A High Yet Wet Adventure!

Tuesday, June 28th

After our day of rest we were ready for some Almaty excitement and nothing satisfies like a little shopping! We went to the Zoom along with Lola our translator and authority on the finishing process of the adoption. She will basically hold our hand through the Medicals for the kids and all the paperwork for passports, visa and exit interviews at the Embassy scheduled for Friday at 3:00. They do all the families that have appointments Friday at 3:00pm so that should be interesting. We have to change our flights from Friday to Saturday and are still having trouble finding flights without having to buy one-way tickets back for us all. The World Cup has made all flights booked along with high season for travel so we are keeping things interesting right up to the end. As a child I loved Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries and my Mom says I have been writing in that style so I guess we are keeping the mystery going. We are expecting the mystery to be solved and for there to be a very happy ending!

We arrived at the Zoom via a taxi and recognized our old “neighborhood.” We stayed just down the street from there at the beginning of our journey so long ago. We looked around a little bit outside and then headed in to the 3rd floor for a little souvenir shopping. We are looking for things that are happy memories for the kids and their heritage. We found some flags, a picture book of Kazakhstan with some English in it, and a doll for Stella and a Gold Man for Sasha. The Gold Man is a symbol of Kaz that was found only in 1998. It was a soldier that was from ancient times and he was dressed on all gold armor. He is all over the place on statues sometimes riding a tiger. Sasha has had his eye on one for a while so after finding out its historical significance we decided to purchase a small one for his room. All the vendors at the Zoom seem to have the same prices.

You can also find lots of native clothing and bow and arrow sets along with canteens, saddles, crops made out of animal feet and animal pelts. It is hard to decide what all to get while considering what will travel well. We plan to go back again before we leave. We find when the kids have a chance to think about it for a while they can narrow down to what they really want. We do want them to have treasures that will last as well as fun things. We wanted to get them a native costume which is velvet. Marina said a vest would be great and based on the prices, we like that idea. From what we understand the older the person the more fancy and longer the coat and taller the hat. We were all about a vest and went into a store and started looking at vests. We wanted Sasha to have one that is bigger than he can wear now and for later when he is bigger but the lady would not even let us look at them saying the vests are only for girls! Well Sasha will not have a vest now…thanks a lot! Oh well, we will see. Marina said that she always recommends a vest. I have never been to a place like this where you are a good paying customer and they will flat out refuse to sell you something for strange reasons but I am sure it is not strange to them just us weird Americans.

We looked around a little more and then Lola left to pick up two families at the airport. They are actually from Atlanta. It is Elaine and Pam and Robert who are in their interim time of adoption called the waiting period. A lot of families go home and come back in about 3 weeks to pick up their children here in Almaty. We had lunch at a little coffee café with a simple sandwich menu. It was good and I got an ice coffee. Just about as we were finishing Lola showed up and we went to see the ski resort and the snow capped mountains. It started to rain shortly after we left and we thought it might be a quick shower but it rained hard all the way up our slow ascent to the resort. After we arrived we found out they were closed. We were bummed but took a few pictures. It was still pretty. We decided we would definitely go back on Thursday. It is gorgeous up there and nice and cool.

On our way down Lola told us the families from Atlanta wanted to have an American dinner with us so we made plans to go to The American Grill. It is a place in town that has good American style food. Lola said there is a place in town that has a dinner show of authentic Kazakh food with a horse and rider performance in costume. We will do that another day hopefully before we go home. Anyways we met them at 6:30 for dinner and the food was really good and we had a good time catching up. They leave tomorrow morning at 7:30 am. We promised them we would not be here when they get back in a few weeks!

We got home and worked on trying to get some flights home on Saturday the 1st but do not have anything confirmed yet. We will though. God is faithful. I pray He has found us faithful!