In the spring of 2009 we flew half way around the world to adopt a little girl in the city of Petropavlovsk in northern Kazakhstan. This blog chronicles our experiences in bringing her home. We wrote it both to keep those at home up to date on our progress and also to provide help and perspective to those who might follow behind us on the same adventure. Hopefully it accomplishes both goals.
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Improved WiFi at the Skif Hotel
Posted on April 18th, 2009 3 comments
I know this seems trivial to those of you back in the land of high speed Internet access but the Skif Hotel in Petropavlovsk (our home for the last month or so) has finally added a couple of additional WiFi attennas to floors two and three. The previous single, lonely antenna was down on the front desk and every time someone walked in front of it I lost my connection up in our room on the second floor. Plus I had to do calls to home out in the hall to get enough signal for VOIP.Think about having dial-up speeds for a month and a crummy connection and you’ll feel my pain. Anyway, as of a few hours ago we’ve finally got a solid signal in the room and I’m almost fully functional again. Of course the Internet connection is all of 1 Mb for the entire hotel so if a few rooms get active online things tend to slow to a crawl but hey, this is Northern Kazakhstan after all.
Beggars can’t be choosers.
3 responses to “Improved WiFi at the Skif Hotel”
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Aimee May 24th, 2009 at 17:47
Hi there,
I am reading your blog because my husband and I are in the adoption process. I appreciate that you are in a different culture/country, but talking disparagingly about their country and infrastructure doesn’t seem the way to go. Don’t you realize they can read your blogs too? Americans already have a reputation for being spoiled and intolerant. This country is generous enough to entrust us with their children. I think we should try to be appreciative and make a good impression.
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Chris May 25th, 2009 at 04:24
Kazakhstan is a former Soviet republic that is slowly crawling its way back from years of underinvestment. Luckily they have significant natural resources and oil deposits so unless the government self destructs they are very likely going to pull off their transition to a first world country. That being said, Petro is a former munitions town that has not seen nearly the investment that has happened in the south so if for anyone that is thinking about traveling there for an adoption they’d better go in with their eyes open and be ready for the reality of spending upwards of twelve weeks living there. It sounds really easy until you try and do it – especially with other young children along as we did.
So I’d suggest you save your “spoiled Americans” comments until you’ve actually completed your adoption and integrated an institutionalized child into your family – and suffered through your time in country. Then you might appreciate the information I put up here on this blog – it is all the truth. They are entrusting their children to us as they have no internal adoption culture and the alternative is institutionalizing them until they are 18 and then putting them on the streets to fend for themselves (a few of whom we met). The orphanages seem to be well run and well maintained but they are still institutions and the chances of a 2+ year old getting placed in a Kazak family are very low.
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Aimee June 2nd, 2009 at 10:22
I am not disputing that there may be infrastructure problems or that things might be very different than they are here in the US. Every country and culture are different. My point was that (and any adoption agency would tell you this) negative comments reflect poorly on potential adoptive parents. If every American writes about “suffering through their time in country,” how does that make us sound? I’d also like the Kazakh government to think I’d speak favorably to the child of his/her native land as he/she grows.
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