July 2, 2007

We finally made it to Almaty on Sunday around six in the morning. We’re 12 hours ahead of CST. However, our luggage, which we have not set eyes on since July 27 is still not with us. Apparently three bags are in London and one lonely bag is still in Chicago. Our interpreter is supposed to call the airport today.

We’ve settled into to our apartment, not that we had much to unpack. Our apartment is sparse but it serves its purpose. It is located pretty centrally. We’re two blocks away from the Silkway. The Silkway is a mall that has a grocery store and internet café. We’ll be spending a lot of time there because our translator said we couldn’t even get dial-up in our room. We would have had to visit the internet café a lot anyway so we can video chat with Russell and that requires high speed. When we went to the café last night the guy that was working there didn’t speak any English so we couldn’t figure out how to switch the computer from Russian to English. Hopefully someone will help us with that today.

And finally, best of all, we met Robert today! He was very shy around us, but at least he didn't cry. We couldn't get him to smile or talk, but he did come to us when the caregiver told him to. We were only with him for about 30 minutes but tomorrow will be longer. He did give us hugs goodbye when the caregiver told him to. I'm trying to upload pictures on the blog, but the computer at the internet cafe is in Russian so I can't read anything. I'll keep trying.