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| [2:50 pm] |
| Subject: The End |
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 happy |
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Hello everybody. Sorry for the hiatus. At long last I think my thoughts are gathered enough, the circadians are playing in synch again, and I’m actually reasonably awake at 10 am this fine Sunday morning. So where were we…? Oh yes, the day from hell. Here’s a shot at summarizing the final stages of our trip, up to the most wonderful moment in the history of our universe, being back home with our daughter.
Sunday, May 14 – Worst Mother’s Day Ever. Sarah got no sleep, largely due to a crying baby, but also because of a splitting headache that would not subside. Asella was in an awful mood all morning, and Sarah could not move, or open her eyes. Daddy tried to take care of both ladies and finish packing, and at one point all three of us were in tears. Eugene picked up Sarah to take to the emergency room for a check-up, just in case there was something they could do to help with the pain and also figure out what the deal was with her weird rash. Sarah described the clinic as something out of a Russian movie from 1963. The diagnosis – allergies, possibly due to cat fur blowing in our 3rd floor window. Uh… sure. So, she popped some Claritin and ibuprofen and hoped for the best. Didn’t work. Asella though turned into a model citizen the moment we got in the car and headed to Kostanai airport. She slept most of the 3.5 hour ride on the 40 seater prop-plane, but my poor Sarah barely survived the flight. I’ve never seen her more miserable, and she’s never been in so much pain. Other than that, the flight was uneventful.
We landed at 7:30 pm in Almaty and were met by Murat. We stopped at a drug store to try to get some stronger pain killers, but Murat’s English is not such that we could really convey we needed the strongest thing they have. They pulled out a few, one of which was from Bulgaria (that was the selling point). Whatever we wound up with, it didn’t help. Our apartment was VERY nice, so that was good, though we had to make a suitcase corral for her next to our bed in place of a crib. It worked just fine though. Asella didn’t seem to care she was in someplace new, flopping herself down to play, then falling asleep. Sarah though still struggled, as the headache lingered.
Monday, May 15 – Almaty - Getting better. Almaty is about 180 degrees from Kostanai. Big green trees everywhere, hot, humid, tropical air, traffic up the wazoo, and tons of people. There’s lots to see, but traffic is so bad it takes forever to get anywhere.
This morning we went to the SOS International clinic for Asella’s required medical exam. It was rather cursory, and they said she looked fine. We also made an appointment for Sarah later that day. After the exam we headed to the U.S. Embassy consulate to schedule our appointment for tomorrow. The office looked like the DMV. It was a bit odd. After that we went to the mall (a real mall, with a skating rink, food court, and baskin-robbins!!!) for lunch at an Italian restaurant. Almaty is a real city, with real restaurants. It’s very cosmopolitan and geared to tourists. Something Kostanai certainly was not. After lunch Sarah had her checkup with a real doctor who spoke perfect English and seemed to know his stuff. After ruling out several nasty things and saying we don’t need to do a spinal tap, he decided this was a measles-like virus that was nearly done running it’s course. He said if we told him she never had an MMR vaccination that he would definitely say it was measles. Weird. In any case, we got what we needed – a prescription for something with Codeine. Yay!! That did the trick and Sarah was on the road to wellness. In the afternoon we went to the central mosque, which was huge and beautiful, and were confronted by a nice woman who told us to take her picture after she made herself pretty. She donned her best Muslim gear and posed for us. She also said that she was happy we were adopting Asella and would give her a good life. But she was surprised that America would be okay with us naming her Asella. We’re assuming the country is okay with it. If not, we don’t care.
We did one final bit of souvenir shopping in a huge mall, but were rushed for time as usual, and were unable to do a thorough job. In the evening we walked with Kim and her dad (and Grant) to an outdoor café for dinner. It was nice sitting outside on a warm spring night. Asella seemed to enjoy it too. Back at the apartment Asella again was a good sleeper while Sarah at long last enjoyed some peaceful slumber courtesy of our good friend Codeine.
Tuesday – May 16 – Last day in Kazakhstan! – An absolutely beautiful morning, so we headed up into the mountains. The 9-10 thousand footers always have snow on the tops and it was a beautiful ride up to Almaty’s famous ice-skating “station.” We walked around a bit, enjoyed the view, headed to a spot for some river prodding, and enjoyed the fresh air immensely.
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For lunch we had an awful time at a Georgian restaurant, where first the waiter did not bring Sarah’s lunch, and then her lunch (cheese with fruit and nuts) came with only cheese. After questioning this, the response was sometimes they make it with fruit, sometimes they don’t. After specifying we would like the fruit and nuts, it came back with only fruit. And of course, they still charged full price. Ugh. Following lunch we headed to our appointment with the U.S. embassy – the last step in the process (good thing, because we were headed to the airport at midnight.) The “interview” lasted all of 2 minutes – basically they asked if the process went well. They gave us her passport with her visa and we were ready to head home. Finally. We stopped at baskin-robbins for celebratory $5 milk shakes (prices here are NOT like Kostanai) and then did one last bit of sight-seeing. One of symbols of Kazakhstan is a statue of a guy standing atop a “snow-cat”. There’s a big obelisk with this symbol on top in the center of town.
Afterwards it was back to the apartment to pack (a much easier task now that Sarah was a functional human-being. We attempted some sleep prior to our midnight trip to the airport, but to no avail. Going home!!!
Wednesday – May 17 – Airplanes and Airports – We arrived at Almaty airport at 1 am on Wednesday morning (noon on Tuesday pacific time). Asella mostly napped while we took care of the check in arrangements. There were about 5 or 6 adoptive families on this flight, in various stages of completion. One 11 year old girl – who was halfway to getting a little sister – talked our ear off while we waited to board. The flight was not very full, and we had the bulkhead with an empty seat next to us. They set up the bassinette for us, which Asella slept in for about 2 hours, letting mommy and daddy eat and stuff like that. It was a good flight – no ear problems, no messy diapers. As perfect as could be hoped. We got to Frankfurt at 6 am local time and promptly headed to McDonalds. Ah, French fries. Comfort food.
Frankfurt airport had really lousy facilities, and the smoke wafts in from everywhere. A fun place to hang out for 8 hours. Yippy. We killed time as best we could – walking around shops and sampling different restaurants. But the time just dragged.
Finally we boarded our plane and discovered we had the 2 middle seats in the 4 seat center section, and no bulkhead. Neither the young German guy with the stupidest haircut ever nor the older Coloradoan accepted our offer to change seats so we could have the aisle with a baby. Nice. The old guy eventually realized he was a total ass and offered to take the middle seat for awhile. We declined, since we were already very well situated, and I was somewhat looking forward to waking him up several times to climb out. He had the final revenge though by hacking up a lung the entire 9.5 hour flight. This flight lasted forever. Asella slept most of it, but most of the passengers seemed to be hard of hearing – it was the noisiest flight we’ve ever been on. After an eternity, we landed. Denver. Home. 2 months later.
Immigration took about 20 minutes to get through, and when we came into baggage claim, Asella was officially a U.S. citizen. All our bags were there – we breezed through customs and into the waiting embrace of… D.J. and his mom. After a quick reunion we headed outside to our awaiting limo. Yes, a limo. Not sure what happened, but that’s what picked us up. I’d have guessed we were in such a stupor that it was a hallucination, but this picture says otherwise. Asella and Sarah promptly fell asleep and we enjoyed the quick ride home.
When we got to our cul du sac (5 pm pacific time) there were 5 or 6 kids in our yard, which was odd. Our neighbor and their kids, some other neighborhood kids, Nina and her daughter, and Grandma Mindy were all in the driveway to greet us. It was truly wonderful to be welcomed home. Our house has never looked so majestic, so inviting, so comfortable. Asella seemed a bit overwhelmed by the greeting, but took it in her usual stride. She made herself comfortable in the family room while we tried to unpack and get some laundry started.
Saint Mindy made us dinner, and then I left the building. Sarah said I was talking but no words came out. By 7:30 I was useless, so I went to sleep. Asella slept okay – getting up a few times, but all things considered, not too bad. We were finally home. The journey was over. Now life can begin. Again.
May 18 – 21 – Settling in – Aside from a nasty cough that kept her up all of Friday night, Asella has enjoyed getting to know her new surroundings. She’s started babbling again (the 3 changes of scenery caused a bit of regression), and has made strides toward crawling again. She’ll be there soon. She’s also started waving hello. Sadly, Grandma leaves today, so we’ll have to do laundry and cooking and dishes by our lonesome. Very sad. She was a tremendous help, and I don’t know how we could have survived those first few days without her, given the amount of sleep we missed. Now we get to see how life will be – as I go back to work on Monday (after her first doctor’s appointment).
So this is the end of the journal. Hard to believe the first entry was on March 20, when we were just 2 naïve Americans on our way to some stan. We’ve transitioned from just the 2 of us in a weird place doing some weird stuff to normal parents with a 9 month old. Well, normal is relative I guess. Now we’ve joined the ranks of the true Highlands Ranchers, at long last fitting into family suburbia. It’s been an amazing, bizarre, surreal, difficult and rewarding voyage, and we thank you for letting us share it with you. Thank you all for all the support and kind words you provided over the last 2 months. Reading our daily comments was something we looked forward to every night. I hope it was somewhat interesting, informative, and possibly inspiring. But I’ll settle for mildly entertaining. Future pictures will be shared through Kodak gallery, so send me an email if you want to be on that list (tujungadj@yahoo.com), or also if you want to know how things are going with our little Kazakh princess.
Thanks for listening. Take care.
Darren, Sarah & Asella |
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