We are starting to feel normal again. We have obtained some of the creature comforts like internet, cell phone and Raisin Bran to help us get into a groove. Our groove of course is to bring home our son: Joshua Roman David Lundberg. This is our job for the next 5 weeks which is all a part of our journey. We didn’t realize what this “journey” was until we started. Our travels have taken us almost 8,000 miles flying over the UK, Germany, Russia crossing the Ural Mountains into Almaty, Kazakhstan just kilometers from the border with Western China. The first few days we were still in a haze and could not believe we were finally here. The realization sinks in that the world is huge geographically, diverse culturally and yet so small that all you have to do is sit (endure) an aeroplane flight for several hours and you are in a part of the world that could only be imagined in books and stories about faraway lands.

Kazakh, Russian, German and Chinese are only a few of the over 130 ethnicities and races which make up the people of Kazakhstan. They are a beautiful people with striking features. Many women wear stiletto heeled shoes and colorful scarves while the men must all have the narrowest of feet to fit into pointed leather Italian shoes and stretch denim jeans.

Tonight we hope to post more photos so far that we have taken in our apartment in Uralsk and a local restaurant (it turns out posting photos is most successful in the early am hours – we’ll try again tomorrow). We have made friends with our neighbors: Wayne and Cari Morrison from Kansas who are also adopting here in Uralsk. Wayne is in the US Air Force and they are stationed currently at Okinawa, Japan (there flight from Okinawa was much closer than ours but they had to change planes 3 times which required them to claim and re-check their baggage at each layover point).

A final thought for now about our son and when we first met Roman (pronounced row-mahn). The baby house director, after speaking with us for a few minutes at our meeting in her office left the room. She is the ideal vision of what we expected: a stern looking Russian woman who finally smiled through her imposing demeanor once she had a chance to speak with us (through our interpreter). The director came back into the room after a few moments and we could feel Roman’s presence outside the room. The caregiver, Maria, was holding this beautiful young boy who up until now did not seem real. Maria handed Roman to me and I held him in my arms. He wasn’t quite sure about this man (probably the first man he has ever met) but he could sense that we all knew this moment was meant to happen. We felt that Roman has been waiting for us to arrive and take him home to be with us – to be our son.