March 11&12

It rained nearly all day today, and that made things muddy in Taraz city. Street drainage was obviously not a high priority with Soviet city planners, and it’s unfortunate, because it keeps their streets potholed and the sidewalks muddy The custom here is to remove your shoes before you enter a house, and it’s a very practical custom at this time of the year. Since we are guests at the Children’s house, they don’t hold us to the “shoes off” rule, but we take them off anyway. The caregivers and kids keep the place so clean that we don’t want to be the ones to track in dirt.

We are very impressed with the Saramoldaeva Children’s house. The director there has created an environment that emanates kindness and empathy. The kids really look out for each other and we’re amazed at the tendency they have to share. We had heard some stories of adoptive kids being territorial about food to the point of hoarding a stash in their room, but anytime we have given the kids any food they have ended up sharing it with someone else.

We spent time today playing dominoes and tiddlywinks, and working on some English letters.
The local news ran a segment on the woodshop that Interlink Resources donated and set up for the boys at Saramoldaeva. Alex, one of the very nice boys we’ve met was on camera running a belt sander. The boys made a truckload of school desks and benches to donate to another Children’s house in Taraz.


March 12
Rain again, and by the pictures we are seeing on the news it is causing some flooding in the countryside. In Taraz, it just makes more mud.

Our big job today was to get names worked out for the kids. We presented Yulya with the possibility of “Julia” several days ago and she immediately liked it. She said she would like to keep her patronymic name so we moved it to the middle and she will be “Julia Tsymbalova Peterson”. She gave us a huge smile on hearing that.
We like Vasya’s name but had been warned by a few folks who work in schools that it was uncommon enough to invite some teasing. We approached Vasya with a list of possible American sounding middle names, and explained that in America, he could go by initials or whichever name he wanted to call himself. He looked at what we had written down, weighed his options and said in Russian “I think people in America will find my name difficult to pronounce, so I would like to be called “Jack”. So he will be “Jack Vasily Tsymbalov Peterson”

We have to meet with the Taraz Guardianship council on Monday for their approval to adopt. People here can’t comprehend why we would come halfway around the world to adopt 2 kids when we already have 2 bio children. Wendy had to give the sales pitch to the caregivers the first day we were here and mentioned that we wanted a larger family, were too old to have more naturally, we thought every child should be able to have a family…..and just got uncomprehending stares. Then she said that my Mom once told her that we needed to have more children so we could have a son, and they all smiled and clapped. Apparently, that is the correct button to push. So even though I’ve never actually felt any need to have a son, while we’re in Kazakhstan, that’s going to be my official motivation.