Happy Easter, Happy Nauryz

It's Easter here in Uralsk. Or rather it's Kazakh New Year's (Nauryz). The Russian Orthodox community won't celebrate Easter until late April. So no chocolate bunnies, no yellow and pink Peeps, no fancy-colored eggs this year. But we are having Easter dinner tonight at the Pushkin Hotel with the Pelnars.

Here's the proud, new family: Mama Gretchen holding 15-month old Danyiar and Papa Greg. Their court date was last Tuesday and boy what a roller coaster ride they've had. The worst being their visas. For some reason, they were issued "tourist" not "adoption" visas. Which meant after 30 days they'd be forced to leave the country. They had two choices: wait in Frankfurt for a new Kazakh visa to be issued (typically that takes 3-4 days). Or trust a complete stranger (who also took all their US dollars) to fly to Astana with their passports and pray they'd get an extension (as well as their passports back). They chose the latter and for an entire week, they were under "hotel arrest." (We were told it's unwise to venture out even to the store without a passport.) Miraculously, the judge allowed them to go through court without it. They got custody of Danyiar on Monday, but still no passports. We called almost every day to be sure they had enough food and baby supplies to last. Finally on Wednesday, they got their extensions and passports back. Big relief. Although they didn't get much of an extension to speak of--they must finalize everything and be on a plane by April 6th. Talk about a nail biter.

Here's another American family we've been spending time with. From left to right: me, Sue is holding 5-1/2 year old Damir, on John's lap is 5-year old AJ and Bob.
We saw Sue and John's boys at the Ministry of Education during our first day in Uralsk. I remember commenting to Bob how well behaved their boys were. We ran into them several times around town and connected over dinner at their apartment. Turns out they're here to adopt their second set of children--two sisters. (Bless their hearts.)

Damir (the boy on the right) and AJ were adopted in 2004. Back then you could adopt two children that weren't siblings. Not so today. Ironically, Damir is the same age as Nurlan and from the same babyhouse-#1. Sue thinks she has photos of Garrett Nurlan when he was only 2-1/2 years old. Now how cool would that be? Another family (the Tratwicks) wrote to tell me that their son Jonathan (Vasily) was also in the same babyhouse with Nurlan. They have photos of him from late 2006 when he was four years old. All of these wonderful photos will help us piece together his early childhood. What a wonderful gift to give our son.