The last post from Kaz...

I have a brother now. Woohoo! I really love that. I am really excited that I have a brother. And I’m really excited that I am a brother.

(Jaden wrote this before he left, but was too tired to write more. He was going to finish the next day, but the next day was crazy making. I thought this was worth posting though. And I love this picture of them in their 'brother' t-shirts, even though it is on our blog already!).

Tuma Talking!!

Tuma is laughing and he’s also talking, wow!!! Tuma said “sa-ba-ka”. Sa-ba-ka means dog in Russian. He said “monkey”, which you know what it means because it’s in English. He said monkey in English! His first English three syllable word was video. Mine was gondola. His first Russian three syllable word that we know was sa-ba-ka. He said “papa”, he said “ball”. Yesterday he said “mama” for the first time, wow. I am having a lot of fun playing with Tuma. One day we played ball.



I am going to so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so miss him. But its going to feel like the month without Tuma is going to go fast probably. That month is going to start in four days. I am going to miss my mommy so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so much 2.


Temorlan is not going to be his real name, but his real first name is going to be Isaac. His middle name is also what we are going to call him and it is … bompadadam …. Milan. Which sounds like the middle part of Temorlan. The “M” also stands for Mildred, Margaret and Murray. Mildred and Margaret are my mom’s grandmothers. Murray is my father’s Grandpa. We didn’t name him after Milan Heduk, the Colorado Avalanche player, but we are pronouncing it the same, which sounds like “Meelan”. My mom is going to start weaning him off Tuna, I mean Tuma (see why we’re not going to call him Tuna?) I’m sorry, now you really really see why we’re not going to call him Tuma.

I’m going to be home in about a week, which is 7 days. When we walked out the door this morning (Saturday morning 10:30am Kazakhstan time) it was going to be the time I am getting back to the airport next week (about 10:30pm next Friday, Colorado time). I am very excited to see all of my friends, but I will probably be too tired in the day to go to school for a few days.



Paka! Jaden

Tra-la-laaaaa!

Tra-la-laaaaa! Hooray for Captain Underpants! Who stands for all that is clean and white and cottony! Captain Underpants is a book, just to let you know. I’ve been a little bored, so I decided to dress up like Tra-la-laaaaa! Captain Underpants! This is not what C.U. really does. The first thing is what I said, C.U. doesn’t really do these two things. I stuffed underwear in my belt to shoot at my mommy. That is #1. Number two, I put many pairs of underwear on, because I could take them off and shoot them at my mommy. When I had them in my belt, the shots were perfect and I hit mommy, Crash! in the chest. I wore our red laundry bag for a cape. It would be handy for storing extra underwear, but the thing is, it’s hard to reach in there and get them out. This is still not what C.U. does. He really has some way for storing extra underwear, like in the air or something it seems like. This is what C.U. really does. He also is a very good at fighting with bad guys. And C.U. always had an idea to fight back at anybody. And that’s the end of Tra-la-laaaa! Captain Underpants, woo-hoo!

At the orphanage, I have been building an obstacle course. I have been using the chairs in the room and using orange string for the finish line so I can take it down off a chair when I win, and my fingerknitting yarn, to wrap around for places you have to jump over. Well, they are not too easy to build, but they’re not too hard to build. I line the chairs up like an obstacle course you have to run around and jump over. It’s fun but sometimes I wait too long to start building them and I don’t have enough time.

There are rocket ship pads in the middle of the Steppe and there is a rocket that took off from one of them and it is coming back April 20th. And I probably am going to be here to maybe even see it land. And it lands very close to here, it would be cool if we could go and see the big piece crashing to the ground. But I wonder if the earth will shake beneath our feet! Ahhhh! The astronauts stay in the hotel in Arkalyk after they land. And there is a billionare on the rocket that is staying at the space station this week. We looked at the launching pads on Google Earth. I could see them well on Google Earth, once it cleared. It’s time for a new post!


The Food post

I think that’s good for today. I will write more tomorrow. Paka!

An Arkalyk Update

Oh mommy! He he he he he he he. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. He he ha ha oh ho he he una hin hin hin. Stop! Mommy! Oh, mommy! I don’t like what you’re doing. He he he. Daddy! Look what mommy’s doing! Everything I say! He he he! “That’s what I said when I was putting it in the word document to post it on my blog,” says Jaden.

I learned to whistle while I was in Kazakhstan. I am homesick really really really really really really really badly. And every day I feel like I need an airplane that second to take me home. But the good news is I am going home right after court, which is in about 2 ½ weeks. I miss home, all my friends, all my toys. I’ll say one thing about it, I miss Colorado. And another thing, I mostly just miss the United States. Just because it’s my home and I just really miss it a lot. But I am happy I am here, because I am getting my little brother. And by the way, just to warn you again, his nickname is Tuma, his real name is Timorlane, but we don’t know what we are going to name him.

You can see like maybe 10 post up it feels like, where it says it’s going good or something like this, where it took 45 minutes for him to stop crying. But right now we can get him to stop crying, as he always cries when he comes in, in 2 minutes. And that is really good progress. He played some ball with daddy and me today, and I thought that was big progress too. And he didn’t ever want to take stuff from us, but today he did that too. And I thought this day was the best day we’ve ever seen in Tuma’s adoption process.

I’ve met about, maybe 16 different Kazakh and/or Russian kids and I thought it was cool to meet my first, maybe last, Kazakh friends. But it’s probably not my last, I’ll probably make more through my adventures. They’re just really cool to hang out with, and I think I am going to remember them and this trip probably my whole life. Well, as you know they call soccer ‘Fudball’ here (said ‘Food-ball’), and that’s almost exactly the way they pronounce it. We are playing Fudball and they play ‘Monkey in the Middle’, except they don’t throw it and catch it, they kick it and stop it, and also once it hits the person in the middle, the last person who kicked it is the new monkey. Just to be funny, monkeys say “ooooh, ooooh, aaaaah, aaaaah, ooooh, ooooh, aaaaah, aaaaah!” I will teach you to play Fudball Monkey in the Middle when we get home.

I think their culture is really interesting. All of the Kazakhs have mostly dark skin and most of the Russians have light skin. I like their language. I’ll tell you some Russian words:

Spa-koy-ney noche means “Good night”. Good is ‘Spa-koy-ney’ and Night is ‘noche’. In Espanol, it is almost the same word, but what is different about it is that it’s Buenos noches, not spa-koy-ney noche. Another word is ‘Zdras-stvee-chye’, which means ‘hello’. There is ‘ne plach’ which means ‘don’t cry’. There’s ‘ya ne pin-a-my-o Pa-russki’ which means ‘I don’t understand Russian’. And there’s ‘ya ne pin-a-my-o Pa-ang-leuski” which means ‘I don’t understand English’. The words I use with my brother are ‘Fso Hari-sho’ which means ‘It’s OK’. ‘Ne plach’ I also use with my brother.

Bird- P-teat-sa
Car- Ma –Shih- na
Eat- Ish (in Kazakh) and Kush-a (in Russian)
Juice – Sok
Moon – Luna (this is also like Espanol!)
Kitty- Kosh-ka
Dog- Sa-BO-ka
Water- Va-da
Tea- Chai (not the kind my mommy really likes though!)

I’ll share some more Russian words later! But for now, Paka! (that’s bye!)

My new photo albums

I added some new photo albums to the links on the right side. If you just click where it says "Jaden's Photo album" for someplace, you will see the pictures. I took a lot of them, but some my mom took or maybe my dad.

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!