Thank God, Almaty!

Steve again. Well, Amsterdam is behind us now. But it turned out to be a very nice inconvenience. Everyone we talked to was incredibly nice. You would never know you were in The Netherlands as everyone spoke English as well as their native tongue. It was amazing how many nationalities we saw in such a short period of time.

We left Schipol airport without incident, our KLM 767 free of technical difficulties. We had an amusing moment when a couple and their daughter were getting settled in front of us. I told Terri that I thought they were American, and a couple of moments later the lady leaned over and said, “You’re going to adopt children from Kazakhstan aren’t you?” A bit stunned we just nodded yes. “I recognize you from your blog site," she said. As it turned out they were going to Kaz as well. We got a good laugh at our really small celebrity status. We also talked to another gentleman going back to adopt his third child.

We landed at Almaty airport at 2AM and waited in line for a while to get processed. The customs lady made me take my glasses off and scrutinized my passport photo quite a bit. Not sure how I felt about this… maybe she was trying to tell me something about my looks. We had a sticky moment when an official gave us some grief about the phone board we were carrying for a local humanitarian group. Yep, it was the ‘big shake down’. I was starting to get a little mad and Terri just dug her heels in and was not going to give in. After what seemed like forever they let us go, realizing that we weren’t going to give up any cash. Our translator was briefly drawn in to this intrigue as she was trying to explain the situation of why two Americans were carrying a phone board. The obvious answer; you never know when you will need one.

That being resolved we were taken to our apartment, getting there at about 3:30AM. It is not a bad apartment, thankfully on the first floor. We have joked it is better than the ‘Shangri-la’ an apartment we stayed at while our house was being built. But we won’t be here long, as we will soon move on to our next destination. Here's a photo of one of th rooms in the apartment:

Really, it is very nice—newly renovated, modern fixtures, hot water and quiet.