Day 4

Today we made our final decision to adopt Nurlan. His official name will be Garrett Nurlan Williams. Even though they pressured us to make a decision right away, we remained steadfast, telling them we needed to hear back from our IA doctor at the UofMN. Well that was easier said then done. Wednesday afternoon we downloaded all necessary pictures and information, hoping to get a 24-hour response. We did, thankfully, but the pictures were inadequate, plus they wanted more information (like motor and language milestones). All of that delayed our decision for a day.

So back at the orphanage we have poor Nurlan hop on one foot, draw squares and take more pictures with dots on his forehead. Then we rushed to the internet cafe to download the photos. Somehow during the tranfer, all our photos were erased (including those from Almaty and Amsterdam). Frantic, we had to reshoot photos (by now it's 6:00pm) and then find an internet cafe that was open past 7pm. The director of the orphanage was NOT happy with our request to take more pictures of Nurlan. Technically until we commit to him, we're not allowed to take photos. Period. (Supposedly someone before us took photos and posted them on the internet.) Needless to say we apologized, quickly took our 4 shots and raced back to a different internet cafe. At that point, the internet was down in Uralsk was down--everywhere!!! We found another cafe who claimed to have access and were able to download the photos, but NO internet. Returned to the first place, they had access to the internet, but we had problems downloading the photos. There was a virus/worm and it corrupted our files. My last ditch effort: send a yahoo email with photo attachments and pray they'd get it. (All of this took 2-1/2 hours and $50 extra for the driver and translator's time.) Luckily, the email made it safe and sound. This morning we got glowing reports from Dr. Dana Johnson. Nurlan is healthy.

Hallelujah. (We're exhausted.)

More later.