Our dossier is registered…..

. . . . . . in the Aktobe region. Aktobe is located in western Kazakhstan. It is so exciting for us to know this after everything we have gone through over the past year.

*** If there is anyone reading this that knows anything about this area, we would love to hear from you.

We also did find out today that we definitely will not be traveling this year but hopefully we will travel or at least be asked to travel in January. This was sad and good news at the same time. Obviously we are very anxious to travel and meet our child but we can now tell our family and friends we will be home for both Christmas and New Years. The holidays, of course are the reason for the delay this time. Apparently, the government offices in Kazakhstan are pretty much closed down from Dec 16 to Jan 13. A month’s vacation - how great is that?? They have several holidays that they will be celebrating in this time frame. Dec 16^th is their Independence Day holiday which is typically a four day celebration. New Years is huge for them and again is usually celebrated over two or three days. And of course they have Christmas which I believe is celebrated at different times depending on religious beliefs. The Russian Orthodox Christmas is on January 7^th. Here and there through out these four weeks the government offices do open but since significant amounts of people take vacation time little work actually gets accomplished. While I am sure plenty of work gets accomplished just not much work when it comes to adoptions.

I added the time and temp for Aktobe and our home. Our home info is mainly for us once we travel. I left Almaty info on the page because regardless of where in Kazakhstan we find our child we will spend the last week or so of our trip in Almaty.