Stuck in Amsterdam for the Night (long - but great - post)

TANYA (RUSSIAN) ALINA (1/2 RUSSIAN & 1/2 KAZAK) SALTA (KAZAK)

Dratts! My flight from Amsterdam to Almaty was cancelled, and after spending 5 hours in line - yep 5 hours (with nearly no sleep on the flight), I feel a bit fortunate (the rosary in my bag must have helped me out a bit - thanks Grandma Simon) as I ended up scoring the last seat on tomorrow's (now today) flight straight from Amsterdam to Almaty............and I got a business class seat!! Rock on! Many of the families behind me had to fly from Amsterdam to London to Almaty or Amsterdam to Istanbul to Almaty, and they still had to stay the night last night and do that trek today. Ugh! Needless to say, I have to feel fortunate.............although I am a bit sad that I cannot arrive in Aqtobe on Tuesday (today) instead of Wednesday (tomorrow.) I was told to be in Aqtobe on the 19-21, so I am still okay, but I wanted some rest, get in some re-coupe time before speeding off to the orphanage. Be flexible Christy I keep telling myself, so I am not fretting too much. What I am worried about is flying SCATT airlines. :) Pamela, a fellow friend (her sister adopted from Aqtobe last year) gave me the heads up NOT to fly on a Wednesday to Aqtobe if at all possible as Wednesdays are the day that SCATT airlines flies, otherwise, I would fly on Air Astana. I guess that SCATT is an old Soviet Airline with very OLD back loading airplanes, so I am freaking out about this. :) I will take photos if I can. Please pray for me. :)

As for my flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam, I flew on an A330, a beautiful plane. There were 2 outside seats, 4 in the middle, and 2 more on the other side. Every seat had its' own t.v. screen so you could watch their movies (about 15 to choose from), listen to music or play card games, etc. We boarded around 9:30 pm and they soon served a beverage w/ pretzels, then around 10:30 they brought us a yummy supper (yep at 10:30 pm), it was chicken, mashed potatoes, veggies, a bun, salad with ranch, cookies and one other item - I forget. Around 4:00 am, yep in the morning, they brought us breakfast: yogurt, fruit and a hot sandwich with a biscuit and egg. Crazy hu! I guess that you get to eat when you pay $2300 for your ticket. :) Who knew!

Mom - I never even saw the ocean :)while flying, it was too late and all was dark, thought that might comfort you!

Not all has been bad with the delay of my flight though, actually there are turning out to be some really high points to the delay: I got to take a nice hot shower and get some good rest in a very nice clean hotel (paid for my KLM of course), this has helped me acclimate to the 'so far' 7 hours time difference (3 more hours to go I believe - I think that Aqtobe is 10 hours ahead of Minnesota time), and I met 3 super cute girls from Almaty, they were standing right behind me in line during our 5 hour wait. I have posted (or at least will post when I figure out how to upload photos while in Amsterdam - it isn't letting me..hmmmmm) a photo of the girls, Tanya is on the far left, then Alina is in the middle and Salta is on the right. Aren't they ALL beautiful! Wow! All 3 girls are currently going to college near Pittsburg. Tanya is Russian, Alina is 1/2 Russian 1/2 Kazak, and Salta is 100% Kazak. We all stayed at the same hotel last night and had supper with 3 other girls from Almaty as well. It was great! I did learn a bit about the culture, thank heavens they spoke English too, but much of our supper was filled with Russian talk as I didn't want to impose with my English too much. :) The 3 college girls were great about speaking English but the other 3 were not quite as comfortable and I felt weird expecting them to speak 'my' language. :)

It was interesting, before leaving to our hotel, we had to show our Passports to exit the airport, come to find out, the Kazakhstan girls had to get a temporary Visa to stay the night but I did not. Alina laughed and said, they know that you wouldn't want to stay in their country because you live in the United States, but those of us from other countries might want to stay in Amsterdam so they make sure they know we are here by making us get a Visa. Weird hu!

Another weird thing, when re-entering the airport in the morning, we didn't even have to go through security. What? No taking off my boots, pulling out my computer, scanning my money belts, etc. Nothing! Isn't that strange! What if I were flying into the United States with guns and stuff, they wouldn't re-check me there, they would just assume that I had gone through security at my last airport. What about having weapons on the plane in general? Hmmmmm must be all of that pot they are smoking here that has their judgement slightly impaired. :)

I really wanted to take advantage of my delay in Amsterdam and take a boat ride (although pretty chilly), tour the shoe factory or just see the city, but with all of this cash on me, I just don't feel comfortable venturing out, so instead, Tanya and I are hanging out at the airport today. I am super dooper hopeful that on my second 'gotcha' trip with my mom and sister we can take advantage and see this city, from the travel pamphlets, it looks amazing! Not to mention that Kristi, in Guadalajara says that it is her favorite city!

HERE IS MY HOTEL IN AMSTERDAM - THE IBIS HOTEL






A couple other tidbits:

*You can smoke pot in the coffee shops here, nothing seems to be illegal. :)
*There is porn on regular t.v. found that out on accident. :) Yikes!
*Their taxis are Mercedes.
*You can smoke at the open air restaraunts in the airport (no seperate rooms or walled off restaurant areas, just open areas in the airport) - ugh - but that stops January of 2008 I guess. Yahoo! :)
*My adapter works with my laptop! Yahoo - was worried about that, didn't need a converter.
*In Kazakhstan they drink 2 1/2% milk, and yes it is also cow milk. Had to ask that.
*Not everyone views adoption as a great thing, I talked with one of the older ladies in our supper group, and she seemed taken back that I was adopting. Although she was nice about it, asking good questions, you could tell that she was quite reserved in her thinking and feelings of adoption. She then went on to tell me how they aired a t.v. show on an American family a couple years back that adopted a child from Kazakhstan and they ended up killing their child in a fit of rage. Yikes!!! Isn't that all too common of the media. I explained to her that the restrictions are so tight for us to be able to even adopt, we need FBI background checks that are nearly clean as a whistle, HIV testing, some need Psych evaluations, etc.

********For those of you that have already traveled, any idea how to upload photos to my blog while overseas? My system doesn't seem to work here??? I can't even spell check, uh oh!

Will figure this out and post photos of my hotel, the airport and Tanya, Alina & Salta later. :)

HERE ARE A COUPLE PHOTOS OF THE AMSTERDAM AIRPORT (A CHRISTMAS TREE COVERED IN FLAT SCREEN TVS - FOR THE BOYS, A GROUP OF MEN SINGING AND A PHOTO OF AN AMSTERDAM TOWNHOME - AS WE DROVE BY IN THE BUS)