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Sept. 4 and 5 - Journey to Kaz
3:30 a.m. - Alarm rings... an early start to our 31 hour travel day. We Sept. 6 - Day in Almaty
A good portion of the day involved resting from the trip and nursing sore
muscles from carrying our blasted heavy suitcases. It was not a pretty
sight trying to gracefully maneuver that much luggage through the small airport,
across the broken sidewalks and into our drivers van. Two of our suitcases
are full of donations for the baby house, so
Our apartment was nice and better than anything either of us lived in during college. The only problem was trying to repack the exploding suitcases as you can see by Darrick's confusion (should I pack the stuffed dog or my sock...) We met our "travel partners", Jim and Denise from Chicago. It will be nice to share this experience with them. The four of us met with the head of the agency in Kazakhstan that afternoon to sign documents, get briefed, etc. She is an amazing woman who is fully committed to helping the orphans of Kazakhstan. Her passion for these children is evident. Sept. 7 - Travel to Sam's city
Our flight on Air Kazakhstan left at 7:00 a.m. We'd heard all kinds of
interesting things about this former Soviet airline. When I took this
photo of the plane I got plenty of dirty looks and a maintenance truck We were greeted by our interpreter, Masha - who is about to graduate from university and is a dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn. We also met three of our drivers who will be helping for our three week stay here. They were lifesavers, as they helped us schlepp our beastly suitcases to our apartment. The presence of the Soviet regime is strong, as Kazakhstan only has had it's independence since 1991. It looks as though most of the buildings were built in the 20's-40's and very little has been done to maintain them, except some shockingly bright coats of paint. Our apartment is well, interesting. Darrick described the decor as "1920's neo-classic Russian garage sale". It has electricity and running water, (even hot water to Beth's great relief) many of the houses here do not. We didn't do much but unpack for our 17 day stay here, and do a bit of walking around with Jim and Denise. The store fronts are misleading. The signs are in Cyrillic so of course we can't read them, but there are no window displays, so you have to poke your head inside the shop to see what it offers. Unless of course you happen to walk past the bakery, and the smell gives it away down the block. Our interpreter Masha said that she has seen Sam! According to her, he looks like Darrick, but has blonde hair. We will see for ourselves tomorrow morning, when we meet the little smooch for the first time. How will we sleep tonight...? |
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have four suitcases each weighing approximately 70 lbs (which is the limit).
Beth is looking quite rested and ready to go but not for long... From
Denver we flew to Charlotte, NC, then to Frankfurt, Germany, then to Almaty,
Kazakhstan arriving at 11:00 p.m. on September 5.
our
return trip will be much lighter.
started honking at me... didn't get the memo to not photograph planes in Kaz!
It was fine - a little noisy, but no worries. The flight attendant handed
out hard candies prior to take-off and landing to help with the air pressure.