The Pizza Place in Petropavlovsk

We stumbled upon a new restaurant a week or so back. Going by the name “The Pizza Place” as well as “The New Turkish Restaurant” it is focused on kids and has a decent collection of Turkish food like kabobs as well as a pretty extensive collection of western food like pizza, hamburgers and chicken wings. It is a popular place for dinner for couples in the middle of adoptions.

The food is sort of what you would expect from a place like this – good but not great – and like most of the restaurants in Kazakhstan that try to do western fare they don’t quite get it right. But it is a nice change from the food at the hotel. The breaded hamburgers were a special surprise.

Of course the giant blow-up playground was the only thing Sam was interested in although we did manage to get a bit of food in her between rounds. The meatballs were particularity popular.

Some shots of the place:

Almaty places #4 in a Business Week survey

Ok…it was the top worst places to work in the world but hey, any PR is good PR right? Almaty got #4 on the study done by Business Week. They commented:

“The remoteness of Almaty, largest city in Kazakhstan, is one of the city’s biggest problems as far as outsiders are concerned. Other significant hardships include pollution, the threat of disease, and poor medical facilities. “Inadequate infrastructure, substandard housing, crime and difficulties with communications are additional drawbacks,” says ORC.”

I just spent three days in Almaty and while I didn’t get to do any sightseeing (the US Embassy was nice…) the city seemed decent. The streets were clean, the trees were coming into bloom which was a sight for sore eyes after the winter weather we’ve been having in Petro and the downtown area looked nicer than a number of major cities I’ve been to around the world. From a glance at the “attractions” list in the hotel it also seemed that there was at least enough to see to burn a few days looking around.

The hotels do manage to ding the credit card pretty hard though. A night at the Hyatt made my wallet about $450 lighter but I definitely recommend a stop to eat at their Grill Room. Yum. Funny thing was that the Hyatt in New York City quoted me $339 for the same night. Competition is a wonderful thing.

The full Business Week article is here.

Don’t drink the water and carry a SteriPEN

One of the things that was echoed by everyone who had previously been to Kazakhstan is not to drink the water but instead to rely on bottled water exclusively. The trouble with even bottled water when you travel is that some shops just refill empty bottles with tap water and resell them. So far I haven’t seen any of that behavior here in Kazakhstan but I have certainly run into it elsewhere in Europe.

So to protect myself, and more importantly my daughter, I carry a SteriPEN with me when I travel. It weighs almost nothing and the UV light it puts out kills all the nasties in water. Of course it doesn’t filter out particles like other water filters but it is also a lot less bulky and it is really easy to zap a bottle of water before drinking it.

It is one of my favorite travel gadgets as getting a stomach bug while traveling is about the worst thing that can happen.

Parents of kids from Petropavlovsk Yahoo Group

Just found a Yahoo group online that is focused on adoptions in Petropavlovsk and I have applied to join.

There is also a much larger Yahoo group that is focused on Kazakhstan adoptions in general. I’ve also just joined that one.

If you do a search for Yahoo groups using “Kazakhstan adoption” you will find a whole bunch more dedicated to various areas of Kazakhstan and different geographic regions in the US.

To get to space you need to pass through Kazakhstan

One of the cooler things I’ve learned since coming to Kazakhstan is that Russia still leases a huge block of land to operate its space launch facilities. The Baikonur Cosmodrome is where all of the missions to service the International Space station originate and pretty soon, once the Space Shuttle is retired, it will be pretty much the only way to get to space in the world. Or at least until the Chinese or a whole range of potential space tourist outfits get going.

So unless you’ve purchased a ticket from Virgin Galatic, or NASA owes you one hell of a big favor, to get to space you need to come to Kazakhstan. Bring your wallet.

Kindle2 – My new must have travel gadget

I travel a lot but normally only for two or three days so I can usually toss a paperback in my bag for that period during take-off and landing where they tell you to turn off all electronic gadgets and cell phones (but of course no one actually does). For this trip I was trying to figure out how to bring enough reading material to cover me through two 30 hour plan trips and three weeks in Kazakhstan.

Given the 50 lb weight limit on most airlines I didn’t really want to be hauling books so I sucked it up and bought myself a Kindle2. Actually, I took the coin jar that we’d neglected to empty for the last two years to the local grocery store and fed a mountain of change into a CoinStar machine. They have a deal with Amazon where you can get an Amazon gift certificate and avoid the approximately 8% coin counting charge that they normally levy.

So with all my coins counted I could nearly cover the cost of a brand spanking (just released) Kindle2 ($349).

I must admit I love this device. I had tried the Kindle reader on my iPhone and while it is nice, the backlit screen really wears on you after awhile. Once you get used to the screen flickering when you turn pages, the Kindle2 is even better than reading a book as it is much lighter and you don’t have to hold the pages open. I quickly downloaded a couple of dozen books to my reader and have worked through about seven on this trip so far. Plus they are quite a bit cheaper than the ones printed on dead trees.

I’ve converted. I won’t say every book I buy will be electronic as I still like to add to my ever growing library at home but for most I’m going to be grabbing them wirelessly in a single click to my Kindle2.

Worldwide poverty

If you travel any amount you are sometimes amazed at the level of poverty that exists. You see it on the streets of New York City, in the less prosperous neighborhoods in London and Paris and in pretty much in every country in the world to some degree or another. I was pretty shocked when I first went to Sri Lanka and I can only imagine what exists in sub-Saharan Africa (I’ve not yet made it there)

While there is poverty here in Kazakhstan I’ve actually see fewer homeless and less evidence of it that might be expected given that the entire ex-Soviet union went through a pretty bad spell when it broke up. It is obvious not everyone is living well but generally people seem to be getting by – even outside of the city core where there is less in the way of facilities. The rich natural resources of this country are more than likely helping.

Of course those of us from the West shouldn’t ever point fingers as things are pretty bleak back home as well. From a recent article in The Independent:

“Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.”

Anytime anyone gets self righteous around me I simply point them to pictures from the aftermath of Katrina. Definitely a case of “fix your own problems first”.

Tipping in Kazkahstan

One of the things I always try and figure out before I go to a new country is their opinion on tipping. Unfortunately I forgot to look it up prior to coming to Kazakhstan so it took me a few days to determine whether it was appropriate or not.

What I’ve been told is that since Kazakhstan’s independence from the Soviet Union, tipping has come back into vogue and is welcomed by most people in service industries. We’ve been leaving a tip (15% or so) whenever we go out for meals and the housekeeper who takes care of our floor here at the hotel is great and every time we give her a little extra for the great service we get a beaming smile (she doesn’t speak any English) – which my daughter Samantha returns just for fun.

We took a cab today and had to convince the driver to take a tip (he did after a couple of attempts to give it back) so perhaps it is not universal but plan on tipping for good service when you visit.

Gifts, gifts and more gifts

One of the things you read about prior to travelling to Kazakhstan and your adoption agency warns you about is that you need to bring gifts for a whole list of people including the caregivers at the baby house and various officials involved in facilitating the adoption. We figured we’d planned ahead and had gifts for a whopping 10 people.

Much to our surprise when we got here and sat down and figured it out we needed more like 20. The kink in our plans was that there are two women on shift at a time in the baby room and a total of 10 on rotation. So there was our extra 10 people. The entire list was long a varied. If we had it to do again I think we’d hit Walmart and Target a bit harder and have planned for more people.

Luckily the guideline is $10 to $20 per gift with a few in the $30 to $50 category for some of the more important officials. So with some targeted shopping over here we were able to fill our our selection. We’ve heard rumor of some agencies claiming you need to be in the $100+ category or supplement with cash but from what we can tell that is more than is required.

Given how hard everyone works to makes sure the adoption goes smoothly a gift is a nice way to let them know you appreciate their efforts!

We got a court date!

We’ve been waiting for a few days now to confirm our court date and we found out this afternoon that we got it when we wanted. So at 10:00am local time on April 21st we will be petitioning the court to grant our adoption.

For those that have never tried something like this, here is the approximate steps you need to get through an international adoption in Kazakhstan (apologies if I get some of this slightly less than accurate…I’ve done so much paperwork in the last year and a half my mind is fuzzy on what exactly I ended up doing).

1. Decide you want to adopt from Kazakhstan
2. Engage an agency to work with
3. Engage an agency and social worker to do the home study (a document that describes your background and home situation)
4. Do the home study
5. Apply for Homeland Security approval to adopt a foreign orphan
6. Go get fingerprinted so Homeland Security can run an FBI check on you
7. Get yourself fingerprinted at the local police station
8. Send the fingerprints into the FBI for another background check that is completely different (yet exactly the same) as the one Homeland Security is doing
9. Get a document from your employer to confirm your income
10. Get documents from your doctor to confirm you are healthy
11. Get references from people you know confirming you are great and all that
12. Build a whole stack of documents including certified copies of every identifying document that you have ever received (passports, marriage certificate, birth certificate and so on)
13. Get the whole load of documents notarized
14. Get the whole load of documents apostilled (where the Secretary of State confirms the notary is duly registered and can notarize documents)
15. Go back and get new documents notarized as they changed the required notary language and didn’t tell you. Then get them apostilled again.
16. Send the entire package into the Kazakhstan Embassy in Washington (or New York in some cases)
17. Wait….wait and wait some more
18. See if they ask you for updates to any of the documents (medical certifications are only good for 3 months for example)
19. Go get all the updates done
20. Get them notarized
21. Get them apostilled
22. Submit them back to the Embassy
23. Wait…wait…and so on
24. Get approved by the Embassy
25. Realize your Homeland Security approval is going to expire prior to you getting your future child home
26. Apply for an extension
27. Go back in and get your fingerprints updated for another FBI check (like they would have changed?)
28. Get approved for the extension
29. Send your dossier to Kazakhstan for local approval
30. Wait (you get the idea)
31. Get approved locally
32. Wait some more
33. Have your agency come back and tell you they believe there is a child that fits your desired profile at an orphanage somewhere in Kazakhstan
34. Cross you fingers (as these are blind referrals – no information on the child is provided)
35. Wait for your letter of invitation to arrive
36. Get Visas for Kazkahstan
37. Book your flights
38. Update a whole pile of documents (likely medical again, income…all the hard ones to get)
39. Get them notarized
40. Get them apostilled
41. Fly to Kazakhstan
42. Go to the Education Ministry to present your approvals and request permission to visit the orphanage
43. Get permission
44. Go to the orphanage
45. Discuss available children with the orphanage Director
46. Choose a child
47. Meet the child
48. Spent 2 hours a day with the child for 14 days as part of “bonding period”
49. Pick a new name for the child (if you decide to do it)
50. Apply to the court for a court date
51. Wait (chew on nails)
52. Get your court date (usually 10 days after the completion of the bonding period)
53. Hang out in Kazakhstan waiting for your court date (and visiting your child)
54. Go to court
55. Get approved (hopefully)
56. Decide whether to stay or leave Kazakhstan as there is a 15 day “cooling off” period to allow anyone who wants to contest the adoption to come forward. Chew on nails
57. Fly home if you decide to
58. Wait (chew on nails) until the 15 days have passed
59. Get custody of the child
60. Apply for the child’s passport
61. Wait (5-10 days) while the passport comes and your agency does the final sets of paperwork
62. Get a doctor to examine the child (required by the US)
63. Go to an interview at the US Embassy in Kazakhstan
64. Get permission to take the child home
65. Get on a plane
66. Try to pass out and fail as your new son or daughter has not only never been on a plane but has likely spent little time outside the orphanage.
67. Entertain child for 25+ hours and 10 timezones
68. Land back in the US. The child becomes a US citizen as soon as their feet hit US soil
69. Go home

But of course it doesn’t end there. There are follow-up placement studies that need to be done and a yearly progress certification that needs to be filed until the child is 18 years old.

Worth it though.