A little voice in my ear

This morning I was awoken by a little voice in my ear. I opened my groggy eyes to see a little boy staring at me ready to start his day.

I guess that was our cue to get up. After breakfast we received a visit from our coordinator Bayan. We were happy to see that she had Cooper’s new passport. We handed her part 2 of our citizenship paperwork and reminded her of our wish to make our next Thursday departure date. We are hoping and praying that this will be possible.

 Last night when it was close to dusk we went for another walk along bulvar Nurzhol. As you can see it looks amazing after dark.

Today seemed to be the warmest day we have had since we arrived in Astana. It must have been somewhere in the high twenties. We got to spend some fun time at one of Cooper’s favorite play areas. A play structure just outside of the mall that you saw a picture of in yesterday’s blog.

Cooper seems to be able to find a lot of interesting things to play with like:

Dad’s slippers

Or even empty water bottles. At one point he was hauling around these 3 big bottles.

Or even boxes. No wait, that was Tanya ;).

You really have to be quick to catch all of his Kodak moments.

Ryan, you’re welcome to hang out with Cooper anytime. He really is a chick magnet and he doesn’t really need any coaching as he usually picks out the cute ones to talk to.

As Mike mentioned in his blog comment, there was some very important news in Kazakhstan today. The launch of the Soyuz rocket with the Cirque du Soleil dude on it. Unfortunately it was a little too far away from us to see in person, but we were fortunate to witness it live and in English on the BBC World channel during Cooper’s nap. BBC World and Fashion TV are the only channels we have that are in English. Two more than we had in Borovoe.

Unlike when he was at the baby house, Cooper doesn’t really seem to be very interested in TV. Maybe there are too many other exciting things to do in our flat.

I’m sure Cooper will eventually get interested in watching Thomas, Handy Manny, and Mighty Machines DVD’s if his cousins have anything to do with it :).

Another day out & about in Astana

Shopping with an 18-month old is hard work people! (As I’m sure most of you are laughing right now and saying that of course you know that.) We decided to venture out this morning and go to the old city centre. We wanted to look at a few markets for some souvenirs and we wanted to see some sights in that part of the city. As Astana tourism intel on the internet is hard to come by, we’ve started using one of the tricks I’ve learned from watching too much Amazing Race. If you want to find out info from someone who speaks English, head to the nearest hotel (preferably a business one) and pester the concierge there. Thankfully we have a pretty swanky hotel around the corner and I think they’re starting to get used to the English guy (with the wife and kiddo in some crazy carrying contraption pacing outside) and they’ve been quite kind to help us.

We did some browsing in a few shops and then we started to walk around and explore. I love it that people readily approach you on the street, ask if we speak English and then say that they want to practice their English. This has happened to us multiple times both in Borovoe and now here so usually you just have a polite little conversation and then they’re happy and off they go.

These were some of the sights we saw today as we walked near the river:

And by then a little someone was getting a bit tired and hungry, so we headed to one of our favorite places – the mall, of course! As soon as we got there and Cooper saw his favorite playhouse, he suddenly perked right up. He had a great time playing while Daddy got the food. Then he ran over, ate all his smiley-face potatoes and then decided to try some of Mom’s burritos and decided that he liked them VERY much. Then he ran back to his playhouse, made friends with some ‘older’ women (two 20-somethings) and they even made sure to wave to him as they left.

I know I’ve mentioned this before and it probably seems not very cultural of us, but one of the regular activities we do is go to one or the other of the two new malls that are near us. Both are REALLY child friendly and have large play areas inside and outside. And Cooper seems to have a bit of a runny nose, so I want him to be able to run and play without being in the wind. So the mall has really been a great treat for all of us. Last night we went to the mall that’s two blocks away from us.

Cooper was excited to discover that one of their play structures was the same as one at the baby house and he had a great time going down the slides and meeting new friends – although he did get possessive of one slide and got a bit upset when he found out other kids wanted to go down it too. LOL And while Mama and Cooper took the play area by storm, Dada was able to watch us and download some things using the free (albeit slow) wifi. So the big and little kids were all quite content. 😉

We even decided to let Cooper try his first ice cream cone. To my surprise he wasn’t that interested in it but, oh well, that meant more for me. 🙂

 

As far as eating, I am starting to figure out what to feed Cooper that he will enjoy. We mainly do soup and some sort of hot cereal for lunch. For supper it’s a mixture of cereals, veggies, &/or meat (that’s the meal we really are still experimenting on). Breakfast is the easiest: oatmeal and yogurt. (And just stick with the same oatmeal each day and don’t try to get too fancy. Apparently sometimes I am trying to be too creative. LOL)

As far as sleeping – I am hesitant to say anything for fear that will make it change. But for the past few nights and naptimes, we seem to have come up with a plan that works and that has meant no tears. Hooray! Last night Cooper was in bed at 9PM. He was up just up once around 3AM (I could hear him moving around) so I took him to the potty and then it was right back to bed and he slept until 9AM!

Oh yes, and Auntie Marla asked if we call him Cooper. Yes, we call him Cooper all the time – in fact, I’ve gotten really used to it and I think he has too. We played a game the last week at the baby house where I’d hold his hand and point to myself and say ‘Mama’ (or Ken and say ‘Dada’) and then I’d point to him and say ‘Cooper’. And we’d repeat this over and over quite a bit. He still likes to do it now, but when it gets to him, he likes to make up names for himself and then he’ll look at you with a big grin and a twinkle in his eye. Overall he seems to respond to Cooper and when we talk to him I’d say we talk about 90% in English and 10% in Russian.

As for the paperwork – I’m glad you all keep asking me and reminding me. Really! We seem to be so busy trying to see the sights and have fun with Cooper that I keep forgetting that we really should be waiting on pins and needles trying to get all this paperwork through. Anyways, we haven’t heard from our coordinator yet today – perhaps later this afternoon. We’re not sure if she has Cooper’s passport yet or not. The thing that is making it a little bit slow is that the paperwork has to go from Schuchinsk to Kokshetau to Astana and then back to Kokshetau again. We’re not really sure why it has to go back to Kokshetau since Astana is the capital and it is a far bigger city. But apparently that’s how the process has to work. So we’re hoping these extra days in transit don’t slow things down too much. Once the passport is issued it needs to go to another government department to get approved and get a visa put in it. Then we have to courier everything to Moscow and get it couriered back. So I’m hoping we can somehow get everything couriered in a day max because at this point every extra day it takes will probably make a huge difference. So that’s all we know for now but we’ll keep you all posted on where the paperwork is at.

In the meantime, Cooper is enjoying the sights of Astana:

Shave and a haircut- two bits!

If you have a real sharp eye you might have noticed some of the growth on my face in recent pics of me. Lately I have been a little lazy in the shaving department. It was only yesterday that I decided to remove the barely noticeable cheesy mustache and goatee that I have let grow since our court day.

Being away for over two months can make it hard to maintain a short hairstyle so after a tiny bit of helpful nudging from the MIL (mother-in-law) I decided today to walk into a salon in our local mall and somehow successfully communicate my request for a haircut. Luckily I had a picture of me with a fairly recent haircut. I know what you might be thinking. No I don’t keep a picture of just me in my IPod :). It’s a nice couple pic of Tanya and me taken when we had family pictures made. As it turns out, I’m pretty sure my hair right now doesn’t look anything like the pic I showed him, but at least now I should be a welcome addition to the Kazakhstan military :).  

Anyways enough about me. It turned out to be another nice sunny morning in Astana so we decided to go on another family walk after breakfast. We have been taking advantage of living so close to some of the most beautiful sites of Astana that we have seen so far.

 

Behind us is the Bayterek monument. It’s a white latticed tower 97 meters in height crowned by a large golden orb. According to Lonely Planet, the Bayterek embodies a Kazakh legend in which the mythical bird Samruk lays a golden egg containing the secrets of human desires and happiness in a tall poplar tree, beyond human reach.

This is an area called bulvar Nurzhol. It is lined with beautiful gardens, plazas and fountains. The fountains were not running this morning but we hope to post a few pics of them in the future.

There were these giant Chia-pets that Cooper enjoyed a lot.

And even this really cool one made to look like a traditional Kazak Yurt.

I will end today’s blog with a pic of mom going to any length to entertain Cooper, but also just happening to entertain dad at the same time ;).

Finding Nemo

Poor Cooper, but Daddy said that we had to have an obligatory embarrassing photo that he will cringe at when he gets older. So here, my friends, is where we spend a lot of our time.

Ken has said that I can just start calling him the Baby Whisperer. And I must agree he does have some really good techniques. Mama did a bit of shopping yesterday during Cooper’s nap and by the time I was back, Cooper had a successful potty time and was busy playing with Dad. And for the past two nights, Dad has been the one to get Cooper to sleep and yesterday it only took 15 minutes! In fact today when I put Cooper down for his nap it was Dada’s name he was saying as he drifted off to sleep.

In spite of all this I don’t think Ken is quite ready to be selling any of his golf clubs. Although he may be rethinking his assumptions that golfing with a little one would be so easy because they could just sit in the cart and nap or relax while he’s making his shot. 🙂

Yesterday was a beautiful evening and since Cooper didn’t have much outside time we decided to go for a walk around our neighbourhood. In the above photo the boys are standing right near the base of the tower you can see out our apartment window. Over Ken’s shoulder you can see two gold towers and what I believe is the president’s palace. There is a nice long promenade all the way towards the palace. There’s lots of flowers, tree sculptures, monuments, etc. all the way along. And there’s a large water fountain that changes its spray every couple of minutes. We were there just as it was getting dark and I could see why so many people have said Astana is like the Disneyland of capital cities. There were light shows on the tower and on the palace and the water fountains kept changing color too. It was gorgeous and there were lots of families (and even some wedding parties) out and about enjoying the scenery. I wished we had our camera along although I know we could never take any photos that would really do it all justice. Anyways, we will probably go back there again soon because it’s a great way to spend an evening and Cooper loved running around there, watching the water fountains and trying to pose along with some people in their photo.

Like we mentioned before, Cooper loves meeting people and making new friends (and getting his picture taken). I’ve noticed many times that he even loves talking to the mannequins in the store windows. Today he was even lucky enough to be able to go right up to a couple and he had a great little conversation with them.

Today we were up bright and early at 6AM (well I think it was closer to 5, but Cooper was kind enough to lie in bed and keep himself entertained until about 6ish) so we had lots of time to get ready for the Aquarium this morning.

We did get to see a lot of fish,

some turtles,

and go on this moving sidewalk with fish all around us.

And we even saw a ‘monster fish’ as Cooper’s cousin Jonah would say.

But after all that I think the most exciting thing for Cooper was the car he could sit in outside the Aquarium.

Nevertheless, this adventure seemed to tire him out and he was asleep for his nap as soon as his head hit the pillow. I’m sure he’s resting up for the next escapades to come!

Our Astana flat

I agree with Tanya that it has been so much fun to watch Cooper enjoy spending a lot of time with us as well as witnessing his never-ending curiosity of every new surrounding he encounters. Whether it be seeing what mom and dad are up to, or new strangers he meets in the mall or even the bustle of everyday traffic observed on our long walks.

I think as far as attachment goes, he is doing very well in that department. I think that being fortunate to be able to visit him for a few hours every day for 50 days at the baby house has been a great factor in helping with the bonding process. We usually can expect a lot of hugs each day as he loves to cuddle. He can also be very mischievous at times doing things like throwing away a piece of food or snack and then yelling out for us to give it back to him like its some kind of game to him. We are learning new things about his personality every day.

I would have to agree with those that say his eating habits mimic a little of Tanya’s, but more of mine in the appetite department. From what we observed at the baby house Cooper can take in a lot of food and never seems to be full. (This could help daddy’s wish to help him grow up to be big and strong so he can be one of the few players born in Kazakhstan to play in the NHL.) 🙂 This also can make it tough for mom and dad to be able to eat our own food or even sneak a snack for ourselves sometimes. He definitely does follow Tanya in the being picky department. It appears that texture is big issue in what he will eat. It might just be because as Jila mentioned he hasn’t tried it before or isn’t used to eating those types of foods. This will most likely change in time especially after some time watching daddy eat. 🙂

The weather has been great the last few days, most likely hovering around the plus 20 to 25 range. We were hoping to be able to make it to the Aquarium today but decided we would maybe try for tomorrow as we got up a little later then normal because of some sleep issues.

I don’t think it helped that we could hear a lot of drilling and banging from some construction just above us until late in the evening. It also didn’t help having a super loud base humming until about 2:30 in the morning. I think there must be a disco somewhere in the building. Is there such a thing as baby ear plugs? LOL

Cooper has very much enjoyed exploring every space of our massive flat. Here is a pic of our apartment building from the outside. We are 5 floors up.

On the right side you enter to a nice sized foyer

Through the French doors is the largest room the living/dining room

There’s a long and narrow sized kitchen

A large master bedroom with ensuite bathroom

And a large spare bedroom with a walk-in closet – for anyone from back home that might come to visit 😉

My personal favorite is this fully loaded shower unit. We haven’t figured out how to work most of the toys in it yet :). We definitely could use one of these back home.

Yesterday Tanya showed you our wonderful view that we have so I will leave you with this cute pic of Cooper’s reaction when we first entered the flat a few days ago. He could barely get his hat off fast enough to go explore.

Curious Cooper

It’s fun just to watch Cooper run and around and explore. I love to observe him and wonder if he finds something fascinating because it’s the first time he’s seen it or if he just really enjoys it. We have a few toys here and he seems to like playing with all of them, but like a lot of toddlers, even mundane everyday items make great playthings. 

Overall I would say that Cooper seems to have adjusted really well. I love it that when he’s unsure of something or a little bit scared, he’ll come running to me and want to cuddle really close. His preferred position with me seems to be the forward facing cuddle. That’s how he sat for most of the ride to Astana. His eyes were droopy but he was so curious so he kept forcing himself awake.

As any new parents we’ve definitely had some successes and failures. As I had suspected (and read), sleep time is quite a challenge. After I was kicked repeatedly the first night (by Cooper, not Ken 🙂 ) and we all tossed and turned, I agreed with Ken that we needed to come up with a different solution. Ken came up with the ingenious idea to bring the mattress from the spare room into our bedroom. Thank goodness I brought a few baby blankets along, so now Cooper has his own cozy place to sleep. Once he’s asleep, Cooper seems to enjoy this arrangement quite well – note though that there is a definite emphasis on the first 3 words of this sentence. The getting to sleep part is definitely tricky. Yesterday it took about 3 hours to get to sleep and today we got it down to 2 hours – although I think today there was even more unhappy sounds if that is possible! I think half the problem is he just doesn’t want to go to sleep. And I’m not sure if that’s because he’s having so much fun, he misses his friends/caregivers at the babyhouse, he’s used to sleeping in a room with lots of other kids, he’s worried that when he wakes up we’ll be gone, or something entirely different.

It’s a little tricky at times because Cooper is definitely at the age where he knows what he wants, but he usually can’t explain it to us and we don’t really know how to decipher his signals yet. But overall he’s really doing fantastic. After a few minor protests, he now quite willingly sits on the potty (although he usually expects a bit of a Cheerio bribe in return). We’ve even had a few successes in that area and considering we haven’t really developed a set routine yet I think that’s a pretty good accomplishment.

Food has been a little bit tricky too. As you all know, Cooper has quite the appetite. Breakfast is usually pretty easy – he seems to love oatmeal and yogurt. Lunch and supper seem to be the problematic ones. He loves his bread so that is one thing he will eat. Otherwise I’ve tried to give him some luncheon meat, pasta and a Kaz dish (mante) but he doesn’t like any of those. If we eat out, he’ll eat the fries but spit out the chicken. So today we went grocery shopping again and hopefully he likes some of the rice cereals and soups we picked out for him. 🙂

I was very excited to discover that we have a washing machine here – and not just any washing machine, but a front loader that also spins the clothes really well and leaves them fairly dry! (Then we just hang them on the drying rack that’s set up in the spare bedroom.) So that was the excitement for the morning: doing laundry. And the bonus was that I even had a little helper.

And afterwards the washing process proved to be quite riveting entertainment.

This afternoon it was nice and sunny so we decided to go explore the area. We are staying in the new part of Astana. There are lots of beautiful new buildings around here and this is the view out our apartment window:

You’ll notice the round structure that’s behind the building across the street. That’s the top of a tower which is quite a popular tourist attraction. (Sorry I don’t know the proper spelling of the tower name at the moment, but when we visit it we’ll tell you more about it. I know our friend Jila wrote all about it on her blog and that made me want to visit it. So it was a nice surprise to find out it is just across the street from us!) It’s beautifully landscaped and you can take a ride to the top and see all the famous buildings that are around here. Plus I love looking at it at night because it is beautifully lit.

Our main destination today turned out to be surprise, surprise another mall that is about a half hour walk away. Cooper is now used to the carrier, but yes it is true the locals are not! We’ve gotten used to them sort of staring at us and I try to tell myself it’s because of the carrier and not because I have hideous hair or something stuck in between my teeth. Ha ha

This mall is also pretty new – if my research is correct, it is part of a chain of malls called ‘Mega Centre’ and they are owned by the same group that owns Ikea (but alas no Ikea here). They did have some brand name stores like Levi’s, Adidas, Lush, Baskin Robbins and KFC. The only thing we are really amazed to not find here is coffee to go. There are a fair number of coffee shops around but so far we have yet to find any with to go cups! Where is a Starbucks or Timmies when you need one?

They also had some really nice play areas in the food court and outside. Cooper seems to really enjoy being out and about and meeting new people. He’s constantly talking to people and on the playground he tries to make new friends. His curiosity reminds me of Scully’s when we go for a walk. So I think they will make quite a pair together.

Here he is playing at the mall:

 

Tomorrow we are thinking of going to visit the aquarium. Some of you were asking what our itinerary in Astana is. The great thing is we don’t really have one! Our coordinator is doing most of our paperwork for us and a majority of that is just waiting for all the government departments to “push the paper” so-to-speak. We are REALLY hoping that everything goes quickly and that we can get on the flight we tentatively booked for October 8th. We would really like to be home for Thanksgiving. But in the meantime we are having so much fun playing with Cooper and doing whatever we feel like doing. Also, some people asked what a good time to call is. Occasionally we are out and about but otherwise morning or evening your time works well for us. We are 11 hours ahead so the only time that doesn’t work well is afternoons (because afternoon your time is the middle of the night for us and vice versa).

Well, this Mama better go to bed in case kiddo is up early tomorrow. Take care!

Kudos to all parents out there. This is hard work! :)

First off, thanks for all the great comments after yesterday’s blog post. They brightened our day. Our new telephone number for anyone that would like to chat with us here in Astana is 011-7-7172-928676. We will be attempting to use dial-up internet in our new flat to post our blogs each day. Most likely the blogs will hopefully be posted by 12:30 PM each day.

We had both been itching to show you Cooper’s face now that you all know his backside pretty well 🙂 . Congrats to all the people that finally guessed Cooper’s name! Special mention should go to Shane who gave only one guess (Cooper) AND said that he liked the name. Also, Jennifer gave a short list of names but she did mention Cooper and say it was a name that she liked. And the first person to guess Cooper’s name on Tuesday was Aunt Susan (good investigative work).

The day started a little rough. We woke up early with the pretty straightforward plan of a shower, some breakfast, and little relaxation before the big day that lay ahead for us. There was just one problem with that plan. No water.  😦 Yes, apparently our luck had been great up until this day as we had always had water. It turns out that there had been a notice on the entrance door that water would be turned off for the day. The only problem for us was that the note was in Russian.

So unfortunately we had to leave the flat with a pile of dirty dishes and un-showered. Great for posing for pictures! 😉 We were picked up by a small Subaru car. We amazingly were able to find room for the four of us and four large pieces of luggage and a pile of gifts for the baby house. Our translator Natasha met us at the baby house. We were able to give all the gifts out first before picking up Cooper to say our goodbyes to all the caregivers. They all seemed to be very happy for us to become Cooper’s parents. Here are a few of the pics we took. This one is the doctor for the baby house.

 

The new Gerbrandt family plus one leaving the baby house.

 

We loaded into the Subaru and met our coordinator to sign a few more documents then it was off to Astana, and quite the ride it was. This driver was a bit of a lead foot. I glanced at the speedometer and at times he reached speeds of 160 Kph. We didn’t really know how Cooper would handle the drive or even how often he had been in a car. The drive lasted about 2 hours and 15 minutes but we were pleasantly surprised that there were very few tears shed. He seemed to be very curious of all the surroundings and didn’t sleep as much as we expected. We hoped this would work to our advantage when bed time arrived.

We arrived at our apartment which looked to be a newer high-rise with about 10 floors. Our flat was on the fifth floor. Our Coordinator had mentioned to us that this flat would be bigger then the one in Burabay. This was an understatement. It is massive. There is a very large dining/living room at least 35 feet wide, 2 bathrooms, 2 large bedrooms, and a large kitchen. Cooper was all smiles as he wandered through all the rooms. After some snooping ourselves we decided to strap on the Ergo in search of the mall. Tanya and I were very hungry and had not had any lunch. It turns out the mall is only about a 15 minute walk from our flat. The mall has 3 floors and looks very clean and new. Quite a difference from what we had become accustomed to in Burabay. The third floor has a food court and a Cineplex with about 7 screens. We managed to successfully order something to eat and a quick look around then it was time to go home to get ready for Cooper’s bedtime. Up until now things had gone fairly smoothly but we weren’t optimistic that bed time would go as smoothly. The problem was that we didn’t have a crib. We decided to let him sleep in our bed between us. Surprisingly after some cry time, but mostly because he hadn’t had a proper nap during the day he finally fell asleep. We were both exhausted, but felt we had passed the test for day one of parenthood. I don’t know how my parents did it with 4 boys 🙂

Well, we had better go to sleep so we have lots of energy for our adventures tomorrow.

Introducing…

Cooper Yegor Gerbrandt!

1…

One more sleep until the reality of parenthood hits us. Once again I must say we are so thankful for all the great support and encouragement we have received from family, friends, and also complete strangers who read our blog. Although we are so far away in distance, we have still felt very close to home thanks to all the blog comments, emails, and phone calls.

I am proud to say we have survived the last 2 weeks of taking the bus between Burabay and the baby house in Schuchinsk. I am not a big fan of taking the bus and very rarely do it back home. These trips have been a humorous adventure at times with the language barrier but for the most part they have been a relaxing time to unwind and debrief after our time with our kiddo. Throughout our bus misfortunes we have always managed to get to where we wanted to be in the end.

I won’t miss the sometimes aggressive people at the bus stop asking to give us a ride to Burabay after our visits with ‘C’ each day. We would always respond with no thanks in Russian but some would keep trying to persuade us. There would always be at least 3-4 asking us each day. In the mornings at our bus stop in Burabay we would usually avoid this as there would normally be a bus waiting before we arrived. We aren’t sure if we will be attempting to use the bus in Astana or not. Hopefully most attractions are within walking distance. 🙂

The people of Burabay have been great to us. As Tanya mentioned yesterday, we have met some very nice people. Being such a small town and with the tourist season being pretty much over I’m sure Tanya and I stick out like a sore thumb. We’ve had quite a few funny experiences on our walk where people (mostly younger ones) will overhear us talking and they will say something like “Hi, How are you?” or “What is your name?” We would answer but then they wouldn’t say anything more. I guess that was the extent of their English or maybe they got shy right away. I think the kids must learn some English in school because we met an English teacher on the bus during one of our rides home from the baby house.

Today was some Daddy time with kiddo for the first hour as Mom had to run a few quick errands and pick up some last minute gifts for tomorrow’s big Gotcha Day. Things were going great. We were playing with drums, cars, blocks.

But then Dad made the mistake of saying “Where’s Momma?” in Russian. ‘C’ then went to the door expecting Momma and wasn’t too happy to not see her there. Momma finally arrived from her shopping excursion to a smiling boy with outstretched arms.

We rushed back home afterwards because we had received a phone call in the morning before we left saying that our coordinator Bayan would visit our flat at some time this afternoon to get some signatures from us. So we didn’t want to take the chance of missing her by not being at home when she arrived.

For those of you that are still playing the name game if you look real closely there is a clue of kiddo’s name in the Friday Sept 18^th blog (titled 5…).

It will surely be hard for all of us to say our good-byes tomorrow. We have been very blessed to have had such a great staff taking care of ‘C’ for us at the baby house. All the staff we have had the pleasure of bumping into have greeted us with smiles and Hello’s each day. We have nothing but kind words for the way that the children are taken care of here.

The Russian word of the day is ‘До свидания!’ (pronounced da sviDAniya) which means good-bye!

2…

Wow, it’s hard to believe we had our second-last visit at the baby house today. As of tomorrow, it will be exactly 50 days since we met ‘C’ and tomorrow’s visit will be number 45 (we just missed 5 days when ‘C’ was sick and we weren’t able to see him). A lot of adoptive families are not able to stay in Kaz for the whole time so they will do two trips – they will go home after court and then one parent will return once their kiddo’s paperwork is ready for them to fly home. We are so fortunate that we could stay the entire time and that we could have all these extra days to visit with ‘C’. It seems to me he’s really seemed to develop over the past 10 days. I’ve noticed he’ll try to imitate words we say to him or words that his talking toys are saying. Here he is playing with Mama and one of his favorite toys (I’m glad we have some toys that he’s used to that he can play with in Astana).

If you don’t play with that toy for a little while it says “Bye, bye!” so now ‘C’ is practicing saying it too.

We’re really curious to see what our kiddo’s reaction will be when he comes with us on Wednesday. He’s always really excited to see us when we arrive at the baby house, but when we leave he seems fine to watch us go. Today the nurses brought him outside to watch us leave and he just seemed to look at us like he didn’t really know us and he didn’t seem bothered when we walked away. So Ken’s guess is that he might be crying when we leave. I’m still thinking he might be so interested in what’s going on because he is a very curious boy that he’ll be excited to see what’s going to happen. I think he’s been in a car a few times before, although it is rare that the kids in the baby house go anywhere in vehicles very often. So either he’ll think this is a novelty or he’ll get freaked out from it. I’m sure I will be a little scared because they don’t use car seats in Kazakhstan, so we’ll be driving on a highway for three hours and he’ll have free rein of the back seat.

After the baby house we went to our favorite little fast food place in Schuchinsk and we each had one of their mini pizzas for the last time. We doubly enjoy the place because it also has free wifi and we were desperate to check our blog comments, emails and to download the latest news stories. We were so desperate that when the connection kept crashing, Ken asked if he could go work on their equipment and he had us back up and running in no time. We also ran a couple errands and I’m happy to say that I found a pair of shoes! The tricky part about buying shoes here is that they often only have shoes in whatever size is on display. So you’re stuck with trying to figure out what shoes are in your size (which is very few in my case) and then seeing if you like the style and the comfort. Check out the snazzy silver runners I found.

I’m quite certain they are indeed the high quality that they profess because they set me back a whole $6.93 USD. LOL

Since we had so much success with lunch, the internet and shoe shopping, we decided we might as well head back to Borovoe. It just started to drizzle as we reached the bus stop which was about 1:20PM. So we waited, politely declined multiple inquiries from cab drivers and waited some more. By 1:54PM there was still no bus in sight and the rain had started to fall. Another ten minutes and a bus arrived that had Borovoe (along with some other city names) painted on it. We were so glad to get out of the rain we grabbed a seat and continued our conversation. The bus pulled away and a few minutes later we noticed that it took a different turn than all our other buses take. Ah, we’re probably just taking an extra loop, we reasoned. We had just made a stop when the girl came to collect our money. We mentioned Borovoe to her, she looked at us, said ‘no’ and then she yelled at the bus driver to stop the bus. Well, at least we didn’t have to pay, but now we were on the side of a very unfamiliar road in Schuchinsk in the middle of the pouring rain! Thankfully our sense of direction is fairly accurate, so we knew the general direction we needed to go. After zigzagging down some roads for about a kilometer, we managed to find the main road to Borovoe. Then we huddled under an overhang, waited for a bus to come, Ken flagged it down and we made it back by about 3:00PM. Success. Ha ha. And we were doing so well! Ah well, it made for a good story and we really have enjoyed taking the bus besides our numerous bus misadventures.

I can’t believe this is my last blog entry from Borovoe (since Ken will be writing tomorrow’s). What’s definitely made the place so memorable are all the people that we’ve met in our journeys around here. I’m sure most of the people in town have been talking about us. We’re the strange English-speaking people who came in the midst of tourist season but unlike the other tourists, we never left. A few shopkeepers have even decided to finally try to ask us what on earth we are doing here. The conversation usually goes “American?” Us: “Canadian”. And then we get a sort of ‘oh’ and a nod. If they’re really brave then they’ll say “Working?” (in Russian) and I’ll say “Tourist” (in English) because I don’t know how to explain ourselves and then we get big smiles and they go back to talking amongst themselves about the strange English people. J

We’ve particularly gotten to know the two ladies that work at the internet café. They alternate days and rain or shine, one of them is always working from 9-9. Then there’s the girl at our corner shop – she is so kind and always has a big smile and greeting for us. I finally noticed that Russians don’t really chat to their shopkeeper like you would say chat to your local Starbucks barista. I think they found it amusing the way I would always try to make this mini-conversation, even though I didn’t make much sense, and after a while they would always make a little conversation with us.

Then there’s this Baba (Nina) that lives upstairs on the 4th floor. She walks very slowly with a cane and we first met her when she was returning to her apartment with a huge 5L jar of pickles. She was struggling to get her purchase up the stairs so we carried it for her. Then a few days later we left the apartment and Nina & all the other Babas were sitting outside. As soon as they saw us an animated conversation began. We had no idea what they were saying, but eventually determined that some of Nina’s laundry fell and she was convinced it fell onto our balcony. I was pretty it was not our balcony since I had just been out there, but how were we to explain that. So, we trooped upstairs, had a look around and she discovered it was the neighbour next door. I also love coming home at lunch and seeing all the Baba’s gathered under a tree with a large pail of milk between them getting their milk supply for the week.

Those are just a few of the fond memories I have of Borovoe and the people that live here. We’ve gotten so used to our daily routine that it will probably be a little strange moving on and not seeing these people along the way.