Moving the blog

http://questforourdaughter.wordpress.com/

for some reason I cant get on this website anymore. I don't know why but it only lets me on about 1 out of every 40 or 50 tries.
Luckily I made it on for at least a second or two so I will send out invitations to all soon.
If you need a invitation send one to twolabs@laptopoasis.net

Sorry!

Found it!

The big news of the day is we found the suitcase! As the days go on we kept thinking of things we needed that were in it. So that's a pretty big relief.
We've also started roaming around town more and venturing further away.
Saturday we are going to go to what the locals call a bazaar. A market place with local goods and food. We drove by one today and it looked quite interesting. I think I might have to try some Borscht http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borscht (beet soup). ha ha not really. You won't see me anywhere near beets.

But if I leave here without one of those fuzzy Russian type furry hats I will not be happy.

Now a few pics:

I had to try em!


Mom pulling her kid on a sled not too far from our apartment. This seems to be a popular way for kids to travel around here.


These seem to be at random spots around town. When your walking around they sure make great reference points!

Here we are!

Here We ARE!



Hello, Family & friends!

As I type this we are hovering over Aktobe, Kazakhstan. About an hour away from Uralsk. It has been ridiculously tiresome getting to this point but we are about to land and we will be done with flying for a bit. I am typing this in Microsoft Word and then I will post it later on the blog so by the time you read this we should already be set up in our apartment/hotel.
Mom’s and Dad’s – Seems like since we departed ways 30 or so hours ago it has just been one long continuous day for us. It is 8:00am right now Kaz time so your time should be 9:00pm Sunday night. We haven’t really slept all that much. We tried to sleep in Frankfurt but lying on your side on a row of seats just didn’t get the job done. So from Frankfurt to Almaty I got a few nods in and Alina got a few in here and there also. It’s amazing how being up for 30 hours is such a strain but getting 2 hours sleep on a plane ride can make you feel like you slept 10 hours. Of course, just getting that much sleep doesn’t last too long and you’re right back to dragging again.
Alina is sleeping now so I won’t be able to get her 2 cents for this post but just know the reality of the situation hit us very hard when we left Almaty just a couple hours ago.

When we got to Chicago yesterday we really had to bust it across the airport to make the connecting flight to Germany. We did make it with about 15 minutes to spare but I know we have never had to hotfoot it like that before in our life. We don’t remember much about the airport.
Frankfurt was kind of boring. Looked like it would be a neat place to visit but we didn’t get to see anything other than the airport. I did enjoy listening to all the Germans talk. We had quite a bit of time to sit and wait. When we were ready for departure, we sat on the tarmac for 2.5 hours because wind gusts were so bad. That ended up being our only delay but the worst was yet to come.

Finally, we landed in Almaty this morning about 4:30am. Not really knowing what to do we just followed others through to customs. After going though customs we went to retrieve our luggage. Thank goodness Alina’s showed up first, so that was a huge weight off, but guess what? Not mine. Mine never made the trip to Almaty so I have no idea where it is right now. We have a claim in at lost baggage and hopefully it will show up on the next flight (tonight at 10pm) and then they can send it on to Uralsk. If not, then I’m in a bit of a jam. It seems like I am somewhat of a magnet for lost luggage.

But the hardest part of today was after the luggage. No one was there to greet us with a sign. We had a connecting flight to Uralsk in 2 hours and we couldn’t find our contact! Agh!
So we went to make some phone calls to see where our contact was at and we couldn’t figure out how to make an international phone call to save ourselves. So that didn’t work out either. We still have to work on that and see if we can figure out how to do it.
There were about 20 cabbies hanging around there trying to get us to go with them. I knew they were not who we were supposed to meet but they were trying awful hard to persuade us to go with them. They were very persistent too. The language barrier was a really tough thing because when I would ask them if they were the guy sent to pick us up they would look confused and then shake their head up and down and if trying to say yes, but not really sure. So I knew then that was not who we were looking for.
About an hour before our plane was to depart Alina talked me into going on to our flight.
As we are standing at the Air Astana counter, a man leaned his head in and said “House Family?” I swear I heard angels sing.
He told us he was there to meet the House family, but that was all the information he had. He didn’t know what we looked like or any info about us. I’m assuming he saw 2 very American folks and decided to take a stab and see if we were the people he was looking for. Alina and I were at a stress level of about 8.5 right there but neither of us broke. So I feel like we passed the first major test.
So regardless, he helped us and here we are on the fight to Uralsk.

A coworker friend of mine told me before we left “Oh Man, You guys are gonna have so many stories.”
Well, I’ve decided I don’t want any more stories, because stories are usually bad. The only stories we want from here on out are about our future child.
We want to be boring.

Here we go!

Just a few short hours and we are on our way.
I'm going to try to take time once a day to keep up with this thing so we'll see if that actually happens or not. I've been told by more than one person - IT BETTER HAPPEN! So since I have been threatened with my life I'll do the best I can.
That means the next update will be from the airport. I hope I don't let you all down!

Rough Day

The bad news of the day:
Well, as we get closer to the date (5 days) things get a little more nerve-wrecking for us.
When I got to work this morning I was told that Lufthansa (the airline for our flight) had begun a strike that was to last 4 days. (but possibly much longer) Of course, that would mean the strike would be over before we even arrived at the airport but my main concern was the backlog of people that lay in wait.
This has been a big concern of mine for some time. When I see a news report on TV about a strike I have often thought of this happening to us.
Lufthansa is Frankfurt's main hub so I can only imagine the chaos that would ensue.


The good news of the day:
About 3:00 today, thankfully, they decided to hold off on the strike for 2 weeks. So that allows us to get out of here and over there before they resume the strike. I think I might have checked Lufthansa's website no less than 50 times today thinking a good update would be just around the corner. I feel like we dodged a huge bullet today.

What's next....?

MAJOR UPDATE!!!!!

NEWS FLASH! EXTRA EXTRA!

Finally!!!,.. after 2 years and 8 months we finally have travel dates!
It seems like it has taken so long to get to this point but we are sure in the end it will be worth every second we have put into it.

On February 27th we will be departing for the other side of the world where our kid(s), I'm sure, anxiously await our arrival. (Even though they don't know were coming for them yet)
You will only know of us through this blog since we will more less disappear into thin air during that time. It looks like we will be in Kaz for about 2 months.

I don't know what else to say right now, as we are shocked by this news today.

More to come soon I'm sure!!!.....

Good news!?

I think good news is finally on the horizon. I say "may" because we recieved a window as to when we will be traveling!
They told us we will be going over between Feb 25th and May 25th. We just got our passports back with our visas, so as of Feb 25th we will be temporary citizens of Kazakhstan. Very Cool.
We are very excited to see that the process is still moving along no matter how slowly.
We are going back to KC tomorrow (for the 4th time I think) to USCIS to get the fingerprinting done again, but knowing this is (hopefully) our last trip makes this pill a little easier to swallow.

Maybe the next update will be our actual travel dates!