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