Day 22 Dec 28

No pictures from today.

This mornings flight was delayed from 12 to 2ish. We got picked up at our hotel Dostar Alem (Room 310) at like noonish. We arrived to a very very empty airport. It was a little eerie and weird to see hardly any cars in the parking lot and no people around at all. We checked in (including drinking our water to be sure there was not poision in it so we can bring it on the plane) and sat and waited until our plane was ready to board. There were only like 15 passengers on the entire plane today. During the 1 hr flight we got lunch, candy bar and a gift from air astana. It was a very pleasant flight.

We arrived in Almaty at like 3:30 PM. We waited, got our luggage and met Arman (driver). We went with a taxi driver while Gretchen and Carl went with Arman. What a ride from you know where. The taxi smelled like exhaust which we can still taste. This driver was just nuts. Yes, the driving here in Kazakhstan is probably 10 times worse than NYC (no lines on the streets - you just drive where there is an opening - first one there makes the lane) - but this driver was bad. Fairly rude at times and didnt know how to take his hand off the horn. Talk about headache when we arrived at Hotel Kazkhstan. He tried to get us to pay him for the taxi ride but we made him wait for our driver. I think he was trying to double dip and up the cost and we didn't trust him at all. So, we made him wait! It's great not being able to understand someone when they ask you something. He was trying and we kept saying "we don't understand, wait for Arman". LOL.

We checked into the hotel and the room this time is beautiful. We got one of the renovated rooms on the 25th floor. All other rooms are taken due to the busy New Years holiday. Gretchen/Carl and us went down to the Guns and Roses Restaurant in the hotel. Food was fair but it was edible. We ate and now we are in the room just chilling out for the night. We are both very exhausted. We will probably turn in pretty soon.

Tomorrow we will be picked up at 12:30 to go to the US Embassay to drop off and complete all the necessary paperwork in order to have our little girl brought to the US.

That's it for now. We will most likely be out and about tomorrow afternoon after the Embassay for some shopping or site seeing so we will be back on tomorrow.