Its Alma-Ata Time!

This post will mark our last full day in Kokshetau, KZ. On the afternoon of the 29th we're going to hop back on that little Russian commuter plane for a three hour trip to Almaty (with two babies this time!). While we have enjoyed our time here, and folks have continued to be very hospitable and friendly around town, I think you've noticed from recent posts that we're feeling ready to leave. And now, the time has come.

So, in celebration, its Alma-Ata time! This is the пиво(Beer) post I'm sure you've all been waiting for.

In my estimation, Alma-Ata is the Budweiser of Kazakhstan. You can find it in every store in KZ, it's made in, and bears the Kazakh name of the old capital, the big city, Almaty (=Alma-Ata in Kazakh). It's consistently average, but always light and refreshing on a hot day, and, not least, has a tidy red and white label! Just as Budweiser (at least for the next few months before InBev takes over) is synonymous with American Beer, so is Alma Ata the quintessential Kazakh Beer.
In beer drinking habits, Kazakhs are like Americans in that, until recently, they almost universally drank one or two styles of beer. For us Americans, it's the mass-produced American Lager that rules the market. Similarly, most beer you find in the cooler at the local store in Kazakhstan is either a Pilsner (light, dry, a good amount of hop bitterness but not much aroma, pale in color) or something like a Golden Ale (deep golden, malty, a bit sweet and usually higher in alcohol content than the Pilsner).

The Pilsners we've liked the best are the ones from Karaganda Pivovarenniy Zavod (Karaganda Brewery) and from Tian Shan in Almaty. The Turkish Pilsner Efes which is also brewed in KZ is a nice one too. When it comes to the golden ales, however, Susan just says no. She isn't very excited about the flavor that more alcohol gives the beer. Among the ones in this category that I like the best are the "Traditional" and "Strong" Ales from Karaganda Brewery. Tian Shan also makes a "Strong" Ale that is good. There are lots of others in this category available in the stores, but most are imported from Europe or Russia (Amsterdam and Baltic Beverages each make a whole series of beers one can buy in most stores here, for example). Good or not, they don't count as Kazakh beers for the sake of this post, so I won't say much about those.

Along with Pilsners and Golden Ales, most Kazakh breweries make a "Temnoe" or Dark beer. These vary in consistency, but the best of them are sweeter and stronger, and taste a bit like a Scotch Ale. Overall, I liked the Dark from Karaganda Brewery the best.

The most interesting beers I've had that aren't typical Pilseners or Golden Ales are those from the Aray brewery in Lisakovsk. The "Zhletnoe" (Pilsner style but more hop bitterness and aroma) and "Barchamnoe" (dark and sweet like a Scotch Ale) are particularly good. Cool labels too.

Unfortunately, even though I have poked my head into every little market and shop with a beer sign in the window, I haven't found beers from several of the countries breweries, especially those in Pavlodar and Shymkent. I'm hoping to find a few more of these in Almaty before we leave the country.

It's not ALL about beer, of course. The reason for the trip back to Almaty, now that we have completed the legal process and the adoption is final, is to visit the US Embassy there and do a bit more paperwork that is necessary to complete Jesse and Evelyns' application for US citizenship. Apparently, when we get on the plane back to the US, we will have both their Kazakh and US passports in hand. As dual citizens they will each have two passports to travel (and impress their friends) with until they're 18.

Exactly when we will get on the plane back to the US is still in question. Because of the mysterious delay I told you about last week that kept us waiting here in Kokshetau, we had to give up our infant-friendly, carefully chosen seats on the 29th, and in exchange we now have a position on the waitlist for tickets returning home on August 2nd. So far it doesn't look promising. We've been calling Lufthansa and our travel agent on a very regular basis over the past couple weeks trying to help our cause, but we are still waiting to get seats on the Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Chicago August 2nd. So far, so amount of pleading or sad stories has helped. Anyone have friends at Lufthansa? Anyway, with luck we will get on the August 2nd flight...otherwise, we will be spending a little extra time in Almaty too! There are no open flights till August 5th.

Once we get to Almaty, we will probably have only minimal internet connection. The apartments there typically only have dial-up and I don't see us hanging out in internet cafes with two squirmy infants. So, it may be a bit quiet here on the blog front. We'll try to post something at least once before we get home though!

See you soon!

Many Faces of Jesse

He is shiny and bright. His eyes seek yours. He loves to laugh. He loves you to laugh with him. He'll laugh with you. He hates to have his face wiped, his hair towel-dried, his diaper changed. He likes peas. He likes to splash in the bath. He wants to hold the spoon. He is motion. He is sound. He bangs toys on the ground. He is in command of that pink walker. He has big hands and no teeth. He could shatter glass with his shriek. He has a bit of a jealous streak. Most nights, he resists sleep. He sucks his thumb. He flirts with ladies, stares at men. He wakes at 6:15am--but will keep himself occupied till 7. He loves kisses on his face. He pulls his left ear while drinking his bottle. Wherever we are, that’s where he wants to be. He eats like a champ. He crawls like a pro. He loves his sister, wants her toys, has won our heart.

Many Faces of Evelyn

She is serious; she’s studious; she’s focused. She is content with her own company. She laughs to herself. She peeks out of her right eye as she falls asleep. She likes to clown around, but only once she knows you. She is shy. She is coy. She has cut her first tooth. She is the easy one. She is patient. She can scream loudly if necessary. She likes to suck on our faces. She enjoys her bath. Peas make her gag. She drools constantly and profusely. She’s a goof when she starts to get tired. She loves to stand up. She is obsessed with her bib. She laughs when I bounce the bottle on her tummy. She likes stories and drinking out of a cup. She always finishes her teething cracker. She has the cutest curls, the sweetest smile, and the chunkiest thighs. Her eyes are lovely, dark, and deep. She fusses just a bit before sleep. She likes my rendition of ‘Bah, Bah, Black Sheep’. She smiles at her brother then pulls his hair. She loans him a finger to suck. She lets him take her toys. She takes his. She’s ours.

P.S. Don't worry. The 'Many Faces of Jess' issue is tomorrow.

Okay, Okay.

Now I'm ready. Now I do feel that it's time to move on.

Monday the gas went out on the stove. Not that it matters directly to me since I don't cook, but it did mean that the AMAZING dinner that Kathleen was making was interrupted part way through the cooking. (Still, it was--I repeat--AMAZING chicken Parmesan.)

Tuesday, the washer broke. The owners and Luba are making clear that they believe this to be our fault. They found 2 coins and a match stick in the lint filter and believe this broke the machine--even though the repair involved replacing the pump. Go figure. Anyhow, we are no longer allowed to do laundry. The good news is that now Luba will do it and she irons everything--including towels, sheets, and socks. So, we'll be looking good these last few days. The bad news is that she charges 500 Tenge a load (a little less than $5). And with four of us in the fam now, and this being a very small washer, that will certainly add up.
So, I'm thinking it's time.

Yesterday, we found out that the owner of the other cottage refused to get a crib for the gals over there. Angie and Renee got custody of their kids yesterday and needed a place for them to sleep. Renee's girl is a little over 2 years old and can sleep with her in the bed, but Angie's son is 10 months and needs a crib. We donated one of ours to the cause, but it certainly complicates things a bit here. A pallet on the floor won't work because both can crawl (or close enough); they can't sleep with us because our bed is only a full-sized and so barely fits the two of us comfortably--besides we're not going to lay down with them every nap; finally, they can no longer sleep together because they have gotten just a bit too big and Jess with his teething issues squirms a whole lot in his sleep and fusses off and on.

So, we pushed a chair against the wall and are using that for Evelyn.

I think she is getting used to it, but we had a very late night last night trying to get her to sleep. Every time we put her in it she couldn't sprawl out like she usually does and would wake up and start investigating the problem. Then we'd have to start the whole rocking her to sleep routine all over again.
Yup, it's time.



The kids are starting to get extremely bored with their current batch of toys (though our friends here in Kokshetau keep giving us little gifts of toys and that has really helped--thanks you all!).


This little toy (from Kathleen) cracks me up.

It drives around and the creatures sway back and forth and sing a song in Chinese, I think. It's hilarious. The twins like it too! Below are all the new toys together.

Jess, in particular, no longer wants to play with toys unless we are playing with him. Otherwise, he wants to crawl around and explore, but this isn't a completely childproof setting and he feels especially drawn to cords and to the standing fan.

Oh, and the kitchen sink keeps clogging.
Time to move on.Clearly, none of this is catastrophic--in fact, it's all pretty darn trivial--but even such minor inconveniences at this late stage in the game provide just the push I needed. I'm looking now toward home.
While we look to our departure date, it seems only right to pass these last few days in a festive way, so I've instituted a daily happy hour on the porch. It begins at 5pm. There's beer and happy hour snacks for whoever shows. On the first day it was all five of us. Evie and Jess even showed up for a cocktail of apple juice flavored water (out of a cup--very special!), and their first teething crackers. For the grown-ups it was beer and nuts.


Yesterday, it was just me and the twins. We'll see who shows up today, we bought a variety of different snacks at the store--don't yet know what they are. Stop by if you're in the neighborhood.

This picture was actually taken in the dark. They wouldn't go to sleep last night (the whole new-bed thing) so we finally just turned out the lights, put them down on the quilt with their toys, and sat quietly to wait them out. I could vaguely see them doing something, so I took a quick picture. This is what I saw today when I downloaded it and added some light. Clearly, Evie was letting Jess try out a few of her fingers.

Hard to believe with all these toys they could be bored!

P.S. Would you look at her hair?!?

Looking Ahead

It's Monday morning, the day before Tuesday morning, which is the day that marks the beginning of our last week in Kokshetau. You'd think that I'd be DYING to get out of here, DYING to get home. The truth is, I'm not.

It's not that I'm reluctant to return home. But, I guess I do feel some ambivalence. These last few weeks together here have been pretty amazing. Having the opportunity to focus entirely on the babies, to get to know their personalities, their quirks, to learn to care for them, to begin to find a rhythm as a family--all this has been really special. And our days are so flexible--we've got no commitments whatsoever except to each other. We don't even have to clean because Luba (pictured to the left) comes everyday to do that!
Lots of leisure for playing:

Here is Evelyn trying to bend my ear. (She actually leaned over and burped quietly in my ear.)

She loves to chew on my face: mouth, nose--and here--cheeks.

A lot will change when we return. When we get home I won't be able to ignore my work anymore. (I do have a reduced teaching load in the Fall, thankfully, but still there are looming paper deadlines.) When we get home Brent returns to work full time. When we get home there will be cleaning, there will be meetings, there will be a telephone and people calling us on it, there will be, in short, all of our usual everyday responsibilities. Part of me is looking forward to our life at home. I miss our house, our dogs, our friends, our church, our farmers' market. I miss smoothly paved roads and sidewalks, English speaking people, having multiple power outlets in each room... Even so, I will also be sad to say goodbye to this life in Kokshetau. It's been wonderful. I've not regretted the length of our stay in Kazakhstan one bit. 

This past week has, in fact, been especially fun. While the first week of custody was challenging, it feels now as if we're getting the hang of things. What is more, we've begun to go out and about with the kids. We take daily walks and, last Tuesday, Evelyn and I had our first "girls day out". (Brent was feeling a bit under the weather and so stayed home with Jess.) Evelyn and I met Angie, Renee, and Makhabbat at the Kokshetau museum and had a tour of the museum.

This is us (Angie and Renee to my left) in a mock Yurt at the museum.

Afterwards, went to an Uzbek restaurant for lunch, and ate Plav (a traditional Uzbek dish), which was delicious. I must say, it was a long walk (2-3 miles round trip) and because I had my 19lb chunk-a-lunk in the sling (the roads were too wet and muddy for the stroller), I was in some serious (back) pain the next day. Still, it was worth it. It was such a nice time and Evelyn had a blast: she was great at the museum and at the restaurant. Not a single moment of fussing even though we were out for almost 5 hours which meant she was very late for a nap and feeding.

Outside the Uzbek restaurant (Angie, Makhabbat, me and my girl)

We were sitting under a red awning at the restaurant, hence the red color.

On Friday night, Angie and Renee hosted us all for dinner at their cottage--Kathleen, Brent, myself, our kiddos, plus Makhabbat and her daughter and niece. It was such fun and the kids

loved the change of scenery--we all did. Saturday night was our anniversary, so we put the kids down and went out for dinner (Kathleen looked after them). We stayed in last night, but Kathleen cooked dinner so it still felt like a treat! In short, we're passing some very pleasant summer days here in Kaz.

Makhabbat and her girls put on a dance for us.

Going out to dinner to celebrate our 11 years!

The kids are doing great. They are making good progress on eating solid foods. In addition to rice (Evelyn) and oatmeal (Jess), they've incorporated banana, carrots, and apricot into their diet. And--just today--Evelyn also added a potato pumpkin concoction to her repertoire. Evelyn insists on sucking on her fingers between every single bite (she pops the fingers out, opens her mouth, leans forward for a spoonful and then pops her fingers back in as soon as she gets a bite), but we agreed that we'll get her to stop that by the time she starts high school. They've both begun working at drinking from a cup (water with just a teeny bit of apple juice). Jess with some reluctance and suspicion, Evie with great joy and gusto. 

They are both nearly able to sit up on their own. I found that putting them in the bath was the greatest help toward progress on this front. They don't want to lean their faces in the water so they work extra hard at keeping themselves up.

Evie sitting looking at a favorite book. Can you see who she's looking at?

Jess sitting up.

They love to play together--where by "play" I mean yanking toys from each other. Interestingly, neither seems to mind when the other takes the toy, they just grab it back again (and again and again). It's almost like when they were first learning to pass a toy from one hand to the other. Now they seem to think they have four hands and so just pass it back and forth among all the hands.

Here they are--"sharing" their toys.

Both of them are chewing their lower lip a lot.

Jess is obsessed with this chair, he goes to it every time he can.

They have started to smile at each other, which is very cute. And they continue to be pretty much in synch. They still go to sleep within about 30 minutes of each other and wake up (or, at least, start making their wakefulness known) at nearly the same time. During the waking hours we're hearing all kinds of noises. Evelyn loves to scream, but has also begun to make other sounds as well, mostly she says "aaaaaahhhhhh", "aaaaayyyyyyyyy" and "mmmmmmmmm" (this last is pronounced with much force and is spoken mainly when she's hungry or tired or frustrated). It's nice to hear her making these sorts of sounds since to this point she's been pretty quiet (when she's not screeching). Jess is a real talker. His favorite word is "gloik" but also enjoys "gah", "gal", "mmmmmmmmmm" (again, pronounced with much emphasis), and, as you heard on the video in the previous post, "dadadada". Unfortunately, he's also discovered a very high pitched kind of squeal which he has now introduced to express negative and frustrated feelings as well as positive spazy excitement. It's not a pleasant sound.

They both love to spin this little ball that's on their mirror.

Even if we've enjoyed this time together here in Kokshetau we also know that we've got lots to look forward to when we return. Not the least, we look forward to seeing you all face to face rather than having to communicate just by computer!

Jess peeking at me from around the computer.

Is this the way out?

This is actually a doorway that's part of the Kokshetau National Museum.

Here we are, one day away from the end of the legal appeal period. After this, the decision of the court will be final, and we will be ready to think about our exit. By Monday we should have the twins' birth certificates, naming us as their parents, as well as their Kazakh passports. The only official detail we have left is go visit the US Embassy in Almaty and fill out some more paperwork, wait a bit more, and then we can get on a plane back to the US. Between now and Almaty it appears there will be one more (mysterious) delay here in Kokshetau, but we are getting better at waiting after all this practice!

Could be the Tian Shan?...but its the Rocky Mountains

Along with being the end of the 15-day appeal period, tomorrow also happens to be the eleventh anniversary of the day we got married, on a beautiful summer day in Colorado Springs, CO. We're planning to have a good dinner at our current favorite restaurant here in Kokshetau, the Boulebar to celebrate our marriage and the new family (our housemate has agreed to keep an eye on the twins after we put them to bed, so it will be our first official date as parents, too).

Most of what has been going on with Evelyn and Jesse is best captured in videos, so I've taken the time to upload a few below so you can see what they're up to in real life! Not only are they happily eating a lot of cereal concoctions these days, as you can see (with varying effects on the digestive tract, see previous post for details), but they--well, mostly just Jess--are also crawling and speaking some language we don't understand. (I thought I caught one word that I recognized in Jesse's speech--listen and let me know if you catch it too). Jess is in the lead in the babbling department, but as you can see Evelyn finds ways to express herself.

After all these indoor scenes I will close with some from the outdoors. These are pictures of the twins just before we went out for our first walk with them in the strollers. You can see they were pretty serious about the whole thing.

You better look out for my sis, she can kick your butt.

Our Kazakh Gnome.

In the end, it turned out to be a very nice stroll, they enjoyed taking in the scenery. Susan and I enjoyed the outing and the ice cream cones we got from a street vendor.

Finally, here's a pic of people across the street from our house, waiting for the bus in the morning. Always lots of variety on the street:

Waiting for the bus in the morning.