Home!

We missed our flight from Toronto to Ottawa. We arrived at Ottawa Airport on a later flight at 8:15 PM on Wednesday. Auntie Iza and cousin Kazik were there to greet us. We loaded up our bags into the car and went home to be greeted by Babcia (Monika's mom) and Shiraz, our beagle.

Yahoo!

More details soon!

Now in Frankfurt

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.

Report from Almaty

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.  

And So It Begins

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 

Canada + 1

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!

Photos and A Couple of Makeovers

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:

The End is Nigh

Because we are still waiting for our paperwork, our scheduled departure date from Karaganda has come and gone. It was supposed to be last Sunday. But now we have a new date: Tuesday, October 6.

We leave here at about 10:30 AM and fly to Almaty on a Fokker 50 propeller plane. After that short 2 hour jaunt, we have a tidy little 14 hour layover in Almaty. Then it’s off to Frankfurt at 2:55 AM on a 6 hour flight. Then an 8 hour wait in the airport there before our 8½ hour flight to Toronto. Followed by a 2 hour wait before our 1 hour flight to Ottawa. We arrive there at 7:10 PM on Wednesday.

Those of you doing the math with fingers and toes by now have run out. Twice. That’s a 41½ hour odyssey if you include waiting times. We will be checking into a hotel in Almaty for sure. Maybe also in Frankfurt.

Success

Very good news was heralded by the sounds of gurgling and belching at 9:00 PM on Sunday night. Our hot water had returned! It ran red for a few hours, and was kind of slimy, but then became as clear as it ever has been. Of course, it wasn't hot, but is heating up nicely now on Monday morning. We are hastening to do dishes, get washed, and so on as fast as we can. So, another crisis has been worked through!

In order to exact payment for this resumption of normal service, our gas stopped working this morning. We are sure that a team of talented engineers is working to remediate this unfortunate situation as soon as is practicable.

Plus ça change...

Another Day Gone

Sunday is almost over here in sunny Karaganda. The high was 22 degrees and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. It was quite dry. Actually, really dry. Still no hot water. And little cold water. The tap in our kitchen only dispenses the tiniest dribble of cold water, and even that only after we utter various incantations, usually involving the state of Florida. You know, sun on a beach.

If we want to do anything serious with water, we must head off to the bathroom and use the tap there. It has a fairly decent flow; almost as much as that of a drinking fountain. Of course, we have our bottled drinking water, but don’t want to squander it on the dishes and personal hygiene. So we bring water from the bathroom to the kitchen and heat it up on the stove. The end result is that it takes about an hour to do the dishes from lunch if you factor in all the trips back and forth, the heating up of water, and so on.

We spent this morning doing the tour of our neighbourhood, walking through the courtyards of apartment blocks. Most apartments here are built in courtyards. You enter your apartment from the courtyard, not the street. The street side is usually reserved for stores and what are optimistically called boutiques, really stalls with counters. You can buy almost anything in these stores and boutiques, ranging from pears to pairs of socks. You can find plumbing supplies, pipes, cigarettes, clothing, liquor, and copies of DVDs, CDs, and computer games. The copies must be legal, because we saw a senior police officer with a large amount of braid on his epaulettes buying one just the other day.

Hopefully the team of crack engineers will restore our hot water tomorrow.

NoH2O

As of 10:30 AM on Saturday, there is still no hot water. The cold water is but a dribble. Our cook tells us that there is no hot water in her apartment building, on another courtyard than ours.

The Soviet way of supplying hot water and steam for domestic and heating use was to have central heating plants. A complex network of above-ground pipes carries the water and steam to apartment buildings, individual houses, and other buildings. You can see an example of a couple of pipes here.

This was done for reasons of efficiency and economy. Any problems in the heating apparatus could be fixed quickly and in one place by trained engineers. You only need to have one type of parts, not many different types for different brands of equipment. This also fit in quite nicely with the general Soviet proclivity towards centralizing functions and facilities. Why have many little somethings when one big something will do, and look good in the process?

So we assume that a team of trained engineers is working feverishly to restore our hot water.