Arrive in Frankfurt

30 July 2009

Just a quick post since I am currently on battery power. We had some issues with the speed of the internet at the hotel in Almaty so that is why there have been no recent posts. I will post them as I get the chance today or tomorrow to catch up.

Lukas' passport was delayed arriving to Almaty so we were pushed back a day in having our US Embassy appointment. We were not sure if we would get out as scheduled or not. Luckily we were able to have it expidited from Astana to Almaty for a small fee of $100. Otherwise we were told it might be Friday before it would arrive. It was worth the extra money.

The embassy appointment was about 10 minutes, we received his passport and sealed envelope. Nicoli picked us up at 11:30pm Wednesday to take us to the airport. We breezed through security and immigration. We were forunate to have a row of 4 seats to ourselves. Lukas was quite excited about the whole process. We were able to get him to sleep just before we landed in Astana to pick up the rest of the passengers. It was a pretty full flight. He slept until breakfast.

He got to ride a bus from the plane to the terminal in Frankfurt and we are currently sitting by a window so he can see all the planes and trucks.

I'll post more later. Just wanted to let everyone know that we are on schedule to arrive home as planned.

Paka,
Lynda, Wayne and Lukas

Part One of Final Trip

It is a wet, grey morning in Frankfurt. We are sitting at our old spot in the airport Gate B22. It has tables and outlets so I can keep the laptop charged. This may come in very handy for the return trip in case we need to keep Lukas occupied with videos or computer games.

I was catching up on some of the other families blogs and discovered the Christian and Natalie from Quebec will be on our same flight. They are the ones adopting the other little boy we were shown on our first day. They will be taking the train from Almaty so we will actually get to Taraz ahead of them.

The flight from Dulles was uneventful and so were all the security checks. Either we are getting better at this and have done it too many times now or they are getting lax.

Guess that's all for now. We will post again when we get to Taraz. We are hoping we will get to go see him on Monday in the morning or afternoon.

Paka,
Lynda and Wayne

Halfway to Kaz

We are currently sitting in the Frankfurt airport after an uneventful flight. Our game of the day is to guess what item will be taken at the next security check point. Going through security at Dulles we discovered we had inadvertantly put a bottle of bubbles we bought for bonding in one of our checked bags. The TSA is now enjoying them. While making our way through the Frankfurt Airport we discovered we had to go through a security checkpoint between gates. This time the offensive item was a tube of handcream that was over the limit. It went through US TSA in a one quart bag without any problems but not in Frankfurt!

So what do you do with 6 hours to kill, buy some bottled water so you will have a small supply when first arriving in Kaz. For future travelers, don't bother, there is yet another security checkpoint we have to go through to get to our gate. The water will have to be used up or tossed before we get to our gate. Live and Learn. Can't wait to see what they find to take this time.

Oh well, if that is the biggest problem we have to deal with during our travel to Taraz I guess we can't really complain to much. Hopefully the next post will be from Taraz.

Paka,
Lynda