Wednesday, May 18, 2005

First, a couple of prayer requests:

1. Just found out from our new friend at Delta that there has been an embargo on skymiles award travel from Jun01/05-Aug31/05 on KLM and Air France. What this means is that any current ticketed itineraries will be honored and no changes are
permitted. Also, name changes are not permitted on tickets. What's this mean to us? Well, we are adopting Miriam Helena, not Jonathan Timmons, whose name is on the ticket. She also said that we may be able to fly nonstop Moscow to Atlanta, if we can get to Moscow. Moscow is about halfway between Almaty and Amsterdam, which was about a 5 1/2 hour flight, so coach to Moscow might not be too bad, assuming we don't have to fly Aeroflot! Please pray that God would just enable us to get home, and take care of the details.

2. Please pray that the judge will waive our 15-day waiting period. His decision will also factor in greatly in prayer request #1 above, considering the timing.

OK, now for the update. Sorry we couldn't post earlier (i.e., last night), but the hotel's phone lines were on the fritz.

Wednesday was a usual morning, but we got moving too late for our walk and it was raining just a bit. The afternoon was a great overcast cool day.

Lena was horrid this morning: would not obey at all. We have much to learn as parents. Dub did "garshok" (potty) several times, and had no accidents all day. We played in a new room because the music room was getting nice new french doors installed. This other room is upstairs in the phys ed. room with lots of places to play and new toys.

We weren't even tired after the morning session or so we thought, but Angel crashed at lunchtime, Kevin read for a couple of hours.

When we started our afternoon session, we went out to one of the little play areas that have a kind of a shed for the kids to use, and we began playing. There was no sign that said, "WET PAINT", but there should have been. Kevin ruined a good pair of shorts, and we had to scrub a bunch of paint off Dub's hands. We moved to another outdoor play area and continued our bonding time by giving the kids their first taste of Whoppers, specifically, "Easter egg" whoppers. Dub crunched his immediately, Lena savored, sucked, chewed, nursed hers for at least 10 minutes.



Lena was very subdued all afternoon. She laid her head on papa's shoulder, very quietly, almost sleepy. Dub was lots of fun. Both Lena and Dub climbed up monkey bars inside the new room. They were both very quick to go up, but didn't know how to come down. With one instruction, they learned very fast. Great climbers. Liked the little swing and very small slide. Can't wait to get them back to a real big play park.

Note to self: Give Lena a clean up job, and she's focused until it's done.



Both Dub & Lena are quickly learning "please" for treats. Lena much more aggressive with "PLEASE" when she saw the treats. Dub just takes it as it comes. "Oh, yeah, sure. Please."



We attended a class from Inter Lingua (part of Interlink Resources) about Kazakh culture, learned about certain traditions, like the circumcision party, with a goat sacrifice (don't know who they are sacrificing it to???) including the "game" of riding horses trying to dump the headless goat into a pit. Very dangerous and very hard because the goat is heavy you have to be strong to hold onto it and your legs have to be strong to keep on the horse with no hands while you're holding the goat and riding at full speed with a bunch of Kazakh brothers trying to steal the goat from you!! This game is still played today! Imagine polo with a goat carcass instead of a ball and a club. It's called Kokpar, and this whole party occurs when the young boy is 4-6 years of age.






We ate an incredible dinner at Sarkotvela, a Georgian (Russian) Restaurant with EXCELLENT shishklas (similar to shish-kebobs) but we forgot to check to see if we had enough Tenghe to eat. We had 2000 Tenghe, but the meal was 2,600 Tenghe. Thats what we get for being stupid American beer drinkers. Without the beer, we could have swung it! We gave the waiter the 2000 Tenghe plus a $20 bill (about $15 extra I just happened to have a $20 in my purse.) He was running around trying to make change for us (and we didn't know this because we don't speak RUSSIAN), but when he brought us back some tenge change, we told him to keep it all for his trouble. He was shocked, and happily escorted us to the door as we got up to leave, while we pleaded izvenichye (I'm sorry) and , spaseeba (Thank you) , over and over. He was very happy in the end, and we were so stuffed we waddled home. The shasklik is very popular here - I guess it goes back to their nomad backtground. Kill the meat, make a fire, skewer it and cook. Comes a la carte but you don't need anything else. The spices are so fabulous!

Our visitation hours have been changed from 3-5 in the afternoon to 4-6pm, so the kids will have time to wake up from their afternoon nap and have a snack before we see them.

Thank you all again for your incredibly kind emails and blog comments. They are very encouraging to us, and we look forward to reading them each day.

Blessings,
Angel & Kevin