Meeting Baby Alex

We made it to Taraz before 6 a.m. yesterday and Vera (translator/coordinator) and Medet (driver) met us on the train and transported us to the Hotel Gazovik. We were pleasantly surprised...make that ecstatic...to see that the hotel is wonderful. A good-sized room with an armoire, desk and TV as well as a large bathroom. The ceilings have to be at least 12' so it seems even larger than it is. We got unpacked and took a little nap then went down for an awesome breakfast. At 11 Vera and Medet picked us up for our first trip to the baby house.

We arrived and met the orphanage director who was very nice. Her nickname among adopting families is "Dragon Lady" because she has a tendency to pull power trips but she seemed to like us. It helped that Jim greeted her with "Hello, how are you" in perfect Kazakh which was probably a first. The elicited a grin and a double-take. Then she said that she thought I looked like a young Kazakh woman and where had she seen me before...was I an actress? Then we talked a little bit about Dallas, that great TV show that is a conversation starter for any Texan travelling abroad. Then the doctor showed up with baby Alex and we were stunned!

He is SOOOOOO cute! Dark grey/blue eyes. He wasn't sure what to make of us at first and he had never been in the orphanage director's office so there was a lot to take in. But after he looked around a bit a checked us out he gave a big sigh (of relief?) and we knew this was our child. We went down the hall to the small visiting room they have and got to play with him for about an hour. He is so tiny! And he had three layers of clothing on--a thick fleece jacket over a sweatshirt over a (hot pink) flannel pajama top. On bottom he had thick fleece pants over pajama footy pants plus a pair of wool booties. And that room was hot! I was in short sleeves by this point. To say they overdress the babies is an understatement.

Alex is totally mesmerized by Jim. For the most part the babies in the baby houses have never seen a man and they tend to get upset around the adoptive fathers. Not Alex--Jim got him to smile and laugh within the first 10 minutes of our bonding. He is also very happy with the little rattle we brought for him. The first couple of times he bonked himself in the nose trying to get the rattle to his mouth. We have taken lots of photos but are waiting until Jim's computer is up and on the internet to post those. Right now we are at an internet cafe.

After our time with Alex we went to the grocery store. Nice, clean and lots to choose from. Fruit juices in every flavor imagineable and since they don't use additives (corn syrup, etc.) they taste like fruit straight from the tree. The yogurt is also in every possible flavor and wonderful--not as sweet or thick as in the US and so much tastier. We also bought cheese, sausage and bread for snacks in our room and some diapers and baby food to take to Alex. You will be pleased to know that we had a three man tag-team of security officers following us up and down every aisle of the supermarket. Not sure what that was all about but I imagined they were paparazzi following us as we made our mundane food choices, a la Britney Spears. Be sure to look for us in the next issue of People!

We went back to the hotel and were going to take a little nap before going out for dinner. When we woke up from our 'little nap' at midnight we realized we should have set an alarm. Oh, well. Thankfully we had our groceries to tide us over til breakfast.

We go back to the baby house every day from 10:30-noon and 2-4. Photos coming soon!

Clearing Customs

I didn't have time to write in the last post about our experience with customs at the Almaty airport. Remember all that cash I wrote about in an earlier post? Well, we had to declare all of it at customs. We'd heard horror stories from people who were really intimidated by the customs agent because you have to count out all the money in front of whoever is passing by and that there were big guys lurking around making you feel unsafe. Our customs experience went like this: there were two skinny Kazakh guys in a smallish room who look like they had recently graduated high school. We gave them our declaration forms and they started making small talk about where we were going while looking over our form. Then the boss came in--all 5'6" of him. He was a little older. He looked over our forms and started asking about Texas. Turns out he had been in McAllen for 'training' (?) last year. Anyway, he says, "So, should we count the money or not?" Jim told the boss he could count it if he wanted to, that we had been completely accurate (even down to the euros we had left after eating lunch in Frankfurt). The boss said that maybe we should give a little gift to the younger agents since they were new to the job. So, our first bribe! Right at that moment a man came in (German?) and had some watches to declare. He was in Almaty on business and had a few watches to give as gifts--the inexpensive kinds that companies give out with their logo on them. The boss was very interested in the watches and figured they were worth about $500 each. Real value, probably about $7 each. Anyway, he got really involved in the German watch guy and Jim and I played really dumb about the 'gift' and the young Kazakh agent started stamping our forms so we got out of there without having to count out our money or pay a bribe! It was the perfect bureaucratic storm. Whew!!