Day 2 - "The Final Countdown"(double click for pics)

Friday, August 12th “Hello Almaty”

Privet from Almaty KA3ACTAHCKNN.

Plans change again…When I left you yesterday, we had a planned visit for Landen’s medical exam scheduled for 10am and I had just returned from the grocery store. Aeda showed up to take us to the Embassy for the medical exam, but as we started preparing the paperwork in the room, Aeda could not find a copy of Landen’s passport. She was under the impression that we would have a copy, but we were told by Lena prior to flying from Pavlodar that a copy of the passport had been faxed to Almaty (either Aeda or the Embassy directly). Aeda did not have a copy and she was assured that the Embassy would not take a direct fax like that. Calls were placed to Svetlana and Lena, but we were not able to reach them. Aeda left our apartment around 10:20am and said she would be back in 40 minutes depending on traffic. Well, it was 2:30pm and she was still not back. I guess the traffic here is worse than Atlanta during Friday rush hour…. Kim and I wanted to get out of the apartment and explore, but we were pinned down until we heard from Aeda. We still had not checked in with family, we had no idea how to call out, we were getting low on baby food…can you get the drift? She did return at 2:30 as noted and had 2 young men with her. Appears she is having some health issues and will be leaving town for a few days. One of the men, Jenia will be taking over for her. We are not too sure how he came into the process, but as long as we can fly home on time, it does not matter. Jenia actually speaks better English than Aeda and was interpreting for her during this conversation. As for our medical exam, we had to move it until 10am on Monday. That will then move the exit interview to Tuesday…basically we are on track to fly on time, but can not have anything else happen or we may be delayed. Please pray for a streamlined process from hear out. For Aeda, we hope and pray for a speedy recover as it appears to be something serious…Puts things back in place doesn’t it?

Jenia was able to take care of some question we had; what’s the phone number here, how can I access the internet, where’s the trash can outside? Trash has been an obstacle…. If you were to pass by our house in Newnan on a Monday morning, you know we have a lot of trash. Add a bunch of dirty diapers and thousands of empty water bottles to the mix and we need a regular trash pick up here. In Pavlodar, we could set our trash outside the door daily and the custodian of the apartment would pick it up and take it away. It got to be a lot there, so we started feeling bad and would take it down ourselves. Now here, we don’t have anybody to pick it up and I don’t care to smell poopy diapers for 4 more days….Thanks to Jenia…I won‘t! On the internet, I purchased a NURSAT icard+ to access the internet. This will be a lot cheaper than it was in Pavlodar. It was nice to be back on line, but even better to get to talk with some of you again. Back on line, trash situation under control, and free time until Monday means the “fun” Woodard’s went……..to sleep. Actually Landen went to sleep, Rylee played with a horse sticker book, I worked on the blog and Kim was the understanding wife that sat up with me to help finish the blog.

It was getting to be late in the afternoon, so we went ahead and got ready to go over to the Ram store (mall). We had promised RyRy that we would take her ice skating every day we’re in Almaty. Loaded up with every possible thing a 11mth old could possibly need (Mom did the packing of course), we headed down to the mall. The mall is approximately 4 blocks from the apartment and an easy walk. Well, the walk would be easy if we were not in the middle of the “INDY 500”. We have discussed this in the past, but just to reiterate the point, pedestrians are like possums in the US. You don’t want to hit one, but if you do…oh well. Even with a stroller, cars go flying by you and they will not even stop at a cross walk. Even the best dirty looks we can muster up have no effect. It may take 10 minutes to walk to the mall on a direct shot, but add 10-15 minutes to cross the street…

I must say we had another first as we were getting ready to go to the mall. Landen got his first “scolding” by Dad. He has been biting our shoulder at times and we needed to correct this behavior before a law suit. I’m serious about the law suit as the bites are lethal. He dug into my shoulder and I pulled him from my shoulder (his favorites spot to lay on us) and placed him directly in front of me and said “No Bite, Nyet Bite” and shook my head no. Kim and I had planned this discipline in advance as we noticed the occurrence picking up. Well, it worked. Sam Edwards and I had discussed this strategical method of corrective behavior in the past and agree that you teach the kids earlier what no means. Although, I got the worst of this one as he was so upset and cried for 30 minutes. It broke his heart in two and mine in a hundred pieces. He got red faced and pulled up crying screams from his toes…boy they were loud. One would think I had done something much worse than a scolding…Ok all of you grandparents….he was fine after the 30 minute cry and even allowed me to carry him out. All was better and back to normal with a valuable lesson learned (by both of us)…

At the mall, we decided to eat out for a change. Kim and Rylee had a slice of pizza and bottled water and I had a burger and fries. Not the same, but ok. I could not finish either, but it was something close to home. Landen had cereal…..not much of a variety in his diet these days…but he’s doing a lot better with the spit ups. After diner, our ice princess got to try out this rink. It is smaller than the one in Pavlodar and Kim thought the ice was a little different as it had melted a little bit. Rylee is doing much better on the ice…she does not hold on to Mom or the side rail and can maneuver around the other skaters. While she still fell 3 or 4 times, she told Kim that she thinks “God wants her to be an ice skater”. After time on the ice, Rylee had a bruise on each knee and elbow…not sure what God was saying about those….

Walking around the mall, we again noticed the American influence everywhere. The stores carry American magazines, Disney items, beauty care products, gardening supplies etc… The funny thing about the magazines was the cost. A golf digest cost 1900 tenge, or $18.00 US dollars…and they don’t even play golf here…. A couple of the stores were very interesting. One huge store is like a super Wal-Mart, but much better. Put an upscale grocery store with a Target and you get the picture. The other store that caught my attention and luckily not my wallet was a children’s clothing store. One pair of jeans for a 18mth old boy was 15600 tenge, or $140.00 US dollars. Needless to say, I was ready to leave the minute I saw the first price tag….There really was a lot of cute clothes… All and all we had a very enjoyable evening out. We got back to the apartment and noticed the man that owns the apartment was waiting outside for us. He had two other guys with him and they were holding what appeared to be crib parts. They in deed had the crib that Aeda had promised us, so they came in a put it together for us. A lot of wasted time, since he was right back in the bed… I must admit that Rylee and Kim were correct on the safety of the crib…not too good. Also, the mattress was an old, old quilt…“no way a baby of mine will sleep in that” was a quote from one of us…I’ll let you think about who said that…

We ended the night with a call from Uncle Pitts. We owe Uncle Pitts a lot for his great job of taking care of the big dogs, all the critters and the house while we’re gone. Pitts had Kim rolling during the call, so I will share one story with you as I sign off. Jim had gotten a sandwich brought to him from his brother Bob that was handmade by Merlene, Jim’s mom. She makes a great sandwich; just ask the big dogs…. Yes, Jim had heated up the sandwich, placed his favorite mustard on it and had it on a plate ready for lunch, when he heard someone at the door. He was gone 3-4 minutes while attending to the man at the door and returned to find an empty plate. I hope my dogs liked the mustard!

Poka, poka from Almaty….. Fyi, check yesterdays blog for some updated photos.