Aktau

Boy is this different from Almaty! Just dry and brown desert meeting the sea. It is a pretty good size city and we are in an apartment with basic modern conveniences such as washing machine, full kitchen including microwave, iron, cable TV with FOX news and CNN in English. The store is big and I realized I brought alot of stuff I could have just bought here - oh well. They have 2 shopping malls. It looks like you can buy pretty much anything you need around here. There is an Irish pub called Shamrocks about a block from our apartment with English menu. We are definitely not "roughing it"!
We have met our baby boy - Joldas is his name and we are going to use that as his middle name. It means "friend" in Kazakh is what we were told. He is 13 months old and his head circumference is great- perfectly normal, but his weight and length are small as to be expected. He has been there since birth and does have some delayed motor skills - more like an 8-9 month old baby. But he is so bright-eyed and curious! He cried the first 2 times we visited with him, but just briefly. After that, he hasn't cried at all the last 2 visits - he recognizes us now. And today we got him to laugh when we tickled him! Everyone at the baby house is very nice and helpful. It is clean and bright. But we have seen all the babies doing that rocking back and forward motion and one baby was repeatedly banging his head against his crib. It is also eerily quiet in there - except close to feeding time! Everything you read about in the books was right before my eyes in regards to the "orphanage behaviors" of the babies. It is really sad. You wonder why volunteers don't come in just to visit and play with them. They all need to build muscle strength in their legs.
We have been told our court date should be 4/3 or 4/4. Also we can have an escort back to FL instead of having to do a second trip - we certainly did not hesitate to take them up on that!
Now we just spend some bonding time and get through the next 2-3 week. I feel like finally we are in the home stretch after all of the preparation and waiting over the last year!
Will post another update soon.