Greetings from Amsterdam!

Hello everyone...

We arrived in Amsterdam safely and without incident yesterday. Sorry it's taken so long to tune in, but we were trying to do it cheaper by using the wireless in our room, and we had technical difficulties. You see, I tried to use our Mac laptop, which ran out of battery power. It's traditional, of course, for us to forget our power chord on such trips, so we didn't have one along. So now I'm on the hotel pay-by-the-second computer downstairs (10 Euro for 45 minutes).

Anyway, we arrived very early in the morning yesterday, local time, so we couldn't get into our hotel room. The nice Irish man behind the counter at the hotel opened up a room for us to store our luggage in, and we proceeded to go kill some time. The hotel is on the west side of Amsterdam, about 15 minutes to the center of the city, by tram. So we bought two 48-hour tram tickets and made our way out. We purposely did not come completely prepared for cold temperatures, so we had to improvise a little since it was about 45-50 degrees here, and damp. But we were OK. So we went into the city and checked things out, including a 1-hour boat ride on the canals of the city (in a nice, warm boat). We also found out that it's not easy to stop into a coffee shop in Amsterdam when you've got a 3-year-old with you, because most coffee shops are "smoking", and have an age limit.

By the time we made it back to the hotel, we were pretty bushed. Tucker crashed on the Tram on the way home. We took a nap 'till about 6 PM and then headed back into town on the tram again to check out the "night life". Yes, of course we went to the red light district. It's not uncommon to see kids there, by the way. No age limit here.

Today, it was more of the same, after a really good night's sleep for all of us. I personally slept longer in one stretch than I have since the beginning of the school year. Heh.

Amsterdam is a fantastic city. Some of my favorite highlights are:
* THOUSANDS of bicycles
* Great public transportation -- and everyone USES it.
* Great food (and reasonably priced if you search)
* Friendly people (almost everyone speaks English, too)
* Many, many nationalities.
* A free spirit.

I do love the spirit of this city. I, personally, am not likely to make use of things like prostitutes in display cases on the street coffee shops with marijuana menus, but I do care that there are places where such things CAN exist. I'm having fun with Dutch, too. Sometimes I can almost read it -- very much like German in a lot of ways.

Tucker is loving all of it. He loves the tram ride, really digs his "Jeep" stroller (what were we THINKING when we considered not taking it?!). And is a constant stream of questions. It's fantastic fun, and I can feel him exploding already. He always grows at an incredible rate whenever we travel. ... and, yes, right now he's still healthy, though he's still got a little sniffle and very slight occasional cough. So far, so good...

Tomorrow, we get up a little earlier to prepare to leave, and head into the city again to try and get that power chord we forgot. (Couldn't get it today because of a holiday). Then we get on a plane to Almaty in the afternoon. We arrive there in the wee hours of the morning, and will be there for two days before we board another plane to complete our journey to Kokshetau and actually see Mia for the first time.

We will be in contact again as soon as possible via email. I'm guessing we won't do much in the way of phone communication at all, but we'll see.

Wishing everyone all the best. Feel free to email. We will get it, eventually.

Once we get settled, I'll try to send pictures.

Love, Mike (and Linda, and Tucker)