timandjenaxtell: February 2008

We are finally heading back to Astana on Wednesday at 2pm!! It has been so hard being away from our little lovebug. Most of you know by now, but Tim and I moved to Florida this weekend. We are now living near Tim's family. Max will get to grow up with his Grandpa and Grandma and Aunt's and Uncles and cousins. It was a good decision all around. Maybe even Max will one day like to scuba dive like Tim and his Dad and brothers. We are so excited to go back. We arrive on Thursday around midnight and pick up Max at the baby home on Friday morning. There will be a big 'goodbye' party for Max so his caretakers and doctors can see him one last time. Then we fly to Almaty where we wait for our US Embassy appointment on Monday morning. We have to hang around a couple more days waiting for a SOS clinic and then we head home. We hope to update the blog while we are there, but we know this might not be possible. The great thing is we have Max full time forever on Friday! We can't wait to do simple things like feeding him, bath time, play time even watching him sleep.
I wanted to mention that we had two nice baby showers in the past couple of months. (one in California and one in Colorado) If you got us some pink clothes, don't worry. If you gave us receipts, we exchanged them for cute boy outfits, if you didn't we are taking them back with us as part of our donation to the baby home along with some bottles and other items. They will go to good use! Please continue to pray for a safe journey for us. We are so thankful for everything that God has done for us!

Well, I figured we needed an entire entry to talk about our home away from home, after all we spent about 20 hours a day there. Our apartment had two bedrooms and two bathrooms. It was always warm (we have heard some horror stories from other families about cold apartments) but in our case, it was very toasty. Sometimes we even had to crack a window. I should mention that our digital camera konked out on us in week 3 so most of our other photos are on the video camera, so I will have to go back later and add the photos of the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom.

Our apartment was located on the 7th floor and we needed a code to get through the door. The security was very good in this place and that is the main reason we picked it. The elevator was pretty sketchy. It shook really bad going up and down and every once in awhile I made the mistake of looking down the big gap between the floor and elevator. You could see way down to the bottom and see little bits of paper. My stomach did a flip-flop when this happened. It also wouldn't always be level to the floor when it stopped. A few times it was broken, and we took the stairs, which wasn't so bad, but it was very dusty and lights were always burnt out, so it was dark a little creepy! Our apartment was more modern with hardwood floors and a stainless steel fridge. Now for the quirks:

1) Our shower or lackoff. We had this huge jacuzzi tub (jets didn't work) The shower didn't have a shower head, just a nozel with a retractable snake like piece. Your options were to take a bath, or sort of squat low. There was no shower curtian so water tended to spray everywhere!

2) Washer machine. This machine was pretty tiny and the directions were in Russian. We took a chance and pushed some buttons and it ran all night! The next day our translator asked our landlady for directions and then it only ran 2 hours. Next you hang them up to dry on a rack, and since it's so warm in our apartment, they would dry in a few hours but they were so stiff, that our pants could walk on their own! I still don't have a straight answer to why they don't have dryers over here.

3) Beds. The beds were rickety, wood frames. The sheets were small and didn't fit the thin mattress. The sheets also were differnet colors, all mismatched and very itchy.

4) Internet. Never happened. I think the landlady just didn't want to have the wires installed. (note to future adoptive families, if you have a choice on your apartment, make sure that they have had interent in the past at your apt. We basicaly dragged our laptop over there for nothing. This will also cut down on the boredom and isolation factor we faced)

Other then that, we had a nice, big warm beautiful apartment. We had about 15 channels on our TV in Russian. Except music videos were in English, and yes, they love Britney Spears over here! We watched bobsledding, ice skating, the Halmark channel and Animal Planet. A lot of those programs were in English but the translator talked over them. You could hear about every 4th or 5th word and follow along the plot. Tim watched this one funny Russian movie about some monkey who was on a hockey team, was kicked off and learned how to skateboard. Let's see, what else. I was reading a book a day and going through my stash of books too quickly so I had to break up my time between reading, working on my jigsaw puzzles and watching TV. Tim really got into crossword puzzles that Aaron and Steph left behind. (they also left us some food, and a couple of toys for Max that they just had no room for on their flight back) Thanks you guys! We also took turns writing in a journal for Max each day.

I just remembered one more quirk, no matter what time of night or day, you could always hear honking outside. It reminded me of New York. The driving is very crazy and all over the place. When the police pull you over, they get on their bullhorn and announce to the world your infraction. Our driver got pulled over once when he made an illegal turn.

For those of you who don't now, Tim and I had to return back to Colorado on Sunday. We had a number of unfortunate 'surprises' that forced us to return. We will head back on Feb. 27th. We already miss our little guy so much, but he loves his caretakers and we know he will be ok. Check back in a couple weeks to continue our journey with us.