Arrival to Kazakhstan

Our arrival went very smoothly. I had received such detailed information about our arrival from Little Miracles, but also from my fellow adoptive parents who had recently "been there, done that". We got off the plane and proceeded to the round table on the left, just where they said it would be, and filled in our migration card. We then wait in a SLOW passport control line, where they inspected our visas and took our picture.

Our bags were on the carousel when we got there. Actually 3 of them had fallen into the middle of the carousel, so I asked Mom to babysit the carry ons while I accessed my old Russian skills in the back of my head and schmoozed some poor guy into jumping over and getting them. He fetched out bags, I said thank you and we went out the glass doors.

Out there we found a mob of people, all yelling and asking if we needed a taxi. I sternly said no and shoved my way threw the crowd, Mom in tow, until I saw the sign with my name on it, just as planned. funny enough, they even spell Caesar wrong in Kazakhstan! HA!

We met Kate, our very animated and talkative translator and our not so animated driver, Leo. Not so talkative, but very nice. We also met another adoptive single mom and her cousin who is traveling with her. We piled our stuff in the van and took off for the hotel. Almaty is a lovely city, very cosmopolitan, and has virtually everything one could need. The streets are tree lined, the building are regal and remind me of old Soviet buildings.

When we got to the hotel, we checked in and then sat down for our briefing of the upcoming events with Kate. We went through the financial transactions that would occur the following morning, discussed our documents, received our cell phones (so the staff can always reach us and vice versa) and our flight tickets for Semey. Kate was very organzied, confident and funny.

We then got to our rooms around 1:30a.m., just 24 hours after leaving New Hampshire. Mom and I both took showers and went to sleep. My body felt like a ton of bricks. I only slep 3.5 hours, as I woke up before 6a.m. knowing what the next event would bring... a baby!