Taylor Tomyris Nadine Van Sant

zdrastvooytye... (Hello) from Astana!

We are on day three here in beautiful Astana, Kazakhstan! We have met our daughter (which I will go into length about shortly!), we have moved into our apartment and we have begun to form a routine.

Our apartment in along the river and seems to be the apartment that is used by Commonwealth families all the time. It is pretty spacious, however Tony is finding the bed difficult to sleep in. Since the average Kazakh person is about 5'3" tall (yeah...), the beds are a little smaller than we are used to. With Tony being 6'5" he has his feet hanging off the bed and with me being 5'11" I am from headboard to foot board! We have a full kitchen, a full bath and a half bath, a bedroom, a living room, and a large living room. We are very happy to have air conditioning as the weather here is much more extreme than we originally thought. We were told that it would be hot but a dry heat... wrong.... It is very humid here. The temperature is about what we have in Michigan (80-90 degrees) but the humidity is high and sticky. We cannot walk out of the apartment without feeling like we are sweaty! However, there is a beach within a 5 minute walk form our apartment so if we wanted we could go swimming! The Ram Store (the main grocery store) is within walking distance as is the gym. We will be looking into the gym tomorrow or the following day. In our apartment right now we only have dial up (until Monday when we can get the cable people out here) so we apologize for not being able to download pictures yet. But we promise, once we get the modem going, the pictures will be up!

For the families who are about to travel, pack light! The baggage people have destroyed our suitcase so pack only about a weeks worth of clothing! Don't be afraid to dress as you please. We have worn shorts, jeans, tennis shoes (all of which we were told we should not bring because they do not wear them!). I advise the women to bring a pair of nice shoes! The women here dress in short skirts, dresses, pants, whatever, but they ALWAYS wear high heels. I brought a pair of flats and that has proven to work well. Especially while we are outside walking around the baby house! You can find the essentials here in Astana. Stuff like American brands are available so only bring travel size items. You don't need to worry about bringing your own toilet paper, it is available here. However, I recommend bringing travel size toilet paper (and lots of it) because you have to pay 20 tenge to use public bathrooms and they do not provide toilet paper. Same thing with the baby house! The bathrooms here are not too bad. The ones in restaurants, and such are nice, just like the ones in the hotels or the apartments. Today I experienced the "non lidded" toilet. Be prepared to stand to go! It was strange. THANKS GRAM! for the warning!

Now, Astana is a beautiful city and we would highly recommend it to people! The city itself is beautiful and the people here are proud of the city. Yesterday was "City Day." This was a celebration for Astana becoming the capital! The city was decorated and there were parades, concerts and the like going on. At about 11:30pm they lit off fireworks which was great because we missed the 4th of July at home in the States! Baheet (our Commonwealth coordinator) and Gulsana (our translator) took us out to enjoy the city.

Now, what you have all been waiting for...
Taylor Tomyris Nadine Van Sant!

That seems like a lot of names but they are all special! Taylor, because we wanted it, Tomyris, because it was her original name with a very special history, and Nadine because it is my mothers middle name and means hope in Russian! Tomyris was queen of the Massagetae, a Scythian people of Central Asia east of the Caspian Sea. She was famous for defeating and killing the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great during his invasion and attempted conquest of her country. We thought that this name was beautiful and we wanted to incorporate this into her name.

When we walked in to meet Taylor for the first time we were caught off guard. We had prepared ourselves for a toddler but instead we were referred an infant! We both believe that this is the right choice and that we can provide a wonderful life for her. Taylor was born Novemebr 14 2006 and will be 8 months old as of July 14th! She is very small for her age, but that is ok! She was born one week premature but has had no serious health problems. She seems to be a little bit developmentally delayed but that is to be expected of any child in an orphanage setting. She is a beautiful little girl and we are very excited to welcome her into our family.

We look forward to sharing more about our journey to begin our new family. More to come...

da sveedaneeya! (good-bye)

PS: Mark, we have yet to see goat head soccer. We did however see a headless, skinned goat body exiting the MALL today. And we thought we could find everything in our malls...