Not Just Another Kazakh Sunday...

As those of you who have been through the Kazakhstan adoption process know, and many of the rest of you may have picked up on, Sundays are pretty low key around here for adoptive families. No Baby House visits, no translator, no driver. Basically, we just sleep, do laundry, go for a walk, go out to dinner, etc. But this Sunday, we actually had plans. Given that Adam will be leaving in just a few days, we wanted to buy the remainder of our gifts for people at the Baby House and we were planning to meet the other couples here for lunch at a Chinese restaurant. So we got up early, went to two different shopping centers, got all of our shopping finished, and rushed home. We basically had enough time to drop the bags off and go.

As we have told some of you before, our apartment is really nice and the door itself looks like a bank vault. Sometimes it is really hard to open- two deadbolts (each operated by a separate key which has a magnetic strip that each turn three times- so the deadbolt is really long,) then there is another thing you have to turn to get the doorknob to turn. Needless to say- locking and unlocking the door is a big production.

Okay, so we got back from the errands, locked the bottom lock to just put our stuff down and were then ready to go to lunch at the Chinese restaurant. Only the lock wouldn't open. It was about 11:55 am and the lock was not budging at all. We fidgeted with it for a while, but we weren't getting anywhere. We also remembered our landlord telling us (through our translator) when we first moved in that the key was one of a kind and to make sure not to lose it. We were very careful that we didn't want to turn the key too hard and have it break. But we were stuck...

So at around 12:00, we called our translator, who called our cooridantor, who called our landlord. Our landlord is a really nice young guy who is about to get married. He and his fiancee were in Karaganda (which is a couple of hours away) when he got the call and they stated they wouldn't be back until 8pm. We were pretty frustrated because we wanted to go to lunch and had some things to do, but we knew that if we called a locksmith who broke the door without the landlord's permission, we'd probably be in a lot of trouble. So we stuck it out. We missed lunch, made some rice and beans instead, and began playing a lot of scrabble and watching a lot of Russian TV- including "Russia's Got Talent"- and for the record, these people have just as little talent as the people on "America's Got Talent." At 8:00pm, our translator came to our door to wait for the landlord. At 8:15 he called to say he was having car trouble and wouldn't be back until 10:00pm. At 10:00pm our translator and coordinator arrived at our apartment and eventually our landlord arrived around 10:30. He fidgeted with the door for a few minutes, but couldn't do much because we had the only set of keys inside the apartment with us. He directed us, through our translator, to wrap the keys in something, tie it tightly and throw it out the kitchen window when we see him down in the parking lot. We followed his direction and wrapped the key in a hand towel and stuffed it in a small box, and taped it shut with silver electrical tape.

Now, for those of you who do not know this, we live pretty high up in a highrise building which also houses the Spanish Embassy a few floors above us. So to say security is tight in this building is an understatement.

So Adam went to the window, took off the screen, we saw the landlord whistling to us from down below, and Sara chucked the box out the window. The box went flying out the window and hit a car down below setting off a car alarm! Not three seconds later did our phone ring from the security man at the front desk of our building. Clearly he saw the box flying out our window with electrical tape wrapped around it on one of the security cameras. We couldn't understand what he said obviously, but when we looked out our peephole a few minutes later, there was a much larger gathering than initially there. It was our translator, our coordinator, our landlord, his fiancee, the apartment manager, 2 security guards, and another random person. With the key, the landlord continued trying to open the door with no success. Ultimately a locksmith was called. At this point, it was around midnight. The locksmith came, used some plastic card that looked like a credit card to try and open the door--- still unsuccessfully. At this point, we were past the 12 hour mark of being trapped in our apartment.

Around 12:30am, the locksmith determined that he needed to use a drill, but it wasn't charged and there are no outlets in our hallway. He stated that he would be back around 8:30 in the morning. So everyone went home and we remained stuck in our apartment. Thankfully we were stuck inside and not outside, thankfully we had plenty of food and water, thankfully we were together, and thankfully Rylie was not in here with us.

The locksmith came back this morning and began the drilling process. Eventually around 9:15 this morning, and 21 hours after we were initially locked in, we were freed! At that point, we had to wait with the landlord for a new lock to be put on, so we missed our morning visit with Rylie. The good news was that we were able to go for an afternoon visit at 2pm instead.

We got a call around 12:30 from Greg and Maria- they are Sabina's parents. Sabina and Rylie are in the same group and are always eating breakfast together when we arrive for our morning visit. Greg and Maria said that Rylie was looking all over this morning when they we there to get Sabina and we weren't there. Thankfully we were still able to see her this afternoon, though we think she was a bit confused when she woke up from her afternoon nap and we were there to see her.
We had a very low key visit with Rylie this afternoon. We don't know if she was just confused about the timing of our visit, or a little tired, but she was definitely a different child in the afternoon than she is in the morning--- much more chill.
So that's the story from here. Sorry no pictures, but our camera is charging. Plus, we were pretty lazy about taking pictures today.
We hope you are all well.
Love to everyone----