Day 3(of appeal period)

I'm still in Almaty and should go to the consulate this afternoon. I changed my titles to reflect that I am now in the 15 day appeal period before I can say the girls are legally mine! 12 days to go
Update:
Here is description the BIG consulate appointment that I had to stay this extra time for. We get to the building which is an office building with extra security. The embassy is only 1 floor of it. We go through security and wait for our escort up the elevator to the 17th floor. I go into the waiting room which is done in shades of purple. About 5 minutes later, they call my name and I go and sign the paperwork that I had previously filled out- 6 forms total-6 signatures. And then we leave! Total time 10 minutes max and most of that was wating for the escort or my name to be called. I know that I couldn't complete the adoption without doing the signatures, but it took so little time that I wish they could have found a way to do it yesterday.

Day 24 Revisited

SInce my DSL was down, I didn't post much on Day 24 so I am going back to that day and posting this update.
The girls were very active again today. I met another family that is adopting from here. We have been to lunch a few times. Today, we met for lunch and they asked me if my girls were having a good time around 10:30. They had been in the physical therapy room which is on the other side of the baby house and they had heard us. The girls had been laughing and screeching and I had been running to try to close the doors so that they wouldn't disturb the whole baby house. I guess I didn't make it.

Leeza loves to go through the circle head first.She just dives through and lands on her head and flops over.

Sasha claimed the "good" swing today. There are 2 identical swings and each day they decide one swing is the good one and both want to swing in it.

Since she didn't get the good swing, Leeza had fun using the video camera case as a purse. Overall, it was a good visit, but I was sad at the end since I have to leave them for a while now and there is no way to explain it to them. I bought them purses, but they played with them yesterday so they needed something new today.

On the way back to the apartment, I finally got a decent picture of the mountains. They are usually hidden by smog. Flying out of Shymkent today, I was able to see the countryside. Once you are away from the city, there really isn't much to see. It does remind me so much of parts of Arizona. Everything was brown, but that may be due to the summer heat. I would love to come back in the spring sometime before everything dried/burns up in the summer heat.

Day 25

Well, my luck with Almaty continues. I arrived here today after confirming my arrival and that I could get an embassy appointment previously. The minute I got here, they tell me that the consulate is gone today and I am stuck here until tomorrow. Why didn't they tell me that earlier and I could have spent another day with the girls and changed my flights earlier?? Plus weekend flights are tough and right now the soonest I can get a confirmed flight is Monday. I may be able to travel Sunday, but I am on a waiting list for flights then. If I can get the Sunday flight, it won't be so bad since I can do a little sight seeing Saturday, but I really don't want to wait until Monday. I want to go home.
UPDATE: I just got a call from Luftansa saying I am on the SUnday flight so now things seem so much better! Actually, it will be nice since Saturday I may get to do some sightseeing in the mountains around here. So all is good again. I will be home Sunday afternoon!!!!!!!!!!!!

Day 24

SOrry no pictures. I am at my favorite restaurant Mozzarella using their wireless internet. My DSL died- I guess I only bought August usage not 30 days usage- who knows! ANyway this will be short, but very sweet. Court ended up being at 5:15 yesterday. At 5:45 the judge said something and my coordinator smiled and said You are a mom to TWO! Court was stressful, but not because anything they did. They were all very nice, but you don't know your future until the final ruling! I now have the 15 day waiting period to complete and then about 4 more weeks of paperwork(maybe less) and then the girls come home!!!!
I had a good visit today, but there is no way to explain to 2 toddlers why mama is going away today and not coming back for weeks. My visa issue was resolved so I am good to keep my scheduled flights. I leave tomorrow morning for Almaty. I will go to the embassy in the afternoon and then at 3:15 Friday morning start me journey home. I've had a great time here, way better than I ever imagined. I will miss the girls, but I have a lot of things to do to prepare for them. I may or may not get on the internet this tomorrrow so if you don't see any posts don't worry. I should be back home Friday night, but I will probably sleep until Sunday!!!
Thnaks to everyone who helped me and the girls during this trip.

Day 23

Court is set for 4pm so I was able to go to bonding this morning. The girls had a good time today and both were running and playing and laughing and at times yelling. I had to make sure the doors were closed as they were very loud today.

I gave the girls 2 of the purses I had bought for them at the bazaar. They enjoyed filling them with their toys.

They both enjoyed carrying the loaded purses around.

Cell phone and purse- she is ready for the US!

Then we played on the swings for a while.

And ran around on the gym equipment. My camera is too slow to get the good shots. I will have to get a new camera soon because these girls can move fast!

Then it was palying race and crash cars with the walkers. These walkers are pretty beaten up, but they had fun crashing them into each other and into me.

There was a lot of running back and forth and crashes, occassional falls, but they had a good time.

There were lots of smiles and laughter from both.

And even the occassional scream. What ever happened to that quiet withdrawn little girl. I am glad to see them both so happy. Sasha was as wild as Leeza and copied everything Leeza did , both the good and the bad!

Day 22

Yesterday was Constitution Day. I have not found anyone who knows exactly what it is for except it gives them a 3 day weekend. I assume it is the day they got their independence from Russia in 1991. They had a parade at the main park in town, but I didn't find out about it until afterwards. We drove by the park and it was filled with flags and many men in military uniforms. Throughout the town, there were a lot of blue and yellow/gold banners hanging. The streets were filled with people outside walking. Most stores were still open. Today is their day off so I am not sure how many stores will be open today. They had a celebration Friday at the baby house. The music room was decorated with flowers and later I saw the caretakers in there having a small party.

I haven't posted pictures of the girls dresses yet. These are the Kazakhstani traditional outfits. They wear them for celebrations. I found one I really liked and they were able to hand make a copy in a little over a week. These are 100% hand sewn. All the red is small hand sewn on beads. The workmanship is very good. the dresses and vests are lined and are very nice.
I decided to go with 2 different hats. The one one the left was made to go with the material of the vest.

I just loved the beading and design on the one on the right. I thought I could go with identical dresses and then different hats and keept the girls happy that way.

I tried to get a closeup of the beading, but it is very detailed and didn't show up the greatest. I think they will probably fit the girls when they are 5. I wanted to have them for when they were older and will understand the history of the outfits better. Now I just have to get them home without getting them crushed!

Day 21 continued

The trip to the bazaar today was fun. Last time it was HOT. Today was comfortable, but even more crowded than last time since it is a 3 day weekend and many people from nearby villages came into Shymkent to do shopping today.
I did find the prized Kazakh souvenir- a doll sized model of the traditional Kazkh cradle. The cover is used in winter and a lighter one is used in summer to keep the bugs out.

I saw a full sized one in one of the souvenir stores, but this one will be good for dolls. It is still fairly large so I only got one and the girls will need to share. They are very colorful and it does rock. I was also able to get what I needed for the escort so my shopping should be done. I have to start packing and make sure I can fit all my souvenirs in my luggage.

Since it is the weekend and I didn't post much yesterday, I will continue with things in Shymkent and other random thoughts. One neat thing is the blogger sign in page in russian.

When you sign in the blog appears in english, but the log in page is all russian!

The milk is also strange. You can get fresh regular milk, but it is in rinsed out pop bottles or you can bring your own container and they will fill it for you. Since I can't be sure what kind of milk it is, i bought the stuff at the store. It is good for 6 months! It tastes kind of like milk, but different. I'm not sure what they do to it, but it does not taste like powdered milk so ???? I assume from the cows on the box(yes box) that it is cow milk.

Of course, I have to post my favorite snack for when I am missing the US. Nacho Dorritos(in Russian of course)

There are many different kinds of ice cream bars here. I ususally get these at the grocery store next to my apartment. They have all benn good, except for one which was just strange. It was vanilla ice cream with poppy seeds in it covered with a carmel coating with sesame in it-weird.

I ran out of listerine mouth wash and went to get some other type. I had my choice as best as I could figure out between Daisy flavored, pine branch and nut flavor or pine cone and honey suckle flower flavor. I chose pine cone and honey suckle thinking it surely could not taste like that, but it does. Very strange, but it works well.

This is the girls favorite swing at the baby house(the red one). I looked at Target on line and they have one just like it except it is Winnie the pooh. I will be buying them one as soon as I get home. They will probably decide they hate it now, but maybe they will play with the box.
I keep trying to get a good picture of the mountains. Today you could see them fairly well, but they don't show up great in the photo. This is on the way back from the bazaar.

You can see the mountains in this picture. Also there is some of the new construction that seems to be going on everywhere here.

Since I have been here, they have been working on improving the area. The are restuccoing/plastering the nearby building. They also put up the edging in the alleyway about 2 weeks ago.

However the big event was yesterday, they decided to pave the alley way. As you can see this was a big event and a lot of the neighbors came out to watch. There are a lot of alleys in town, but very few are paved. The government owns the alleys and yards and sidewalks. They decided this year to invest in cleaning up the outside areas in town.

In the distance is one of the banks next door. It has a nice little park area with benches and roses out front. Every morning, a park employee using a twig broom sweeps these sidewalks.

The grass out front has automatic sprinklers in it that water the grass every day. The grass is rather scraggly, but they work hard at it. One day while I was waiting for my ride, I saw 2 guys on each side of the street with hand scyles cutting the grass. They worked their way down the street doing all the yards as they went. They stopped occassionally and took out sharpening stones to sharpen their scycles. Very old method of cutting grass mixed in this very modern neighborhood, but it explains why the grass doesn't look very even.

On the other side of my apartment is another bank and seems to be ATM central. This is early Sunday morning, but ususally there are groups of people waiting for the ATMs. There is a constant flow of cars and taxis dropping people off and picking people up. It is considered rude to take someones picture here without permission so it is hard to find times to take photos of these places.

They take their rain gutters very seriously here. they line all the streets and almost none are covered. they are over a foot across and about 2 ft deep.

Here is another view of some of the grass outside my apartment (hey it's the weekend and no pictures of the girls so you get what you get!)

This is one of the typical roads in the city. The center divide is usually filled with trees or roses or some ornaments. The blue banners have recently been put out all over the city. They represent the Kazakhstan flag. On the way to the baby house each day, you see the government park? employees on the edges of these roads sweeping them with the twig brooms. Cars are going by at 60 mph and they just walk down the edge of the road sweeping and all the cars seem to swerve and miss them. I have one of these ladies on video tape as we drove quickly by.