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.