Hi!
My husband and I live in NW Ohio and we have 5 children, 3 of whom were adopted from Kazakhstan using Building Blocks Adoption Service from Medina, OH (
www.bbas.org) . We adopted Tayte (9m) and Karenna (23m) in Jan 2001. Their adoptions took 7 m from start to finish. Then we were returned to adopt Garrett (33m) in Dec 2001. His adoption took only 5 m to complete because we already had INS approval from the first time. All three of our adopted children were from baby house #1 in Almaty. Our children are very happy and healthy!
We were very happy with BBAS and highly recommend them! They were very helpful and answered all our questions as quickly as possible. We had a wonderful experience! They kept in touch with us often and were always ready to answer our questions. Our paperwork went very smoothly! I found Denise & Wendy to be very personable. I felt very comfortable talking with them and never felt "alone" in during the process.
We liked the caretakers and the baby house. It was an old building, but very clean. There are generally 2 caretakers per age group with approx 12 children in each group. The kids are on a strict schedule. In many ways it reminded me of a day care. The children were given lessons in music, speech, academics, etc.
We were enjoyed our time in Almaty. Almaty is the largest city in Kaz and has all the amenities of a city. Our interpreter took us to the orphanage everyday to visit the children, then we went to lunch. Afterwards, she took us shopping or sightseeing. We learned about the culture and history of Kaz in that way. We stayed in an apartment supplied by our agency. It was pretty nice and very safe. We have a driver and interpreter available to us 24 hrs per day if needed. We honestly didn't have to worry about a thing. All our paperwork was in order and we didn't have any delays.
Please feel free to ask me any questions that you might have about Kazakhstan.
Best wishes to you,
Pat Langhals