Tue 3 Aug 2004
This is the continuation of my adoption travel journal. We adopted Dinara and Noah in March of 2001 from Kazakhstan. If you missed the first several posts, you can click on the archive and find the posts by viewing titles that start with an ” * “. Let me know what you think of the story!!! I’d love to hear feedback.
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We got to the apartment around 7:30 am. It was five floors up. Being very overweight, I really thought I was going to die. Who would have thought an elevator was a luxury in a building with more then 3 floors! It was a dark stairway. A typical soviet style building. Dilapidated and slightly neglected. Socialism’s stark contrast to capitalism. We had decided to stay in an apartment because we wanted to experience our children’s birth country in a very real way. But I have to admit as I hauled my big body up these stairs, I wondered what I had gotten myself into.
The apartment was nice. It was circa 1950. But clean. Comfortable. We dropped our stuff on the floor and thanked our driver and were told we’d be picked up in 3 hours to visit the kids.
I dove for the phone after the driver left. I wanted to talk to my mom who was watching Emma, my 3-year-old daughter. She had flown out from Florida and I was already missing Emma more then I thought. I was feeling weak from throwing up and just wanted the comfort of talking to someone from home.
I dialed my home number. The phone clicked in the way international calls do. And I heard the recording that made my heart sink to the pit of my stomach.
(AT&T’s familiar tone sounded then) “We’re sorry, we can not connect your call due an earthquake in the region”.
WHAT!!!!
John and I scrambled to find something on TV. You take for granted all our 24 hour cable news shows in ENGLISH. Amazingly, we found one. We gasped as we saw that Seattle had been hit with a magnitude 6.7 earthquake.
Was my daughter ok? Was my mom ok?
I was going to meet my two newest children not knowing if my eldest child was even alive.
Related posts:
- *Day Seven #1 - Almaty Early Morning This is the continuation of my travel...
- *Morning Visit Day Three - March 3rd Today is a busy day for me as I have...
- The Joy and Loss of Adoption This morning as we were finishing up a...
