Our 7th day in Almaty – Day # 61

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

We are free to go !!

We went to the US Embassy today and got Lincoln’s Visa and his other paperwork. As soon as he sucks in the first breath of air at Logan Airport he will officially be an American Citizen. The process at the Embassy was much easier than we feared. It was simple actually. We filled out one quick survey then they called us up to a window and Jeff (our rep) explained all Lincoln’s paperwork to us and congratulated us and Lincoln for finding each other and becoming a family.

When we were at the Embassy we meet many brand new families. It was so wonderful to briefly be in this room and see other families just as happy as we were at that moment. We all shared bits of our adoption ventures together. We had been hanging out with a few families but had no idea that there were many more new families in Almaty at the same time. If we all were not so anxious to head home it would have been nice to have been able to spend more time together.

Another big event of today was seeing the Olympic Torch Relay. We thought we would miss it because of our Embassy appointment but we did get to see it. The relay went directly down the street in front of our hotel. Since our room overlooked the main street we were able to stand out on our patio and watch. Our room was on the third floor so we were over the crowd but not too far off the ground. It was a perfect view. We set Lincoln up with a little play area and toys so that kept him occupied while we waited for the torch to come by. We got extra lucky and seen the torch exchange between two runners. It was a lot of excitement and you could just tell that the people of Almaty were very proud to be part of such a huge world recognized event.

In between all the excitement today we spent our free time packing up and getting organized for our journey home. I hope we have everything we will need packed in our carry-on luggage. It was a tough deciding what and how much to bring for Lincoln.

For our last dinner in Kazakhstan, Eric, Joel, Sara, Julian & Zoe went and picked up dinner for all of us at the Kaz burrito stand. Gen and I stayed in the room with the boys and worked on getting them to sleep.

We are not sure what happened with Lincoln, maybe the whole day was just too much for him to handle. Or maybe he was anticipating the big change about to occur and wasn’t sure if he was ready for it. By the time 6pm rolled around he was done for the day. Our sad little guy was very upset till he finally gave up and went to sleep around 8pm.

Our driver is picking us up at 4:20AM. It will be long day getting home; we pray Lincoln will do fairly well. The three of us will need to be able to get sleep on the flights. We are hoping for the best but expecting several “bumps”.