And we're back online - did you miss us?

Due to some required traveling and technical difficulties, we have been offline for 4 days. We are sorry to have broken our daily blogging streak, but we'll try to catch everyone up.

We have now officially completed our 14 day bonding period! And it only took 17 days! June 18th was a typical day at the orphanage: half the time inside and half outside. Alina has become quite interested in pictures of home. We think we will be giving them this photo album when we leave.

June 19th we were at the orphanage in the morning and flew to Almaty in the afternoon. Highlights: Alina braided Blythe's hair (which is the first Seth has ever seen it braided); the bubble gun had its last hurrah and was laid to rest (thank heavens!); standard indoor/ outdoor spasticity. We informed the children we would be gone for a day to Almaty, but would be back soon. Lauren was planning to be there in our absence and we figured she could reassure them if necessary.

We have never expereinced air turbulence like that in the immediate airspace over Ust-Kamenogorsk and Almaty. We have now taken this 90 minute plane ride 3 times, and each time we were sure we would loose our lunch. Avoid this trip if you can.

We arrived in Almaty on the afternoon of the 19th and were taken to what appeared to be a very upscale hotel. As it turned out, the Hotel Kazakhstan was one of the low points of our visit. Picture a 25 story high-rise building, in the middle of a congested city in the throws of a summer heat wave. Now imagine that you are escorted to a room little bigger than a shoe box, where you realize the entire building has no air conditioning. We slept with our window and door wide open, hoping in vain for even the mildest breeze. And when we say "slept", we mean "layed in bed for 8 hours, listening to the wild Almaty nightlife, and actually sleeping for maybe 30 minutes". Complementary breakfast consisted of corn flakes in piping hot sour milk and yesterday's dinner rolls fried to disguise them as french toast. Accompanying this was coffee with a compliment of supposed dairy product that currdled immediately upon mixing (not sure what it really was; given the cultural surroundings it most likely was mayonaise). Thoroughly awful hotel, but at least it was expensive. The only redeeming quality was the view from our room. Note the snow capped mountains to the west of the city. Breathtaking, really. Seth wished he had time to explore, but we had a more exciting day planned at the U.S. Embassy!

We felt very patriotic listening to the musak rendition of "America the Beautiful" (over and over and over), and standing under the watchful eyes of George Bush, Dick Cheyney, and Condie Rice in every room. For once in our lives we felt like true VIP's. Our coordinator Oleg cut to the front of every line saying "Don't worry; international adoption gets priority." He is cleary buddies with everyone in that building, which doesn't hurt.

Well, that was our whole morning. After that we were back on our turbulent flight to Ust-Kamenogorsk, and the Shiny River Hotel (which strangely is beginning to feel like home). And that brings us up to the present.

The most salient point about today's visit was Kostin's defiant behavior. After an hour of throwing Alina's necklace beads and slamming doors, we wondered what had happened to giggly, happy Kostin. Our suspicions were confirmed when we sat him down to talk, and with a face that looked as if it was on the verge of tears, he told us that we have to come visit EVERY day. There is no getting around it; when we leave at the end of the week Kostin is going to take it very badly. We did our best to explain to him we are going away to get everything ready, and that soon he will come to live with mommy and daddy forever. There is alot of jealousy that gets stirred up by other kids in the orphanage who are not being adopted, and we suspect some of the other children may have told him we were never coming back for him. We assured him that we love him and that no matter what anyone says, we are going to take him home. Our saving grace is that he will be with Alina who seems to have a much better grasp of what is to come.

Blythe gave the same explanation to Alina that we would be going away for a month to get everything ready for them to come live with us, including her bedroom. She then piped up and told us Kostin will get the bottom bunk and she gets the top. We were already planning this based on her gymnastic skills. At the end of Blythe's detailed explanation, we asked Alina if she had any questions. She immediately asked how to say "I need the bathroom" in English. After we told her, she danced around the room singing "I need bathroom! I need bathroom!" Blythe has been teaching her English through repetition, and she clearly feels this is the most important English phrase to know. We would agree.