August 31 Life in Kostanay

(View from our hotel room)

Some observations from our stay here in northern KZ.

Kostanay has about 300,000 people. Our hotel, the Tourist, is in the "city center" close to the various government offices and administration. It has the basics plus a few extras like an ATM machine and a restaurant. We have just about all of our meals there, and the waitresses know us by sight. They now know to bring us the very-loosely-translated-into-English menus. They also know we will have only either "cola", "Sprite", or "water, no gas (carbonation)" to drink, or sometimes coffee (they only have instant here).

We have not sampled the national delicacy, horsemeat. The locals say it is excellent and regard it much like our filet mignon; we will leave that to our imagination. We do actually have some familiar dishes to choose from: pork chops, chicken wings ("Legs of Bush", since chicken is imported from the US), hamburger steak (generously referred to simply as, "steak"), mashed potatoes, and french fries, along with some familiar-looking canned vegetables. We've noticed that every restaurant we've been in seems to have at least one mirror ball. There's also typically a boom box pumping out a strange brew of Russian folk and American top 40 music. They want to be prepared for the impromptu dance-off after dinner, I guess.

There are only a couple of workers at the hotel who speak some English, but they are not here every day. After you've been here a couple of weeks, though, it's amazing how well you can get by with just a few words of Russian. The hotel lacks fire sprinklers, and the sole elevator is basically a moving telephone booth. The rooms are clean and well kept, though pretty basic and rather small. We also noticed there were no tableside lamps in any hotel we've been in, and they are seen as fire hazards. On the other hand, they practically encourage smoking, so go figure.

Most of the hotels (including this one) and office buildings here have no central A/C, though there are a few window-type units. Our room's ventilation relies on opening the windows. But we have to tolerate the party-goers in and out of the pub just down the block, all nights of the week. Like clockwork, you can hear them get cranked up right about nightfall.

The cars in KZ are typically pretty old and small, without much control of their exhaust emissions that we can see. The typical sedan is about a '70s vintage Russian Lada 4-door buzzing around your ankles. The buses are old and remind us of those we'd see in a Mad Max movie. People are jammed into them, and the windows are typically caked with dirt.

In our room, we have a tiny bathroom that is adequate, but the shower is so small you can barely turn around. It is a basically a corner of the room with a flimsy curtain comprising two sides. The water is hot, but it is less than...ah...clear. They do replenish our linens daily, including two narrow fabric strips known charitably as "bath towels". The toilet paper is plentiful, but it's more like those those paper towels you pull down from the machines in public restrooms back home. It's not squeezably soft.

Many young women here dress fashionably, kind of surpising considering how remote this seems. They wear stiletto high heels and many are attractive (LeAnne made me put this in.) Everyone we've met has been pleasant and friendly, with no obvious anti-American sentiment. We have felt comfortable here, although we use common sense and don't go out by ourselves much. We have had a few stares here and there, but nothing that's really a big deal.

That's all for now.

(LeAnne's birthday flowers and Kazakh camel, gifts from Amir and Zhanna). The vase weighs about 50 lbs!

August 30 evening

We now understand that our missing bag of luggage is enjoying a fabulous vacation in Turkey.

August 30

(Left: Forest Restaurant near Kostanay with traditional Kazakh doll. The food was excellent.)

(Right: Lakeside park near the restaurant. L to R: Zhanna our legal liaison, Talap the driver/police official, L&D, Talap's son Maksat, who assisted us very capably with translation)

We visited the orphanage in Rudniy again today, and spent 2 hours with the baby girl. She is really sweet and very lovable. We continue to try to sort out and understand the implications of her medical condition. We are in contact with an international adoption pediatrician who will review some photos we took and e-mailed to her today, along with her medical history. We will hear back from her today.

We are in good spirits and are prepared for whatever the outcome will be. Even if we return to the US without a child, we will never forget this experience and what we have seen. We hope to be able to make a difference here by telling our story and helping these orphanages in some way. The people here are very friendly to us, and have gone out of their way to make us feel welcome. Our driver this week named Talap, a police department official, invited us to spend the Kazakh national holiday today (Constitution Day) with his family. We politely declined since we are so focused on trying to make the right decision and need time alone together most of all. We've spent hours on the Internet trying to learn more about the implications of the possible medical conditions, and soul searching about whether we are the right parents for a child that could have special needs.

Dasvidanya (Bye)

August 29 evening

Everything is fine, we have just been very preoccupied with different events and actitivies for the past two days. We are still in in Kostanay in the Kostanay Tourist Hotel. Yesterday, after much running around town to various administarative offices and rounding up of poeple who had to accompany us, we visited the Delphin Baby House here in town (thanks, Becky!). It's a very nice facility, almost on par with an upscale-type US daycare center. Very cheerful surroundings.

Unfortunately, due to the popularity of this orphanage, there's a waiting list and many of the babies also wind up being adopted by locals first. We were told about 1 child, a boy of two who reminded us of Becky's Ian, but he was part of a sibling group of 3 with two significantly older siblings, and we just don't feel we are ready for 3 at once.

Afterward, we went to the baby house (orphanage) in Rudniy, and we met a baby girl there. She is adorable, but there are potentially serious medical history issues that have to be sorted out. We will gather information and ask for God's guidance as we move forward in the next fews days. We will visit her again tomorrow morning. We need everyone's prayers, as this is a very difficult time. We are struggling with conflicting emotions. But we hope for the best.

A special thanks to Ken Bailey for his wonderful comment (we were unable to respond to your post due to technical difficulties, Ken.).

Love, Don & LeAnne

August 27, 2006 (LeAnne's birthday) 2nd post

Photo above, L to R: Our coordinator Amir, Oleg the Russian driver, and his son Maxim, the new Elvis according to LeAnne


(In Almaty airport awaiting flight to Kostanay last Tuesday)

I will try to bring everyone up to date for events of the past few days. After our arrival in Almaty on Monday, we stayed 2 nights there. On Wednesday, we flew to Kostanay, where we met our coordinator, Amir, and our legal advisor/liaison, Zhanna. We were dropped at the airport in Almaty by Gulya (Julia), Amir's wife, and despite the language difficulties, we managed to check our bags and board the plane. We felt like we were traveling in the 1940's. I'm sure the flight was mundane to the many locals and natives on board, but we weren't really prepared for the comparative primitiveness of an intra-country flight in KZ. It was a propeller plane, not a jet, and seemed to be at least 30 years old. I tried to reassure LeAnne that this was a plus, since it had clearly completed as many landings as takeoffs over the years. LeAnne, she sort of gave me, you know...The Look. No flight attendant, no oxygen masks, just a shelf instead of overhead storage compartment....and no other Eng.ish speaking people on the plane.

Anyway, so the plane droned across the barren Kazakhstan steppe for 4 hours, and we finally landed in Kostanay in the late afternoon. At the baggage claim area, we found 3 bags had arrived, after we'd checked four. But of course! The one missing had items for the orphanage and all of our prescription drugs we'd so carefully arranged to have with us, just in case. Five days later, the airline is still trying to trace the bag. We are optimistic it will turn up since we were able to give them the baggage tag tracking number, but we are not holding our breath.

Upon arrival in the Kostanay, we met our coordinatorAmir for the first time. We stayed in a hotel there that is relatively modern by KZ standards. After one night there, Amir arranged for a driver to take us to Arkalyk, site of the baby house (orphanage for the youngest children) to which we'd been assigned. We decided to go by car because the train would have taken 13 hours overnight, whereas we were told that the drive would be about 6 hours by car. We were a little nervous because Amir wound up finding the driver in the classifieds in the local paper! As it turned out, he was a great driver. A tough-looking Russian guy with a monster tattoo on his left arm and a buzzcut like a Marine, we were leery. But Amir assured us that it was common practice for drivers to advertise their services, and he felt okay about him. So we, Amir, and Zhanna piled into the 10-year old Honda Odyssey along with Oleg the driver and heade to Arkalyk.

Odyssey, indeed. While most of the trip was on a paved highway, portions of the road were under construction and we had to detour onto dirt roads several times, often for a mile or more. Later during the last part of the drive, where the road appears to have not been maintained for possibly decades, it became almost impassable due to the massive potholes. Drivers got around this by simply leaving the the road and just blasting across the adjacent fields and meadows, running parallel to the road for long stretches.

So along along the way, the driver wants to stop for a picnic, and Amir agrees. We pull off the road & drive a good ways across a field to a small lake. Very scenic, but we're wondering if the guy's going to pull a knife on us. Luckily there was none of that, but he did pull out something else...you guessed it, the vodka! Apparently it's customary to knock back a couple of shots at mealtime, as if it's just the beverage to the meal. Fortunately, the driver only had a small swig, and we completed the trip with any trouble. He turned out to be a nice family man. He spoke only Russian, but we learned through Amir's interpreting that he has a wife, a daughter with a baby of her own, and a 17-year old son named Maxim. He came with his Dad for the return trip when we summoned Oleg back to pick us up on Saturday. LeAnne said the son looks like a young Elvissaid they'd call him Elvis at home from now on.

The trip wound up taking closer to 8 hours, and we were tired by the time we got to Arkalyk around 8pm Wednesday. We really weren't prepared for what we saw. Arkalyk is a dying remnant of the old Soviet era. The landscape is littered with abandoned and crumbling buildings, plants, housing, etc. Apparently the Soviets just moved workers and cities en masse to other locations when economic conditions changed. It reminded us of scenes from war movies or even the Planet of the Apes where you'd see all the old crumbling buildings. The people there, though, in many cases seemed to be in stark contrast to their surroundings, in that many of them (although certainly not all) appear to be well dressed, successful people.

We stayed in a hotel in which we were among only a handful of guests. Foreign travelers are rare in Arkalyk, except for the occasional adopting family, coming maybe once a month to the town. We were put in what was apparently the honeymoon suite, which was ironically,the nicest hotel room we've been in, cosidering it was in the midst of the depressing surroundings of Arkalyk in general. We met several Russian women at the hotel who were very nice to LeAnne, and delighted in us taking their pictures and then showing them to them on our digital camera.

As Kenneth (LeAnne's brother) has already posted, we were not successful at the baby house there. We met some wonderful children, but, as we had been prepared for based on the information provided to Amir beforehand, they did not have a child that was right for us. It's a very difficult situation, because your heart goes out to any child in need, especially these in this desolate place. We did a lot of soul searching after leaving the orphanage, and talked to several trusted family members and friends. In the end, we reached the decision that we did not feel in our hearts that we had been matched by God with the right child in Arkalyk.

The director of the Kostanay region's Ministry of Education, which oversees orphanages and adoptions, had committed to us before we went to KZ that she would help us find the right child, even if it was not in Arkalyk. We have returned to Kostanay, the capital of the Kostanay region. There is a baby house in Rudniy (spelling?), about 40 minutes away, where we will visit tomorrow. There is also another one in Kostanay itself called the Delphin Baby House, which has a waiting list, but it may be another option.

We will go to Rudniy with open hearts and open minds, and we still hope to find our baby there. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers. We appreciate everyone's interest who is following our journey and offering encouragement through your comments to this blog.

We will post again tomorrow evening after we return from Rudniy.

Love to all,

Don & LeAnne

August 27, 2006 (LeAnne's birthday)

(Here we are in a market in Almaty last week)

Hello, friends & family! We finally have an Internet connection again and should have for at least the next few days. We have returned from Arkalyk and are safe and sound back in Kostanay. However, it is 1:30am on Sunday morning and I am worn out, so I will post again tomorrow with more details on our travels. Please join me in wishing LeAnne a Happy Birthday today (8/27)! Don

August 25 update

Family and friends, I just talked to Don and LeAnne Fri 900 pm. They visited some children today and saw mostly Asian kids 2 to 5 years old. They liked all the kids and of course felt sorry for all of them. They said they saw one Asian girl about a year old that they really liked and was asked and pressured to take to America, but they didnt feel the right connection. They where told they would know when they hold or see the right one.
So they are going to take the 8hr car ride back to Kostany to visit a place 30 minutes from town. They were told it would be closed til Monday.
LeAnne is having a hard time adjusting to the poverty and way of life in the country
Don seems to be doing OK
Lets keep them in our prayers
Ken Cone

August 22, 2006 (2nd post)

We had a brief sightseeing tour in Almaty. The city is bustling and quite active. We found a western-style grocery store and bought a few items to tide us over. We napped again this afternoon...will our body clocks ever adjust!? Today we got our plane tickets to Kustanai, and we leave tomorrow afternoon. We will be greeted by our coordinator Amir there, and we will stay there one night, then meet the regional orphanage director.

There are a few English-speaking people in the hotel, enough to understand basic questions and inquiries. We met a young Spanish woman in the business center (Internet center in the hotel) who speaks English well and told us quite a bit more about this area and the culture. We are starting to feel a little more comfortable with our surroundings. Just in time to leave tomorrow! Hello to all friends & family back home. Talk to you soon. D&L

August 22, 2006

We arrived in Almaty yesterday, and caught up on sleep. We will stay tonight before flying to Kustanai on Wed. The trip was long, but thankfully, uneventful, except for a 5 hour delay leaving Amsterdam. We were greeted at the airport by our coordinator's wife, Gulya, who drove us to the hotel and will be our host in Almaty today. The hotel is nice, and we are posting this message from the business center. It's definitely summertime here, with temps in the 90s. The driving is a little hair-raising, with lanes being wherever you direct your car, basically! We will see more of Almaty today.

August 18, 2006

Wow, what a week! Now it is the eve before we leave. We are heading to Almaty tomorrow, and due to arrive early Monday morning, local time. We have scrambled all week to get ready, and I think we are almost there. It's hard for LeAnne and I to break away from work, but we now have a mission that we are determined to complete. We've invited family, friends, and co-workers to track our progress, so thanks to all of you who may care to check in with us. We are not sure what to expect technology-wise in Arkalyk, our ultimate destination, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that we'll have access to the 'Net and e-mail. I should be well prepared...I've never seen such a pile of gadgets I've accumulated to ensure comunication. Laptop, cell phone, GSM cell phone, digital camera, video camera, headset, Skype. Plus I believe we have packed an entire pharmacy. Anyway, the packing is almost done. We will do last minute things tomorrow, then head to the airport. Sans liquids and gels, natch.

August 7, 2006

We have been told to arrive in Kazakhstan sometime mid-August. We are going to travel to the Kostani region and then on to Arkalik to a baby house to meet our son or daughter. We will spend the next two weekends getting packed and ready to leave. We will probably travel through Frankfurt Germany or Amsterdam. We will finalize our plane tickets this week and get our Visa's ready.