Petro Day 1

Here's an old entry from the written files that I am just now uploading...

We made it to Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan. We flew from the south of Kazakhstan, by the Chinese border, to north Kazakhstan, just 40 minutes south of Russia. Talk about a major difference. Almaty was in the mountains, a huge old city of 3 million. Petro is in the north, flat land, a city of 250,000. I like Petro much better. There is a hotel here, called the Skiff, where there are many American families adopting. They all eat together, shop together. We met them tonight and had dinner. It was pretty fun. I am looking forward to staying here.

Before we can visit the Baby House, we need permission from the government. Our previous permission was granted for the Almaty region; now we need permission for the Petro region. We should have the necessary documents to visit the Baby House on Monday.

So we’ll spend the weekend resting, visiting the bazaar, checking out the city. It is super hot here, and no buildings have air conditioning, including our apartment. We’ll be staying here through Monday, then on to the Skiff with the other Americans.

We finally got the phone card to work, and now we can communicate with the boys. Owen doesn’t really care to talk on the phone, so even when I call, he sometimes won’t talk to me. Stinker. At least I can get a “hello” and “bye-bye Mama” from Ari.

We need to get out and take some pictures of Petro. It’s a cool city. I did post some pictures of Almaty in Flickr, so you can always check over there for new pictures.

Now I need to find an internet café to upload this. We don’t have internet in our apartment yet, although we should have in-room access at the Skiff.

So far today I beat Keith at Connect Four 10 times. I also read a book, and we watched some volleyball tournament on television. We also like to play rummy. At last, I have him trapped and he has to play games with me!

No camel or horse meat today. I bought a kilo of cherries from a lady at the grocery and I am looking forward to eating those tonight. We bought ice cream cones on the street today, and they cost 13 tenge each, which figures to about 12 cents American. Cheap ice cream! I’m loving that. Also, they don’t sell Diet Coke here, just Coke Light. I think the difference is that Coke Light has 1 calorie, and there is a slight taste difference. I like Coke Light just fine. The food is different, for sure. I’m trying to be adventurous, but I admit that yesterday, I just ordered French fries. I needed something that tasted familiar! And French fries apparently are universal.