Typical Day

By Kazakh law, we visit with our children for 2 hours/day for 14 days during the "bonding period". At the end of this two weeks, we apply for a court day, which can occur anywhere from 3 days to 3 months from the end of the bonding period, but typically is about 3-7 days (please be 3 days, please be 3 days...). After the court date, there is a 15 day "waiting period", which several years ago was waived, but now is not. We are now in the 12th day of our bonding period, and will hopefully find out our court date on Monday.

Parents either stay in country during the 15 day waiting period, or go home. We're planning on going home, then returning for a second trip (this was recommended to us). The second trip is when we can take Ethan from the Orphanage, and when we prepare his documents and visa for travel to the United States, which usually takes 7-10 days.

So, our typical day involves visiting Ethan for a couple of hours, either in the morning or in the late afternoon. We usually get a ride over the the orphanage, then walk home (it's about a 10-15 minute walk from our hotel to the orphanage). The rest of the day we usually do some shopping (food for us, toys and fruit for the kids, or just random browsing through the markets). We then do some reading, go out for dinner at one of the five restaurants we've found, and in the evening we often watch a DVD on the computer we brought (we're sooooo glad we brought some movies -- helps to hear some English!).

Today we introduced Ethan to M&M's, which they sell over here (CocaCola, PhilipMorris, Mars, and many other big brands have already established themselves quite comfortably here). We played a game matching the colors of the M&M's to the colors in his book, except there aren't any blue M&M's (were there ever?). Anyway, Ethan definitely approves of the chocolate candies. He's going to fit right in in good ol' America.