Going Home Day 09
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It’s Saturday, and we’re going through our morning ritual with Gabriel. He’s still running on Aqtobe time, so that gives us an extra hour of sleep. We’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that we will be missing our flight this Wednesday. We have not heard back from any of our WHFC people concerning the status of Gabriel’s passport. We still need to get Gabriel’s physical completed as well as meet with some embassy officials concerning his visa but cannot do any of it unless we have his passport. This is very frustrating as you can imagine.
So to avoid twiddling our thumbs in our rooms all day, we decide to go for a walk around Almaty. I put on the Baby Bjorn thing, strap Gabriel in and off we go. We follow the similar route which Lena took us on the previous day. We head into a market called Baby City, which as you surmise for yourselves, dedicated for baby stuff. Since Gabriel’s wardrobe consists mainly of winter clothes and the weather in Almaty is in the 60’s, we try to find a spring jacket for him. There are a couple of jackets which look like they are a nice fit for Gabriel, but not for the price. These baby jackets started at $40 and went north of that. The pricing here, and the entire city is absolutely ridiculous. The quality is total garbage, yet the pricing is that of name brand stuff. We run into the Kami, Eric and Lincoln in the store as well. Eric and Kami are looking for some clothes for Lincoln as well. We chat for a bit and go our separate ways.
There is a German restaurant up the street that we decided to have lunch at. As luck would have it, the menu is in English. The waiter seats us and brings a high chair out for Gabriel. We order our food and drinks as Gabriel plays with one of his toys. There is a little girl in the place who walks up to Gabriel and shows him her toy cell phone. Then Eric and Kami walk in. They’ve got a case of the munchies and decided to try out the same place as well. The food was good, but the beer was a bit too warm for our liking. Afterwards, we head to the supermarket to pick up some supplies and then back to the hotel for Gabriel’s nap.
Putting him down for his sleep time has gotten easier for the past couple of days. He does his little routine where he’ll play with some of his toys, roll around and make funny noises before he falls asleep.
For dinner, we go meet Eric, Kami and Lincoln, along with a Canadian family who had adopted in Almaty, at a Chinese restaurant. They adopted a cute little girl, who’s name I can’t think of at the moment. We took the food to go as it was close to Gabriel’s sleep time.
Paka!
Going Home Day 10
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Gabriel woke up crying at 3:30 AM this morning. Gen comforted him for about 15 minutes before he went back to sleep. He got up an hour later then his usual time. After he was done eating we got ready ourselves and headed downstairs for breakfast. There we met up with Eric, Kami and Lincoln. We discussed what the plans were for that day, and we decided on lunch with the Canadian family we met, along with another family that was in Almaty as well.
The café that we were to meet up at was in the same area where we had bought souvenirs a couple days earlier. It’s about a 15 minute walk from the hotel. So I strap on Gabriel and off we go. When we get there, Kami is outside with Lincoln getting some fresh air. We head inside and meet the other family and their daughter. We spend an hour or so lunch with them and head to the Green Market, which is basically a big flea market. We walk around for a little bit and head back for Gabriel’s nap time.
Paka!
