Kazakhstan Adoption

Medical surprises

One of the things you do immediately when you get home is take your newly adopted kid or kids to the doctor to get a complete workup. There are adoption specialists that you can use but here in Massachusetts the waiting period for an appointment is crazy so we just went to our normal pediatrician.

When our daughter came home she was eating like a horse and could never seem to get enough to drink so we wanted to get to the bottom of it. What we found was that she had a parasite which was likely starving her for nutrients. One cycle of meds and problem solved – she is eating like a normal toddler again. This also likely explains why she was under-weight in the baby house and had a nasty skin infection (since mostly dealt with).

One thing I did learn is that these parasites are hard to test for (so you need to look multiple times and over multiple days) and that there are two tests run – one for domestic exposure and one for international exposure. A US medical lab won’t do the international test automatically (and many doctors don’t realize they need to order it special) so you need to make sure it is included in the workup.

Given how many people we met in Kazakstan who got sick, it would seem parasites and other baddies are pretty common in the water and food. So watch yourself and your newly adopted kids (and any kids you bring with you).

Kazakhstan foreign investment not so hot anymore

Those of us adopting in Kazakhstan tend to get 100% focused on the adoption process but it is good (I think) to pop our heads up now and then and see what is actually happening in the country itself.

From Bloomberg news today:

“The crisis in Kazakhstan is a legacy of banks that piled on debt as the economy soared and couldn’t repay when credit dried up. Gross domestic product shrank 2.2 percent in the first quarter. Foreign investors are drawing back capital as their favorable terms with lenders evaporate, said Kieran Curtis, who helps manage $800 million in emerging-market debt at Aviva Investors Ltd. in London, including Kazakh bonds.”

It seems like Kazakhstan is having as much difficulty with their banking sector as the rest of the world.

Escorting adopted kids home

The end to end process in Kazakhstan is rather lengthy. From the time you first set foot in the country to the time you get on a plane with your newly adopted child or children can be as long as three months and eight to nine weeks is pretty normal. This time frame is in contrast to what is  normal in other countries like China (13 days total).

Since you can pretty much get your bonding period and court date completed in three and a half weeks this leaves a pretty large gap of time in which you are cooling your heels until the waiting period expires (currently two weeks, potentially moving to four at some point in the future depending on what the government decides to do) and for all the paperwork to be processes both in Kazakhstan and with the US Embassy.

While many people stay the entire time, others just cannot be away from homes and jobs that long. We fell into the second camp so we decided to have Jennifer escorted home rather than come back for another week to week and a half in a month. It is less that ideal on a lot of levels but it is the formal process that is in place and you need to follow it. We loading up her care-givers with stuff to take care of her while we were.

So to organize all this I had to get back on that scary turbo-prop airplane and head to Almaty to sign the necessary paperwork with the US Embassy to have her escorted. It is actually pretty simple once you figure it out but it took a number of calls to the Embassy to get to the bottom of what exactly we needed to do.

Here is what I believe is the master list of documents (at least it is everything we signed and it worked out for us):

1. Form DS-230 which is the child’s application for a Visa to come to the US
2. Form DS-1981 which is where you confirm you will get the child vaccinated
3. The I-600 which is the petition to classify the child as an orphan and allow for the adoption
4. A power of attorney at the US Embassy which allows your escort to sign on your behalf for the visa, medical exam, etc. (they have it at the embassy)
5. A power of attorney for travel from wherever this child is to Almaty or Astana. This is a Kazakhstan style power of attorney that allows them to bring the child to a departure city for the US. You need to do this at a notary in country and it needs to be translated.
6. A power of attorney for travel from Almaty or Astana to the US. This is a US style power of attorney that allows the translator to bring the child to the US on your behalf

The other thing you do at the embassy is pay for the visa (approx US$450 at the moment and they take credit cards). We actually missed #6 and had to do it from the US and have it apostilled and sent. For reference, a priority letter from Boston to Kazakhstan is $106.00 and takes about four days to get there.

I’m amazed it actually worked….

Jennifer comes home

So it has been a ridiculous amount of time since my last post but that was primarily because we were waiting for Jennifer to actually arrive here in the US. So with a minor paperwork scramble out of the way, she got off a plane about four days back and was quickly collected and driven home.

Sam and Jennifer

We decided to have her escorted home as taking another week off to head back to Kazakhstan was going to be very difficult. In the end it all seems to have worked out.

Going to court

So we had our court date on Tuesday and everything went well. The judge granted the adoption subject to the normal fifteen day waiting period so on May 6th we can officially take custody. Unfortunately that week is a mess of local holidays and the passport offices aren’t really going to be operational. So the paperwork to allow Jennifer to leave the country will start on the 11th or 12th of May. So cross your fingers and she might make it stateside the week of the 18th.

Getting used to cold showers

In my opinion, one of the signs of civilization is the ability to take a hot shower every day. When you are backpacking in the wilderness you suck it up and jump in the cold lake but when you are staying at a hotel, getting hot water out of the shower in the morning should be assumed.

Not so at the Hotel Skif. If you don’t get yourself through the shower prior to 9:00am you are out of luck as around that time the water runs cold. The funny thing is that there isn’t any hot water for the rest of the day from what we can tell. Luke-warm is the best you can hope for.

Bit of a mystery here….

More pictures of Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan

There aren’t a lot of pictures of the town of Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan on the Internet from what I can find so here are a bunch more that we’ve taken as we travel about the town. They will give you a flavor for the town and what it looks like.

Art Gallery in Petropavlovsk

We had a chance a few days back to visit the local art gallery. It is located in a 100 year old building in the traditional Kazakhstan style that used to be the home of a wealthy merchant. It was renovated a number of years back and turned into an art gallery.

It is small but has a pretty varied collection of more traditional art as well as modern interpretations from local artists. We got a tour from the Director as we were the only people there. It is worth the hour or so it takes to walk through.

Are here it is on Google Maps:

Some pictures of Jennifer

It has been awhile since I posted some pictures of Jennifer so here they are. Bonding period is officially done and the court date is this coming Tuesday.

City wide heating in Petropavlovsk

One of the weirdest things we found when we first came to Petropavlovsk is that the majority of the buildings in the downtown core are heated centrally. I don’t mean that they have central heating systems but that they are all heated from a central, city-wide heating plant and the heat is piped to each building via a network of above ground and below ground pipes.

Each residential or commercial building has pipes running to it in which hot water (or steam?) is moving to transfer heat from the central plant to the building. The entire city is covered in these huge pipes.

The other strange thing is that there is no way to limit the heat from this system. The buildings don’t have thermostats or any other limiter on the radiators. So whenever you walk into a room, the hotel Skif included, the temperature is always sweltering. We’ve spent the entire trip wearing t-shirts inside and leaving the windows open even though it has almost always been near or below freezing.

Apparently in early May the heating system is shut off for the season and for several weeks the situation changes and everyone freezes. Then in the fall they flip it back on and for awhile the residents of the town are back to roasting until it gets cold again.

I guess this is the result of Soviet central planning at its finest but in today’s age of green heating technology and skyrocketing fuel costs, just keeping the heat on must be a huge financial drain on the town of Petropavlovsk.

So bring light clothes to wear around the hotel or rented apartment if you come…you are going to need them.

Here are some more photos of the pipes: