One Week Has Gone By. . .

Preevyet! Hello from Kostanai! Hi Ms. Barrett, hi Katherine and everyone in Dominique's Class! Dominique misses you all! We are having a great time visiting Baby Sofia in the Baby House. Yesterday we were able to take Sofia outside, and that was fun.

The Baby House is a large yellow building, with a small playground in the back. This Baby House keeps about 75 children, ranging from 3 months of age through 4 years of age, boys as well as girls, although baby girls are the ones parents adopt the most. When they reach 4 years of age, the children are moved to another Children's House in the same town, where they will live until they are older. They are cared for very well in this House, but all of us who are adopting wish we could bring them all home with us to provide these little children with a loving home, hugs, and stability. It breaks our hearts to leave them behind, but hopefully other people in the world will adopt them. . .

Here is a photo of our hotel. Buildings are all like this, block-like, and painted with different colors. Hotels are not just hotels, though. In one given building, be it a hotel or something else, it contains multiple small businesses. Only the third and fourth floor of our hotel have rooms, and part of those floors are businesses.

Most people in Kostanai do not have very much money -- the minimum salary here is about $100 per month. An average job may pay about $250 per month, and a teacher and a doctor who works for the county hospital may receive about $150 per month. Most people go to college and get degrees, and jobs are available, although the more specialized ones require moving to a bigger city. People who make good money are businessmen and corporate people - they can make about $2,000 per month. A judge or a lawyer may make about $1,000 per month. Most people ride the bus and do not own cars. People walk everywhere.

Food and items at the grocery store, which looks like a very small version of our Ralph's, is not very cheap. Families live together in small houses or apartments in order to make ends meet, and extended families are an important part of the Kazakh culture. Grandmothers and other members of the family live together, and they all take care of each other as they age, and children are not required to leave their homes when they are done with college.

Here is Valentin, our Kostanai translator, and Baha, our coordinator who lives in Almaty with her husband and twin 4-year old children. Valentin recently completed his degree in Chemistry here in Kostanai, and lives with his grandma and parents in an apartment. His thesis was about milk, and he studied the elements of it with milk from his Grandpa's cows. He is very intelligent, and a hard-working young man. His parents must be proud. While studying chemistry, he was taking English lessons for many years, and working as a translator. He hopes to land a job as a chemist somewhere, but for that he will need experience. We met an Irish couple who is adopting here as well, and they are looking into trying to arrange a job for him in Ireland for experience. Baha is very busy -- she works with many adoptive parents at a time, and she coordinates and schedules meetings with lawyers, judges, arranges hotels, Baby House visits, transportation, etc. She is away from her little children a lot, and that's hard on her. But she loves her work, and does it well. She likes children, and is often kissing and hugging Alex and Dominique.

We found out that our Court Date is set for June 16th. This means we will probably be going home on the 18th. And then Mike and I will return to Kostanai two weeks later, probably around July 2nd for about 9 days. At that point we fly to Kostanai to pick up Sofia, spend the night, and fly to Almaty for about a week. The week there consists of going to a medical examiner for final physical check-up of the baby, for finalization of paperwork and Sofia's passport, and for interview at the US Embassy and legal paperwork for Sofia to enter the US as an American.

For now, DAS VEDANYAH! (Good Bye!) Hugs to all!. . .