We've got dates!!!

Just got a note from the agency that our Letter of Invitation is complete, and that they have the all-important registration number. This will allow us to apply for our entry visas, book our plane tickets, and generally run around like mad things for the next week getting ready to go.

It will also allow us to open those bottles of Malbec and Veuve Clicquot we've been saving :) !

We're scheduled to leave Friday March 2nd, and we should arrive in Kostanai on Sunday, March 4th...meeting SPW should be Monday, March 5. More as things progress.

Kazakhstan - some background info

Kazakhstan is the largest country of central Asia, stretching from Siberia to the deserts of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and from China to the Caspian Sea. The country covers two time zones and five climatic zones. We will be in Kostanai (also spelled Qostanay) in the north of the country - northwest of the capital, Astana.

Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Stone Age, generally by nomads, to which the region's climate and terrain are best suited. Historians believe the vast steppes of Kazakhstan were where humans first domesticated the horse. The rich steppe land had been a valuable prize for many invaders, including Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan and Timur the Lame (Tamerlane) who conquered and ruled the region. It was the Turkic-speaking tribes that developed trade routes including the Silk Road flowing east to west and the Sable Road connecting central Kazakhstan to the Altai and south-west Siberia.

Islam was gradually introduced starting from the 11th century. It was only in the late 15th century that the first Kazakh states were formed and a Kazakh people emerged divided into hordes ruled by khans. The area was conquered by Russia in the 18th century and Kazakhstan became a Soviet Republic in 1936. During the 1950s and 1960s agricultural "Virgin Lands" program, Soviet citizens were encouraged to help cultivate Kazakhstan's northern pastures. This influx of immigrants (mostly Russians, but also some other deported nationalities) skewed the ethnic mixture and enabled non-Kazakhs to outnumber natives. Independence in 1991 caused many of these newcomers to emigrate. Kazakhstan possesses enormous fossil fuel reserves as well as plentiful supplies of other minerals and metals. It also has a large agricultural sector featuring livestock and grain. Kazakhstan's industrial sector rests on the extraction and processing of these natural resources and also on a growing machine-building sector specializing in construction equipment, tractors, agricultural machinery, and some defense items.

A few stats for you:

• Area: 1,052,085 sq mi – 9th largest country in the world (in area) - slightly larger than the US east of the Mississippi river
• Climate: continental, cold winters and hot summers, arid and semiarid
• Population: 15,185,844 in July 2005
  
• Ethnic groups: Kazakh 53.4%, Russian 30%, Ukrainian 3.7%, Uzbek 2.5%, German 2.4%, Uighur 1.4%, other 6.6% (1999 census)
• Religions: Muslim 47%, Russian Orthodox 44%, Protestant 2%, other 7%
• Languages: Kazakh (state language) 64.4%, Russian (official, used in everyday business, designated the "language of interethnic communication") 95% (2001 est.)
• Literacy: definition - age 15 and over can read and write: 99.5% (for comparison, it’s 99.7% in the US)

(Info from a variety of on-line sources)

So what's an SPW?

We've been on the path of an adoption for the past year. [Yes, it's a slightly longer than normal pregnancy but, as a friend pointed out, elephants gestate for 24 months!] Because we're adopting from Kazakhstan, which doesn't match you with a child prior to travel, we know neither gender nor age for our child (up to age 3). Since you can't keep saying "the baby" or "it" for a year, we had to come up with something. Enter SPW - Small Person Wolfe. We're hoping to find and meet SPW within the next week or so - just waiting for our Letter Of Invitation - the golden ticket to the land of parenthood.

So here’s the plan: We'll go to Kazakhstan around the beginning of March, be introduced to our little one, and spend about a month visiting them every day. This sounds like a really long time (at least it did to us initially), but the reason our stay will be so long is that it will give SPW time to get to know us at bit before we whisk him or her to the other side of the world. Just imagine being taken away from everything you know – people look different, smell different, eat really different food, and, oh by the way, you don’t understand a bit of the gibberish they’re speaking. Then factor in that you’re no more than 3 years old. That’s why we need to go there for a while – give them something familiar to balance out all that change.

At the end of the month, we’ll go to court in Kazakhstan and be named adoptive parents. Once that happens, we’ll come home for about 3 weeks, while paperwork is processed (or maybe we’ll stay there…don’t know yet). We’ll then return to Kazakhstan, finish paperwork, go through an interview process at the US Embassy there, and then take SPW on a LOOONNNGGG plane ride home. Hopefully we won’t torture the other passengers too much, and then SPW will become a US citizen upon landing back home.

So follow along on our journey of Welcoming SPW to our family, and please keep us company on the way.