Friday March 30th in Arkalyk

I am going to the orphanage every day at 4 o’clock, but after April 12th I am going to be going at 10 o’clock and 4 o’clock. I also made this girl friend at the orphange who must be like a volunteer or something. I have been visiting my little brother daily now. It’s going good, but today it took 40 minutes for little brother to stop crying. He’s been crying every time he sees us. I don’t know what they’re saying, like if they are saying “here’s your mama and papa, they’re going to take you and you’re never coming back”, and “here’s your big brother” or something, he just doesn’t like it and every time he sees us he’s like “Wah, wah, wah.” By the way, my little brother’s name is Timorlan. He was named after a very famous king. But his nickname is Tuma.

There is a space capsule outside this museum that the Russians landed in from the moon at some point. We see it every day, and we even got to see the hatch today, two hatches actually, and we also saw numbers on it. At some point it had a 1, 2, 3, and 4 on it, at least it had it when they launched it up there. There is also a big dent in it. I must of landed on a rock. They used to land the space capsules on the Steppe near Arkalyk, because it’s far away from people and everything, and it won’t hit anything. It was small, I couldn’t even imagine having having 4 people in there or 3 or something, I could only imagine having 1 person in there.

We also saw a big mining bucket that they used in the mines. There was once a pulley system attached to it. I even got inside it and my mom took a picture with me inside. They do a lot of mining around here. They mine for a lot of bauxite, which they use to make aluminum. It’s a kind of mineral my mom thinks!!!

I have been digging a hole in the snow, two holes actually, on this path we walk on. In my second hole, we found a dead bird. On the side of the hole. It probably is still there, but it’s covered with snow again, good thing. I don’t like looking at it, it grosses me out. We’ve also seen an animal skull on the way to our flat, which I am sitting in doing this blog, and it looks kind of gross. I can see some bony string stuff in it. I don’t want to talk about it too much to gross you out.

What’s different about their stores here, is that they are teeny weeny tiny. Like, let’s say Whole Foods is huge, humongous, compared to that, especially with the bookstore and the movie theater added to it. There stores here are like an ant compared to Whole Foods. They don’t really anything different in them. They have a lot of water and juice and tonic and vinegar or whatever.

We also saw this movie theater at the end of the path. I wonder if there’s any movies playing in it right now. Even we did go watch it, we wouldn’t understand, because it’s either in Russian or in Kazakh! It’s near the big ripped up ferris wheel. The seats are ripped, and it’s not closed in, and it’s very rusty. I don’t even know if it works. It seems too rusty to be riding in it, or maybe it even doesn’t work, so I just don’t want to go in it. We also saw this big Mosque in the distance. We’re going to go check it out a different day. It looks HUUUUGEE. Maybe it’s as big as 10 of our school. And I’m talking about my school, ESA. We’ll let you know what we find over there. It looks very pretty, it might also be pretty inside and cool inside. Get it. ‘cool’? Like I’m cooling off, but really it’s ‘cool’, like ‘looking cool’.

Paka! That means ‘bye’ in Russian.

Some things about Arkalyk

Privyet! That means ‘hi’ in Russian! If you look at the bottom you’ll see another word in Russian. It’s 9:38am- in Colorado. I would be awake there. Hey, I’m awake here, in Arkalyk! I have learned some Russian words and I have made some Kazakh friends. The town just like really small, but there is a ferris wheel in it. I wasn’t expecting there to be a ferris wheel about centered! I don’t think the ferris wheel works, but it could. But some of the cars are really broken up and the part that moves it is really rusty. The roads here are like slushy, muddy floods. There’s a tower right outside our bedroom window in our flat (I am writing ‘flat’ cause I want the kids to interrupt and say “What’s a flat?” while Mrs. Murray is reading!). The tower is really tall, I think it’s a TV tower but it also could be a tower for airplanes. That’s what Marshon told us, except there is no airport here that works, so we are confused.

The cars are so small, most of them, they’re like a big monster came and smashed them into bits and they had to rebuild them teeny-weeny-tiny. The taxi ride back from Habiba’s house was like extreme driving. We went in these holes and went “boom, ooohhhh, boom, ohhhh, boom, ohhhh…”. And we went in this hole where we went “OOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” and the last few minutes I thought I felt the ground scraping on the bottom of the car.

The orphanage was a pretty interesting place, with all of the kids running around. It was also quite an interesting thing looking around the orphanage for my brother. Just saying ‘hmmmm…. I don’t think this is my brother….’, and ‘hmmmmm…. That one might be…’. The first day I felt a little nervous going to the orphanage because I didn’t know quite what it was going to be like. It was pretty good once I got there, cause it just was better than I thought. Because I was just like more OK with it once I got in the room because it was a big room, instead of a small room with 10 kids running around. I liked it how it was mostly. The kids were cute and fun but this boy who we thought we were going to adopt was so focused on this balloon that we couldn’t get his attention, so we had to take the balloon out. He went right out after it and one of the caregivers got it for him, not knowing we didn’t want him to have it. But we also played in the snow with all of the kids, and it was fun. And we also found my brother, at least he might be my brother if another Kazakh family doesn’t adopt him. It’s 90% yes and 10% no on the scale. But I am hoping he is going to be my brother.

The Naurez festival, that’s their biggest festival, the Spring and New Year’s festival, even though it’s not at New Year’s on our calendar but is at the first day of spring. But it is their New Year’s on their calendar, just not on ours. There was lots of dancing, there were Yurts, we saw people with fancy costumes, we saw a tug-of-war, we saw running, we saw Kazakh singing and Kazakh national dancing. We had lunch after that and they served the Kazakh National dish, which is horsemeat sausage with noodles, and daddy decided to try it. Only one bite though, he didn’t like it. But I am not grossed out by the fact that he tried it, and the fact that it’s horsemeat. But my mommy is. And my daddy is too. At lunch this little girl that was 6 years old also, danced for us and she put on two different costumes and she danced. And on the festival stage that was inflated, there was this girl who was 7 or 8 or something, singing. And there were a LOT of people there. The whole town was there. Well, actually, it’s not the whole town, it’s the whole region.

(Jaden trying to dig to Colorado- "Hello friends!")

I am going to go to bed now. Paka! (Paka that means bye! in Russian) I did learn a few words in Russian, didn’t I!

Jaden’s Top 10 Stinky Rotton Smelly things about the train

1) The toilets were so yucky it seemed like a monster sprayed it’s wormy toothpaste all over the seat.
2) It was so hot that I almost needed to pour ice cubes all over myself
3) It went so slow that it seemed like it would take forever to get there
4) It smelled like cigarettes so bad it smelled like something inside me was smoking
5) It was so hard to sleep that I barely got a good 2 hours
6) It made so many stops it seemed like it was trying to pick people up and go around and end up in the same place as we started
7) We didn’t have any water to drink, and the only water on the train was in the bathroom, or in the yucky tea heater thingy
8) It was hard to snuggle with my Mommy or Daddy in the top bed where I was
sleeping because my Mommy and Daddy’s beds were far apart and so skinny
9) The windows were so dirty it was hard to see out
10) There was so much baggage it took up a whole bed for it and it was really hard to get it on and off the train.


Good Things about the Train:

1) The Stinky Rotton Smelly Things were all worth it because it brought me to my brother.

The Days in Berlin

We got into Berlin the day that was like maybe Monday or something, and when we were driving to our hotel we saw an old church that got bombed in World War II. I thought that it was pretty interesting to see that church and the tallest tower was destroyed but it was still interesting. I thought it was pretty cool to see a church standing up from so long ago. It was built in 1897 by Kaiser Wilhelm the King of Germany. The inside wasn’t very damaged, there were lots of cracks that had to get glued together, but the paintings on the ceiling and walls still looked really beautiful. And also, nearly ¾ of the church got bombed away.

The next day we took a double-decker bus tour. The name of the double-decker bus tour was Top Tour. We saw many of the embassies. We also saw this big statue in the middle of the Tiergarten, which is a big piece of land which is just grass, no buildings mostly. But if you are high up it really is beautiful, but you can also drive through it. We saw the Holocaust memorial, the memorial for all of the people who died in World War II. I thought it was like hills up and down, and it was sort of like a rollercoaster. The tallest cement blocks in the memorial must have been at least 10 feet tall. We also saw this TV tower which gives all the signals to all the TV’s. And another day I went in it and if you are in the dining area, it turns in a circle and takes 20 minutes to go around and see the whole city of Berlin. We also saw the Brandenburg Gate that one held people from going into the city a long time ago. Then we saw the Berlin Wall that kept people from going into the West part of Berlin that were in East part that wanted to go in. And the Berlin Wall was used a long time ago after World War II.

We went the aquarium and I saw a shark. It was swimming around laps, kind of crazy for a shark to know how to swim laps! Laugh, laugh, laugh says Jaden. We went to the Zoo also and saw penguins, monkeys, and lions. My au pair from when I was small, Birgit, came to Berlin to hang out, and we went to the aquarium with her. And I had a great time doing fun stuff with her. My mom and I went the German Museum of Technology. They had a cool airplane hanging up outside the building. I wonder how they got it up there so high. It looked like it could just take off and start flying any time! I wish it was where you could climb in for a tour and then take off and fly around and then come back to the Museum and land on the roof again.

After Berlin we went to Potsdam and we got a tour of a King’s Palace. But we didn’t get to see the Queen’s part, we only got to see the King’s part, and some guest rooms, some dining rooms, and some servant’s rooms. Then we drove to Frankfurt Airport and we stayed overnight in a hotel to catch a plane to Kazakhstan.

The Update before the days in Berlin which I am going to work on tomorrow

I’m going to get on the plane tomorrow to Kazakhstan and I feel sort of nervous and excited. I feel nervous about the big part of the trip and I feel excited about that I am going to get a new brother. I’ll work on a post about the days in Berlin on the airplane to Kazakhstan but right now I am going to go to sleep. Bye-bye!

(Jaden at the TV tower overlooking Berlin)

The part that was on the airplane for my trip

Dear All Friends,

I got up this morning and I felt like today’s trip was going to be a really big adventure. But I went to the airport and got on the plane and we were about to take off when there was a problem. And I thought that was going to change the whole trip into more of an adventure, but after an hour or an half an hour the mechanics fixed it. And we finally took off and the good news is that we didn’t have to change planes in Denver. And our flight from Denver was good to Chicago, but when we landed in Chicago we had a rush, but we made it into the plane that went to London. And that is the flight we are on right now.

(Jaden blogging on the plane)

I was really tired after the trip from Chicago to London. But then I woke up from my nap of only two hours and I didn't feel all that much better. And then I felt better after about a half an hour and I spent the whole day singing the rest of the time.


























(Jaden waking up in London)





We landed in London and we had a five hour layover and then we got on the plane to Berlin where we are right now. On the way to Berlin it was mostly just the same as all the other flights as I was talking about above. One thing that was different from all the other flights is that I slept all the way to Berlin.