Walking

Today was an interesting day at the baby house, when I went into the play room, for the first time there was another person there with a baby. She was singing in Russian or Kazakh to the baby. The baby was very young; I asked her how old and she held up four fingers, four months. I asked her adoption and she said yes. Many of you know the children are on a registry for six months before they are available for international adoption, during that time Kazakh citizens can adopt the children. That’s what appeared to be taking place. I wonder if the Kazakh citizens have to do the required fourteen day bonding period like we do. It was good to see and another new experience for me in Kazakhstan.

BB was good today; he cried when I finished feeding him, he always wants more. I know he gets fed several times a day but I wonder if he knows what it’s like to feel full. That will be something new for him in the future. BB was not feeling great today, we played for a while and then he just didn’t want to be put down so I suffered through it and held him for most of our time together. He still has a cold and he spit up four times today, he hasn’t spit up once in three weeks. Maybe it was bad porridge, ha ha ha.

On the way back from the baby house, I finalized my travel arrangements home for Sunday. I will be taking the 4 AM flight out of Almaty on Sunday morning, lucky me! I’m looking forward to coming home but once I’m home I will be anxiously waiting to come back. Hopefully I’ll know my court/return date soon.

It was a pretty sunny and warm afternoon so when I got back to the hotel I took a walk back down to Paniflov Park. There were a lot of people in the park enjoying the nice day. It was a nice day for a walk. When I returned to the hotel they had the lobby torn apart, they are putting in all new lobby furniture, makes me think I was gone for a long time!

Sara called and invited me over to their apartment for a home cooked meal. I walked over to their apartment; however I took an unintentional detour. The walk that should have taken me thirty-five minutes or so, it took over an hour. I knew the street name to turn on but of course I know it in English, you would think by now I would have learned to read Russian or Kazakh, not! The walk wasn’t bad, I saw new parts of the city that I had not seen yet and of course it was in the daylight. So needless to say, I did a lot of walking today but it was well worth it, Julian made a delicious pasta dinner for us and we watched a little bit of American Idol. After good food and good conversation they walked me back to the hotel.

Three days left on trip number one. By the time I'm done here I may be able to sponser city walking tours, ha ha ha! Have a good day/night, Chris