Kazakhstan Adoption

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.

Good coffee….in Petro!

So I guess I need to take back a bit of what I said about the coffee in this town. On a recommendation we walked down to a coffee shop on Constitution Ave this morning and it was actually pretty good! I had a caramel cappuccino which I would definitely recommend. The chocolate cake was good as well.

The wait staff don’t speak English so there was a lot of pointing to the menu and grunting but we figured it out.

It is on the same block as the Italian restaurant.

Sightseeing in Petropavlovsk – Google map

I was going to put up an overall Google map of the things we’ve found here in Petro but it would seem Jennifer at Convergent Paths has done it for me. Hopefully she’ll add some of the additional locations we’ve found to it.

Great list of Kazakhstan Adoption blogs

You may have seen this in the comments but in case you didn’t, Jennifer M maintains a really good list of Kazakhstan adoption blogs at lotsofkazblogs.blogspot.com.

Kazak’s don’t like diet…anything

One of the most striking things when you land in Kazakhstan is that every woman under twenty-five is tall and model thin. So imagine my surprise when I realized that there are no diet soft drinks to be had anywhere. If fact there is no “diet” anything. Normal, sugar laden drinks are everywhere but nothing with the word diet on it – in Russian or not.

Very strange…I smell a conspiracy here somewhere.

So if diet is your thing, I’d suggest you bring your own if you come and visit Kazakhstan. But of course with luggage weight limits being what they are you can’t  do that either. So no good coffee and no diet soft drinks. I’ll keep my eye out for what else is missing and perhaps we can get to the bottom of this.

Meet Jennifer Darya

So after much debate we finally decided on a name. Jennifer Darya is the one that won out even though it wasn’t even on the list at the beginning. Her name will officially change after our court appearance. At that point they will apply to get her Kazakhstan passport in her new name.

Some more pictures:

This Borat thing might have some truth behind it

When the movie Borat first came out I pretty much assumed that it was based on a made up version of Kazakhstan. Even though I’ve never actually seen the movie, even the trailer was so over the top that there was no way that it was real.

I spotted this poster on a shop today here in Petropavlovsk so now I’m not so sure…(in all seriousness I haven’t seen a single person wearing one of these since we arrived…so I doubt the shop has a lot of customers for them)

The Real Kazakhstan

The Theoretical Kazakhstan aka Borat