Trying Again

03 Oct 07, Wednesday, Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan
Major event of the day: Trying again

Hot water? Who needs no stinkin’ hot water!?!?! At least it is comfortable in the apartment despite the fact that it’s hovering near freezing outside. Let say the blood is pumping and we are alert!

Since the cupboards were bare, Bill headed over to the Iceberg for basic food items. It was an adventure! But basic needs were met and we now have plenty of water, milk, cereal, juice and toilet paper. “Toilet paper,” you ask? Well, we have been spoiled at home and everywhere on our trip up to the hotel in Airtau (or whatever the name of the town is). The “old style” toilet paper is actually like crepe paper we use for streamers, except that it’s a light brown “natural paper” color. Bill is getting pretty good at figuring out labels and continuing efforts to learn basic Russian.

Fast forward… We just returned from the Regional Boarding School where we have met two children who we will begin bonding with this afternoon. LG is 10 and LB is 12. They are older than we had planned, but based on interests, we both think they will do well. They are both very happy about the prospects of having a family. More after our visit this afternoon…

Day 1 of Bonding:

LB was waiting at the door for us this afternoon. You should have seen his grin when we got out of the car and called his name. LG was still with her friends and running a little late. As we reached the door, LB said in passable English, “Wait, Wait.” Masha, our translator, told him that we had to check in at the office, so he ran off to find LG. Apparently news travels fast around the RBS and she was getting some pointers from a little girl whose new parents flew back to the states last Friday to make final preps at home during the appeal period.

We all had a blast making formal introductions, playing Uno (RBS will have another set when we leave), and playing on our computer. Masha and Cathe had an excellent suggestion for playing Uno: LB and LG had to say the colors and numbers in English while we made our best attempts to do the same in Russian. For a while it looked like Bill was going to win, but LG pulled off the win, much to the chagrin of her brother.

Mid way through our visit, the assistant director stopped by to see how things were going. Her name is Laugh (no joke). Both children were all smiles. She watched as we made one more run through the pictures, this time naming names of grandparents, mama and papa, and older brother as well as many activities. She also asked about our son who is 21and in the Army. “Cincinnati?” she asked. “No, Memphis,” we responded. She was confused. Apparently she had asked if our son is single, not where were we from. The term just sounded like Cincinnati. Her implication was that he could come and marry Masha and that Cathe could stay and be a teacher at the RBS. The pay’s not great, but the food is. Although honored, Cathe had to turn down the job offer. We all had a good laugh.

After the Uno game, we got out the pictures we brought along. (There’s a 1 hour photo lab at the Iceberg where you can get prints for 27 kzt, so we printed a lot of recent ones of family, home, school and general Memphis area). Bob (our golden retriever) is going to have a couple kids wearing him out! LG immediately fell in love with him. When we came to the pictures of the kids rooms, we handed the ones of the yellow room with butterflies and flowers on the walls to LB and told him it would be his room. Didn’t phase him one bit. His only question was, “Do I share a room?” Then we handed the pictures of the room with the jungle border and tree frogs to LG who said she preferred the yellow room, but wants to swap beds so Bob can sleep in her room (bunk bed in boy’s room, a trundle bed in girl’s room). LB sealed the deal in agreement. I guess we’ll have to work that one out when we get home.

After a once-through on the pictures, LB was ready to hit the computer (LG was still going through the pictures asking Cathe about the details in each one). First thing we did was to open Google Earth. Since I had been zooming in on our home area as well as Petro, there were some pretty good images. I set the distance ruler start point on the RBS and zoomed over to Memphis to the mark for our house: 6,096 miles direct. Of course, that doesn’t include the necessary routings via Almaty and Amsterdam. The excitement was building for both LB and LG.

It was hard for us earlier this week, but we had put the choice in God’s hands before we left the states. We knew He would match us up with the right two children. Although they are older that we had initially planned for, they are the right children for us. It's hard to see how we could make the leap from our original intent of adopting one in the 0-5 range to adopting two in the 10-12 range. It was a series of small steps through which we were prepared for this day when we would meet our children.

P.S. We finally had hot water this evening!