May 15, Part Jen

May 15, Day 14 of visitations

Here's some Tenge, the money we use here. When we arrived we were gettign 125 Tenge to a dollar, now it is about 120 or 121. They use a lot of 100 Tenge coins, and some very colorful bills. In case you are wondering, that's Rob's hand and it was our first official picture with the new camera.

Today marks the 14th day since we first visited Junior. This is one of the big milestones for our in-country visit because it means tomorrow the papers can be officially filed to apply for a court date which will happen within 10 days of filing, usually on day 10 or the next week day after day 10. One week from today we should hopefully know WHEN the court date will be, and then will have a better idea when Rob will return home. And we can start figuring out when I will come home, about 3 or 3 ½ weeks after Rob does.

Junior was busy playing with bubbles today. He finally figured out to poke at them on his own. So this kept both him and us entertained for about an hour. He figured out where the bubbles came from, and became more interested in the bubble jar instead of the bubbles. He likes out new camera and is now zeroing in on that. I guess getting the pretty purple one might not have been such a good idea. Aside from the camera he’s going after the iPod and speaker. I tried to get him to just push the on/off button, but he seems more interested in grabbing the wire and swinging it like a lasso. Hopefully out of sight will translate to out of mind. We tried different music with him today, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby Christmas music. I do think I saw a little dancing today. Then it was on to more magic blanket playtime. It was raining a little bit today so we could not go outside.

After our visit we were off to the bazaar while Rob stayed at home to wait for the cable internet man, who never came. Just like at home. At the bazaar I got some more socks and pants and a hat, for about $10. I’m sure once I wash them one or more will shrink to too small (we bought him size 2), which will then become another donation to the orphanage. The bazaar we went to last week was closed for ‘cleaning’ so we had to go to another one, in an equally scary neighborhood. With as dirty as it was, it could close for a decade and still not be clean. Let’s just say if I dropped $10 on the ground, I don’t think I would pick it up…and you know how cheap I am.

Tonight I left Robbie at home (he was mopie and missing breakfast foods and the cats) and went out to dinner with some other families here, all with 2 different agencies. After hearing about their apartments, I’m quite happy with our apartment. It’s been an adventure, but at least it’s been relatively comfy. Some regions of the country have issues with a lack of hot water. In Astana it’s quite the opposite. If you dare to turn the hot water all the way to the right (that’s right, the hot water is on the right, not the left) I think it comes out boiling. So if you want a nice sauna, just turn on the bathroom sink water to hot, and wait about 5 minutes. I’m not sure how germs could live through that boiling water, but we still don’t drink it. We got 2 5-gallon bottles of water delivered the first day in the apartment for about $5, so we have been drinking that.

A word about traffic control. Astana is a relatively large city, far larger then any Rob or I have ever lived in. There are traffic lights on most street corners. But in the last week or so we have noticed that in addition to the stop lights controlling traffic, they also have a couple traffic police standing in the middle of each intersection. These guys are not only functional, but stylish in their dress and actions. They wear the typical black and white uniform, topped off with white gloves and a black and white striped baton fastened to their wrist with a string/rope/lanyard/whatever you want to call it. Some times these cops’ traffic direction agrees with the stop lights, and sometimes it does not, adding more excitement to the Kazakhstan driving and pedestrian experience. Last night as I walked to and from the internet café, where I walk at a much slower pace than the cars, I had the chance to watch these guys in action (it was about as exciting as feeding the birds).

It appears that they arbitrarily decide which direction of traffic they will work with first. If you have your left blinker on, this may anger the Traffic Gods, and he may choose a new path for you, such as going straight. Then the guy behind you who also wanted to make a left, well that’s ok and he is allowed. It’s like they are bouncers deciding who are the cool cars worthy of traveling down that road. And if you diss the Traffic Gods and try to play chicken with him? Bad move, because after much horn honking and baton waving he will make a swooping motion and force you to make a u-turn. It’s kind of like the equivalent of “Return to Go, do not collect $200”. Then after a bunch of forced right turns or left turns for random cars in traffic, he will decide to let a bunch of people go straight. Perhaps he is trying to equalize traffic on the city streets. What kind of warped Sim City 2000 power trip are these guys on?

After the stylish man in black has wielded enough power to one stream of cars, he shifts his weight to his heel and does a little swirly rotation and with the swing of a baton he is now directing traffic in the other direction. Now I know where all the geeky Drum Majors from high school and college marching bands have gone--- To Kazakhstan to direct traffic! “We’ve got traffic yes we do, we’ve got traffic how about you!”

With all of this baton waving and heel twirling you’d think he’d get tired and need a break, right? Correct you are. There is usually a 2nd seat drum major ready to hop in to fill his shoes. But don’t think the 1st guy is slacking off; he appears to randomly be collecting donations to the police man’s ball from selected motorists.

This was quite entertaining on my hour and a half walk through the big city en route to the internet cafe. As I had more time for my idle brain on my walk, I was thinking about the adoption process here. They really have their act together with this adoption stuff for the new parent. For the past 2 weeks our only interaction with Junior has been to play with him for 2 hours a day, and wipe his boogers. Then we return him to the caregivers. (This kind of reminds me of what I used to do with my nephew Bryan—we’d play with him, fill him with sugar, get him all riled up, then return him to my poor Sister In Law Peg. It’s a wonder she still talks to me). Then at the end of the 2nd week, they allowed us to start changing his clothes (no diapers yet). You have not seen a funnier sight than 2 college educated adults try to get 2 layers of clothes off a sleepy child, who’s arms are not being co-operative and a child who does not understand the command TouchDown, and then figure out how to get a sleeper with about 10 snaps on him. When we started our clothes changing adventure he was about to fall asleep….and 5 minutes later when we thought we had it covered, he was wide awake and giggling at our inability. We had to use the assistance of the translator to figure out how to get all the snaps done with the bulky diaper. In our defense, we do think the sleep was a couple months too small.

So after a couple weeks of playing and attempted clothing changes, we hope to move on to feeding next week, and then the PhD level of diaper changes.

How many parents out there would have preferred this Child Care for Dummies program instead of the crash course in Parenting Without Sleep For 7 days? Yes, the Kazaks do have it going on!

As I lay on the sofa earlier, without a thought in the world, I had flashbacks to college where life was about as difficult. Our days are filled with sleeping in until we wake up, getting showered, playing with Junior, eating lunch in a cafeteria and then home fro a nap and a walk around town. If my bones did not ache so much when I woke up, I’d think I was back in Indiana, PA and my room mates and I were freshman again. The only major difference, aside from the whole parenting thing, is that we don’t have to get someone to buy us beer.

As reminiscent of college, back in the day when you only got 1 or 2 TV stations if you were lucky to be located on the right side of the dorm, we found ourselves watching some interesting programming the other night. First we watch Synchronized Judo. That’s right, you heard me. And I did not know it existed either. But if we have Synchronized Diving in the Olympics we can do it with Judo. As if that was not entertainment enough, I watch StepMother, with Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon, dubbed into Russian. I don’t think I ever saw it in English, but I must say that in the dubbed version, Julia Roberts gave quite the attitude which is never typical of her characters. At one of the more serious scenes, I could not stop laughing because Julia’s voice was a sassy “Pepe Le Pew meets Natasha”.

We are search of the next Kazak car to photograph for Megan.