Almaty Day 2

Day 2 in Almaty was no better. There are no children here for us. We drove about an hour and a half outside the city to see the only available girl in the region. We did not accept her because of her health condition. She is about 18 months old, but is not sitting up on her own, and barely holds her head up. She is 15 pounds. This is not a developmental delay just from living in a baby house. She was very, very premature and the baby house did not have the resources to help her. She needs more help than we can offer. It was very sad to meet her, because she smiled and grunted at Keith. She did not want me to hold her, but lunged over for him, and held his fingers and made noises at him. I’m sure the decision was more difficult for him when we said we could not adopt her. After we said no to her, we were told that our documents would be returned to us and that this coordinator (the in-country one) could not help us any further. So much for choosing a child in-country; the one was saw was very sick, and no others were shown to us.

After we got home from the baby house, Keith and I were very confused, and disappointed. I was ready to come home. It’s extremely difficult to plan for over a year to come and meet your daughter, and when you get here, after the waiting, the paperwork, the money, to be told that there are no children here for you? Unbelievably cruel.

Our coordinator came over to the apartment (the one we brought with us) and saw that I was an absolute emotional wreck; he sat down and made some more calls. He was in touch with another coordinator in a different region, and apparently there are more opportunities for children there. So, very long afternoon story made short, Keith and I are taking a short in-country flight today to another region, then a 5-hour bus ride, and then we will meet more children.

(I think.)

(I hope.)

So far it’s been one bad day and one awful day. Not exactly what I had in mind. It doesn’t help that we haven’t been able to figure out the phone lines, and we haven’t talked to the boys since we’ve been here.

After all that, we went with some coordinators to a Kazakhstani restaurant. There were musicians playing traditional instruments, dancers in traditional dress, it was very entertaining. We ordered a traditional meal, called Five Fingers. It is a huge dish of noodles, with horse, lamb and camel meat, and then topped with onions and potatoes. I managed to taste the horse and lamb, but I had to draw the line at camel. Keith was not deterred, and ate everything in front of him. The meat didn’t taste bad; in fact, the horse tasted just like roast beef. It was just the thought that it was horse, and camel, you know? We had a really great time at dinner. By the time we left, everyone was up front doing this weird bouncy (vodka-induced, I’m sure) dance, and we joined them for one song (Keith excluded – the man will eat camel, but won’t dance). We fell into bed around midnight, and finally slept a little bit. The jet lag and strange pillow and bed have taken their toll, and we’ve been sleeping only about four hours each night.

This journey is so far unpredictable at best. We are hopeful that the trip today will result in a meeting with a healthy girl. We’re assured there are three healthy girls there. This gives me hope. Yesterday I really felt like our two choices were either a healthy boy or a sick girl, and neither of those was our reason for coming. A healthy boy was plan B, and we could have that here in Almaty without leaving the city. But we decided to keep pushing and see what our coordinator came up with.

So I’m off to pack up our things and get ready for the flight. We’ll make one more trip over to the Ramstore to upload this message, and hopefully find a new charger for my cell phone. Mine is burned up, I guess from the converter we used to plug it in. Seeing that text messages are the only means of communication we have right now, we need that cell phone!

Don’t feel sad for us (I spent myself doing just that yesterday, and it didn’t really help, honestly). We will find a child here somewhere. We didn’t come all this way to give up after two bad days. Thanks for your best wishes and prayers. That will sustain us.