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Hi all. We got some bad news today. They have apparently decided to change the process again, and it seems we will be here an additional month longer than expected. This royally screws up our plans, and we’re sure yours too (both work and visits), but there’s nothing we can really do about it. We’re stuck. The adoption agency folks are working like crazy to try to find a way around it and get us home in the expected timeframe, but the Kazakhstan officials just won’t budge. So, looks like we’ll be here a bit longer. This is very frustrating, but eventually, it will all be worth it.

Anyway, today was a pleasant day, aside from the bad news above. The weather is still nice, a little colder than yesterday, but sunny and seasonable. We walked to lunch again at a place we like a lot. Sarah had couscous salad again, and I had pasta with pesto sauce and pine nuts. Pesto here consists of parsley and dill, and no basil, but it was still pretty good.

Our orphanage visit was nice. Asella sat by herself pretty well today, and is a happy, happy little girl. Though today she was dang smelly and needed 2 diaper changes. They’re potty trained by nine months, right? Good. Here she is in a typical goofy moment. She already takes after her dad.



For all those that are interested (both of you) here is Asella’s daily routine and diet:

Wake up and breakfast, 6 am – porridge
Play time until 7:30, then a 2 hour nap
2nd breakfast (just like hobbits!) at 9:30 am – Porridge, egg, mashed apple, and juice
Play time until 11:00, then a 2 hour nap
Lunch at 1 pm – Mashed potatoes, ground beef, fruit stew (yummy!)
Play time with mommy and daddy until 3, then a 1.5 hour nap
Snack at 4:30 – Milk and cookies (Pepperidge Farm mint milanos – go figure!)
Play time until 6, then (you guessed it), a 2 hour nap
Dinner at 8 – Milk formula
Play time until 9, then beddie-bye time, interrupted by an 11:30 pm snack of porridge.

Sounds like a nice life! Where do I sign up? All told she eats about 1.6 pounds of solid food, and about 13 oz. of formula per day. Is that a lot?

At the end of today’s visit, Asella had me in her tiny clutches, refusing to let go of me and be handed off to the caretaker. Not that I was encouraging her to let go… After the visit we continued our tour of our home away from home, starting in Victory Park, pictured below.


We traded up translators and were with Alexander, who is very nice and very patient with us photo-snapping, dumb question asking Americans (What’s that building there? Oh an auto parts store. Fascinating.) Alex spent a year in Mobile, Alabama at the University of South Alabama, so he’s got an idea what Americans are like. At least, some types of Americans. Victory Park houses a monument wall, marble markers with names of heroes of the Soviet Union, a statue of Lenin (the statue of Ringo is in Almaty), and a memorial to victims of concentration camps. From there it was on to the swap meet - a huge outdoor bazaar selling everything from clothes and bug spray to candy and almost dead fish. As usual, folks stared mercilessly at us, especially when we took photos, but the candy shop ladies were very nice, offering free samples of local Kostanai candy and halva that looked like a cinder block. With one hand on my wallet and the other on my camera, we browsed the aisles and generally wandered about. We were told to be careful of the gypsies, who apparently engage in such nefarious deeds as selling eye glasses and buying gold. There was one gypsy woman with a fortune-telling bird. After visiting some other shops (one with several girls trying on boots who laughed at Sarah and her silly flat-bottomed tennis shoes and bell-bottom pants) we made our way back to the central park and finished up the tour. It’s a really nice small city, and it should be especially beautiful once it has greened up and they plant flowers in the park. We’ll definitely be here long enough to see that now.

There were a few comments about eating at an auto dealership. Lemme ‘splain. There is an auto dealership (with a nice porche cayenne) that has a café in it, where all the auto dealership employees go have lunch. While the free hot-dogs are enticing, they have really good gyros and perogis, and the best bread we’ve found thus far. All for the low low price of shamelessly, ridiculously, guilt-inducing, puzzler-puzzling next to nothing.

Speaking of food (as usual), dinner was a rather amusing affair at the Art café. It’s not often you have to spend 2 and a half hours over dinner when there is one other customer in the joint. Apparently the kitchen was downstairs, across the street, over a bridge, and somewhere in the next town over. Sarah’s potato pancakes with mushrooms, cheese and spices arrived sans mushrooms, cheese, and spices, and I believe they may have had our ice cream with chocolate in the vicinity of a chocolate bar, but there sure wasn’t any on the actual ice cream. DJ’s dessert required marshmallows, which they were out of, so they took a brief trip to the store to get them. And then, since we were there so long, they wanted to tack on a cover charge for the night club portion of the restaurant. Eugene nicely talked them out of that and crossed off that portion of our bill. All part of the experience. At least the exceedingly loud karaoke was entertaining.

So that was our day. Oh, and that bit at the start of this entry about the extra month here… check your calendar. Did I get ya? :) Happy April 1st!