Wednesday, June 24

Day 5 of bonding. Today went well, I was really surprised that when Roman came in the room, he was finishing a piece of chocolate and finishing a whole apple. I guess it was a myth that the kids in the Babyhouses didn't get sweets! Roman gets totally wild while kicking the ball, and he could do this all day. So we brought a few other more calming things to do. We brought macaroni to put in an empty coke bottle. He would patiently put these in and then pour it out, at one point he even started making a design on the floor with the macaroni, but he's just not into art too much. We have this 'Parents' brand phone from when the girls were babies that he likes to play with, too. You can record something short on it. There is a play mat in the room so hubby decided to make a 'dom' (Russian for house) and we played house. We also each played hide and seek. He can get totally hyper when playing with the ball, but if we find something quiet that he likes, it will calm him down pretty quickly. We've also tried learning a few phrases in Russian that helps, such as, Ni na do (don't do this), Ni brra sigh (don't throw), mol ode yets (good job), horr oh shoew (great/wonderful), ha va teet (that's enough).

After our time in the Babyhouse, our translator, Galina, took us to the Green Market where there are bargains to be had, well, bargains to Almaty, anyway. Everything is really expensive here. We bought a couple of outfits for Roman to try for size. I think he is about 18 months-24T. We also bought a couple of toys. A small bag of building blocks and a bag of animals which includes a shark, he loves for us to draw sharks and fish. On the upper level of the market people sell all sorts of goods, clothing, lots of shoes, hardware, toys, hats, etc. The lower level has all the food stuff, herbs, counters of cabbage and other items to make a dish, fruit, nuts, meats, all kinds of meats. She took us by this one man's sausage counter and he gave us samples of different kinds of sausage and smoked meats, including horse. The smoked horse tasted like ham. She treated us to some meats and bought us a flatbread, I'm not sure what it is called here, but it was yeasty, with a very hard crust almost like a cracker. It was fun, I always love going to farmer market type places.

Bus stop:

McBurger:

Green Market upstairs where we bought some clothes and toys for Roman:

Green Market sausage/meat vendor:

More pictures of the Green Market:




The rest of the day was spent in our room and making a trip to the supermarket for more water and Coca light. You might wonder what we do in our room, most of the time, we are on the internet, taking a nap, talking to the girls, watching one of the dvds we brought (thanks to several friends who lent us dvds), reading or knitting (that would be me who is reading or knitting). Tonight we had a picnic with the sausage and smoked meat while we watched 'John Adams'.

Our 'picnic' dinner:

Here I am on the internet probably typing this!