT were we to buy it. That’s about $14. This is a big change from Karaganda.
We are staying in an apartment until just after midnight, when we return to the airport for our 2:55 AM flight. (Zzzzzzz)
We will try to post to the blog from Frankfurt if we can.
We leave our apartment in Karaganda tomorrow (Tuesday) and fly to Almaty. The end of the beginning starts then. Over a two-day period we transition to the part of the world in which Monika and John are comfortable. And Alexey comes to a world he doesn’t know exists.
Our time in Kazakhstan was one in which we could focus on becoming a family. It was a time without any distractions or external pressures. Local problems and inconveniences simply were a part of our family-building process. Monika and John could focus on learning about Alexey and he could focus on learning about Mama and Dada. Monika and John watched with amazement, amusement, and sometimes disgruntlement as Alexey learned new things every day. Respectively, in the past week Alexey has learned how to pick up food in his hand and eat it with all five teeth, how to throw things backwards over his head, and how to do a raspberry (ptttht!) with food in his mouth.
So in two days we will be back in Canada and continue our lives as a family, charting a new course with a new crew member. Alexey will meet his new relatives for the first time and make a whole lot of new friends, even though they all speak a funny language.
We will try to post to the blog from Almaty and Frankfurt as we travel home.
До свидания
Today, Saturday, we received Alexey’s documents back from the Canadian Embassy in Moscow. We now have Alexey’s Kazakhstan passport, new birth certificate, and adoption certificate.
Best of all, though, Alexey is now the proud holder of a letter that states that, as of September 30, 2009, he increased the population of Canada by one, because he is a Canadian Citizen!
Alexey now also has a Canadian Facilitation Visa, which allows him to enter Canada as a resident.
We’re comin’ home, baby!
It’s been a while since we posted some photos, so here are a few new ones.
Alexey is already complaining about having to sort the laundry. Wait until he finds out about cutting the grass at home:
Alexey has already learned how to drive handsfree:
Alexey trying his flight accommodations for feel and size:
Alexey’s hair was starting to look a bit unkempt. In need of a makeover, he had his first haircut on Monday at the hairdresser in the shopping area of our apartment complex. He tested our eardrums for much of the time, but we managed to get the entire job done, which we believe to be a miracle. Here he is afterwards with Mama, posing for the camera:
In Kazakhstan, you see feral (or wild) cats and dogs quite often. The dogs are often in small packs, but you sometimes see loners. A makeover is required here too:
