TRIP #1 TO KYRGYZSTAN
a mostly pictorial guide to our trip
The cast of characters
Kai - 4 year old warrior boy
Grace - 3 1/2 year old hell raiser
Casey - 22 year old college senior.
Zachary - "BIG DADDY"
April - 34 year old caffeine addict.
So we left Vermont on, like, a Friday and got into Bishkek on Monday morning. The trip is long, very long and Heathrow Airport, for what it's worth, SUCKS! They might want to work on that before the Olympics. Good GAWD people, I thought the Brits were supposed to be organized. The airlines, on the other hand were great. British Airways and British Meditteranean both had amazing flight crews who dealt beautifully with some mighty grumpy people.
Here is who were not grumpy. Kai & Grace. Cheerful and chipper the whole way there. I love flying with those guys.
So we got there and stayed at the very nice, and amusingly named, Golden Dragon Hotel. It was quite swanky, ya know, for Central Asia. We fell asleep for a wee nap and woke up 7 hours later. Yeah, the jet-lag hasn't gotten any easier since we were last in this part of the world.
The next day we went and met the baby, which was, I gotta tell you, pretty awesome! He was so teeny and tiny and perfect. We cooed and snuggled and he, well actually he slept through the whole thing, so who knows what he thought, probably something along the lines of "people, trying to sleep here. That's why my eyes are closed. Because I am sleeping. Ya! Sleep is good. Now stop trying to get me to open my eyes."
After a brief half hour we went back to the hotel and collapsed with the other sleeping members of our crew.
For the first week we could only visit every other day because of the age of the babies and the fact that they wanted to see how they would do with so much stimulation. So we went a shook them and threw them up in the air and used them as footballs and lo and behold, they survived! And then we were allowed to visit every day for a couple of hours, because of our superior parenting skills.
During our off time we made a tour of Bishkek's attractions:
"Come children, I will take you to....."
"The Flamingo Park!
I love how sad and exhausted the guys look.
The theme of this park was not immediately clear.
So, that's the Flamingo Park, a sort of Soviet Disneyland that has had some upgrades since Kyrgyztsan became a Republic. The better park is downtown because entry is free and the rides are funkier and the food is better. Plus the people watching was more fun. Behold:
Awesome bouncy castles there!
These 2 girls were so cute!
I lurve donkeys.
An outing with grandma
Told you the rides were weird.
Yeah, weird.
We had been waiting forever for a ride on the pony. Finally the boy came and found us and the redheaded woman in back ripped him a new one because she thought he was stealing her business. The kid MADE Grace get off , that's how scary she was.
Casey, taking her pown life in her hands by sitting next to scary, screaming, redhaired lady. The donkey just kept showing up wherever we were.
I wish we could share pictures of the baby, but this is a public website, and we just aren't comfortable doing that until he is legally ours. Then we will post so many pictures you'll be sick of him. In the meantime, here are some baby related pictures.
Waiting to go meet their new brother-to-be for the first time.
Grace is a fan of brothers.
The baby's hand on mama's finger.
OK, so Lenin isn't exactly baby related, but these statues always crack me up.
We had a great trip! We loved the other families we met. We are so excited about our new little man (who has gained 2 lbs in the last 3 weeks thank you very much) and our kids were really happy to be there with us. They did beautifully on the 30 hour trip home which started at 4am. Just brilliant, non-whiny travellers. Now we wait for courtdates and then hopefully a quick turnaround for picking up the littles Taylor. In the meantime, here are some pictures from our excursion up into the mountains.
Thanks for stopping by. Stay tuned..........
A prayer tree. Yes, we did tie a ribbon on too.
