Becoming the 4 McCaffery's

We've created this webpage for our family, friends, and future adoptive families to follow us in our adoption journey to Kazakhstan to become a family of 4. Thanks for reading, we hope you enjoy it!!

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

April 19th

Once again we took a walk around town and decided to visit the department store across the street from the TSUM. I’m thankful the weather is nice enough so we can take a walk each day or I’d go nuts sitting in our apartment watching BBC World over and over again as it’s the only English speaking channel we have. Our days are incredibly boring, but each day the boys are becoming better brothers and Vitaly is becoming more secure about becoming part of our family and becoming his own person as well. We have no real news to report. The highlight of the day was walking to Mario’s Pizza for dinner which was once again delicious and cheap. We might get really adventurous and ride a bus tomorrow as both boys are very excited to do so, plus it might help to pass the time.
Tim’s turn to narrate:
The bus is very very cheap—20 or 30 TG (about 20 cents) per person, but we haven’t found a route map anywhere. We haven’t even seen a city map, although we haven’t tried to ask for one either. Most of the locals take the bus everywhere. There are big city buses that only come every 30 minutes and other vans and minibuses that come more often. We think the smaller buses are privately owned like taxis and they’re a few cents cheaper. Some are diesel and some are electric, but they all look pretty old and are always packed with people. You can barely see light through the windows as they drive by. It may be an adventure.
We’re still waiting for our interview with a social worker, which we thought would be last week, but they were apparently too busy last week. Now, we have no idea when it will be. Our coordinator has told us we will go to court next Friday, but he also said “no later than next Friday” which leaves a glimmer of hope that it will be sooner. If it isn’t until Friday, Tim and Ian will probably stay with Nell and Sam until Sunday evening then leave Karaganda to catch our originally scheduled flight out of Almaty at 0145L on Monday. It will be a long day of travel, so I hope Ian will sleep on the plane. He didn’t sleep at all on the first leg last time, but slept the entire second leg. We have a 6 hour layover in Frankfurt to make the day even longer. Not quite long enough to go to a hotel, but way longer than ideal. The obvious issues are getting tickets to Almaty, changing Nell’s return flight (she will now stay for the entire process) and getting Sam/Vitaly a one-way ticket to the US. Nothing a few phone cards can’t solve, but we have to take a total guess at when they’ll be able to come home. Nell has to wait 15 days for the court’s decision to be “final”, and then wait in Karaganda for the paperwork (adoption decree, birth certificate, Kazakh passport etc) to be complete before going to Almaty. Unfortunately, these things have to take place in series--one after the other. We can’t start on the paperwork until the court decision is finalized and Nell can’t go to Almaty until the paperwork is complete. Once in Almaty, she has to meet with a doctor and the American embassy to finalize some things on the American side. Then they can finally come home. We can’t count on anything being overly expeditious (a lot of things are based on a number of “business days” which are only Tue-Fri in Kazakhstan), so the whole thing could take a month after Tim and Ian depart. Guessing on a departure date for Nell and Sam is tough, so we’ll probably end up having to change the tickets again on some later date. Leaving Nell here is certainly not ideal, but we all agree that it’s better than sending him back to the orphanage after living with us for 3 weeks. Every time we mention the “Detsky Dom” (orphanage), he freezes up and gets really nervous. I’m not sure he’d trust us again if we put him back in there after he lived with us for this time. On top of that, we need to sell our house, buy a house in Colorado and move by the end of June. All that makes sitting here staring at the apartment walls even tougher. It’s worth it though.

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