Kazakhstan Adoption

Decent bakery near the Hotel Skif

Our translator took us by a decent bakery (at least by the standards of Petropavlovsk). I grabbed some beef and potato filled pastries for lunch and they were not bad. Apparently the pastries are decent as well although we didn’t sample them this trip.

Bakery in Petropavlovsk

For those that care, this is where it was:

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Decent pizza in Petropavlovsk

We were getting tired of the food in the hotel so on the advice of another couple who are also adopting we headed out to look for a pizza place they had tried and liked.

The food was decent and although they didn’t have English menus it was cafeteria style so pointing and grunting was sufficient to get what you wanted to eat.

In addition to pizza they served salads, ribs, rice and a range of other sides. It was a pleasant change to what we had been eating for dinner and we’ll be back. I will snag some pictures of the outside of the building and the restaurant itself the next time we go and post them but the highlight of the trek for our daughter Samantha was the attached playground.

For the map deprived (in other words pretty much everyone), here is where the restaurant is located:

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Hotel Skif – Location

I took a GPS fix outside the Hotel Skif this morning as I could never find a map of Petropavlovsk anywhere on the Internet. So here it is courtesy of Google maps.

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Introducing Darya

We’ve been visiting the baby house for a few days doing our “bonding” with our to-be new daughter. So here is the first picture of Darya (we are still discussing a name change when we file the official paperwork with the court next week…more to come on that front).

She is 14 months old and has been at the baby house for about a year.

The process from this point forward for those who are not familiar with how Kazakstan adoptions work is that we spend 2 hours a day with her for 14 days and then our dossier is submitted to the court. Approximately 10 days later we get a court date and the judge makes a final decision on the adoption. Assuming it is granted, there is then a two week waiting period for any final objections to be raised and five days for paperwork with the Kazakstan government and the US government. Then she can come home.

It is a long, involved and rather frustrating process but you just need to suffer through it.

I’ll post a gallery of photos in a couple of days.

The Skif Hotel, Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan

Since we were not able to find much information on the Skif Hotel on the Internet prior to traveling I figured I’d spend a post talking about the hotel we are staying in. Some level information on this place would have been rather helpful when making our travel plans.

This hotel seems to be the hotel of choice for some adoption agencies as there are multiple couples here going through the same process. It looks like it has been recently renovated with more renovations ongoing but even the newly renovated sections would find it difficult to climb to the level of two stars in a western hotel. I give it a solid one star.

The foyer is large, tiled and kept extremely clean (there is always someone sweeping it). On the lower level is a very large dining room, the tables attractively set with tablecloths and cloth napkins in a royal blue and gold colour scheme.  Breakfast is included in the price of the room and usually has eggs, some type of cereal, bread and with a couple of the options some fruit.

They have one menu translated to English (everyone has to share) and in case you are not inclined to eat horse meat (a meat of choice in Kazakhstan), it is indicated in the menu. The food is quite good and very reasonably priced. Dinner for four the other night rang in at $20 or so. That being said, by the fourth night you are going to be looking for alternatives as the menu just isn’t that varied.

The second floor is recommended since the rooms are outfitted to North American standards. If you need space, the suites are a good choice but are a bit more expensive. There is a fairly large foyer, living room and separate bedroom, a 2 piece bathroom and a separate shower room (some with showers only, others with tub with shower). The suites go for approximately $105 per night with the Tenge at 150 or so to the US dollar. We were offered a 20% discount if we paid for our stay in advance.

The smaller rooms are more like normal hotel rooms and are a bit cheaper.  There is also a fridge. Maid service is rather sporadic but if you tip them you get a good service. Bring slippers since the carpets are not very clean.

There is a workout room with 2 treadmills, 2 stationary bicycles, an elliptical trainer, some weight machines and free weights. The full size gym has basketball nets, a volleyball net and a ping-pong table.  The pool is all one depth and deep so it is not ideal for children. It is a requirement to wear a bathing cap which they sell in the pool area for 400 Tenge. There are change rooms, showers and a sauna but everything looks rather ex-Soviet Union, albeit with a more recent coat of paint.

The hotel is within walking distance to a number of grocery stores, restaurants and a mall. Constitution Avenue, also within walking distance is a great place to go for a walk as it is a car free zone. More to come on the area around the hotel in future posts.

Almaty to Petropavlovsk

We arrived in Almaty airport at 5:30am or so and after navigating ourselves through immigration (pretty painless) and collecting our bags (which all showed up…yeah!) we headed up to departures to figure out how to get on our domestic flight to Petropavlovsk. Luckily we had someone meeting us to give us our tickets and walk us through the process or we would have been doing a lot of hand waving trying to get the information from the airport staff who for the most part spoke no English.

The Almaty airport isn’t very big and reminds me a lot of some of the airports I’ve been in in India (Chennai for example). It is basic and of course you won’t find a Starbucks or Borders anywhere. What you will find is a currency exchange kiosk (149 Teng to the dollar at the moment), a small store where you can get juice, etc. and a coffee shop which we didn’t bother trying although it looked just fine. There are also the normal tourist kiosks where you can buy locally made gifts and what looked like a small pharmacy and a cell phone store (they weren’t open when we were there).

Domestic flights leave on the opposite end of the terminal from international flights and the process by which you check it was a bit convoluted. First you wait out in the main terminal for your flight to come up on the board. When it comes up, the check in line that you need to use is also listed and you can pass through a ticket check line to get into the actual check-in area. They won’t let you through until your flight comes up so if you have a long layover like we did you need to set up camp in the main terminal.

Once your flight comes up you can make your way to the check in counter that is listed on the board. In our case we were flying SCAT Airlines so that was the counter we needed to find. I was hoping that SCAT actually flew jets but no such luck. The flight to Petropavlovsk was on a 30 seat, Soviet era turbo-prop. So our carry-on luggage needed to be a maximum of 5kg which of course several of the bags exceeded. That meant that we needed to pay some more because we had too much baggage and that needed to be done via another kiosk back at the ticket check line. So back we went to pay and luckily I had converted some cash as their credit card machine was out of order.

The flight was uneventful (thankfully) but long. I had forgotten how much I hate flying turbo-props and three and a half hours on one was not what any of us needed after 30+ hours of travel. But we survived and arrived at a very small, very simple airport in Petropavlovsk.

The terminal was so small that they really didn’t have a luggage carousel. So we headed into the main hall and waited for our bags to be brought out one at a time by a bunch of guys who wanted 100 Teng (about 70 cents) per bag for the service. We met our translator and driver in the terminal and loaded up for a trip to the hotel.

Amsterdam to Almaty on KLM

I had forgotten how great an airline KLM is as I’ve not flown them in a long time. The flight attendants are really friendly and the food is actually pretty decent, even in coach. Of course there was a minor issue with our seats but I’m going to attribute that to Northwest’s general incompetence. A couple of weeks ago I spent a good 45 minutes on the phone with the Northwest call center getting our seats re-arranged from the defaults we had been assigned. Imagine my surprise then when I actually boarded the plane and the seats we had been assigned were not the ones on our itinerary (printed from the Northwest website) but the original ones assigned to us by KLM. Grrr….not a good way to start a long flight. Lesson learned – check everything before you board.

Despite it being an overnight flight I didn’t sleep much (although the girls did) and spent a few hours reading a book on my new Kindle. I finally broke down and bought one just for this trip as the thought of hauling books half way across the world made me cringe. Plus we were right at our luggage weight limits anyway. I must admit, the Kindle is my latest must have travel accessory. It is a really amazing device and a pleasure to read on. If you can get by the initial cost, I highly recommend it.

So the friendly KLM crew got us to Almaty airport in Kazakhstan. We even got a brownie for breakfast!

We are off to Kazakhstan

At 8:00pm this evening we boarded a Northwest flight out of Boston for the approximately 7500 mile journey to Petropavlovsk in northern Kazakhstan. Our flight to Amsterdam was uneventful although my daughter Samantha was a pretty restless sleeper so we as a result didn’t get much sleep either.

It has been a long time since I flew international in coach (the benefit of racking up miles as a consultant) and I had forgotten how bloody uncomfortable the seats are. My back is going to take a few days to recover from all this abuse. Plus despite beating on Northwest I couldn’t get us all into the premier seating zone. I will be so glad when Delta and Northwest finally merge so my status on Delta will carry over correctly.

Also when I booked the flights Northwest couldn’t seem to decide whether the plane configuration had three seats across on the middle or four seats across in the second to last row which is where we ended up – the problem with booking at the last minute. It turns out they booked it as if there were four seats but there were really only three. So we got the entire row and someone else ended up in the front of the plane after we sorted out the fact that the seat they had assigned her didn’t actually exist (luckily as it was overbooked). So airline disaster #1 averted.

Once we got to Amsterdam we snagged some breakfast and then tried to figure out what to do with the rest of our ten hour layover (ugh!). Luckily we were in the Amsterdam airport which has a Yotel pod hotel. So we snagged a pod for eight hours and all of us promptly fell asleep. It was expensive but well worth it. Plus you can book online which is something to remember for the next trip through Amsterdam.

The bed folded down automatically which initially caused Samantha some concern but she got the hang of it and promptly turned it into a temporary playroom. She did seem frustrated through when everything on the TV was in Dutch.

After six hours of sleep and a quick shower we checked out of our “pod” and went hunting for coffee. Unfortunately the Starbucks in the airport is outside of the passport controlled area so I couldn’t get my fix. I had to settle for a decent cup of coffee at a coffee bar down towards the playground. That was perhaps the best part about the airport – they have a full sized playground inside. So Sam spent nearly an hour sliding and climbing which helped to tire her out for the next leg of the trip.