An update designed to torture you

We made it to Karaganda. It's a pretty neat city. Our apartment is nice, and the food is actually quite good - we've only gone to the grocery store and cooked it ourselves. The flights were all great too. Aside from having to pay a fee for too much weight in our checked luggage on the flight from Almaty to Karaganda (I won't tell you it’s Ambers fault), really nothing has gone wrong! We are here with a couple (the Cruz's) from Arizona, and a single mom from Utah with her daughter she adopted from Karaganda last year (the Richards) and a friend. We're still running on very little sleep, but a bed sure beats an economy class airplane seat or a bench in an airport. We've been to the orphanage twice, and there will be baby pictures soon, we just don't want to post anything until it's official. Here are a couple pictures of the apartment - Jason

Living room:

Bathroom:

Hallway to the apt

This has been quite an experience so far! I only slept about 5 hours since Monday until last night and Jason not more than 3! We also were without showers for over 2 days, not pretty! Our apartment building looks very run down, dirty from the outside. The hallway inside is even worse. We were a little nervous when they brought us in but our apartment is very nice! We will try to post pictures. Jason is happy because he can still watch American football, it's just has voice over’s in Russian. We are eating very well, too well! I thought I would lose weight being here but now I'm not so sure! The store has coffee and lots of chocolate and sweets. We were told there wouldn't be coffee here but there is! The store also has tons of juice, a whole isle of just juice. The meat is mainly pork and red meat; we found just a few chickens at the store. People dress similar to home. The women all wear high heels though, even with pants/jeans.

The weather is nice, it's cold at night but sunny and warm during the day. Just a sweater is fine most of the day. We went to the baby house yesterday, after all this time it was hard to believe that we were actually there. It was surreal. We all went into a big room and sat on the floor or tiny sized chairs and waited for them to bring in the babies. They started bringing them in and they said their names and how old they were. They then either gave them to someone or put them down on the floor. The babies were all crawling, rolling, playing with toys and squirming around. It was a little overwhelming! They are all so beautiful! It really is so strange to have to choose your baby like that. However we have chosen our baby and we love our child already!!

As Jason said we will post about that later. I feel so mean, making you all wait!! -Amber