Friday's Visit

After we removed all our winter gear at the baby house today we were informed that Hope was at a doctor's appointment and wouldn't return until 1:00. Tim was very disappointed that we couldn't stay and play with his sister. Mike and I made good use of our time there though by talking to her doctor and speech therapist (all the kids have speech therapy, physical therapy and massage) to get some questions answered for the doctor at home. After about half an hour we donned all our gear again and headed home. Fortunately we were able to return to the baby house at 4 and visit then. We discovered that there are 7 other American families visiting there right now - all of them at the same time in the afternoon from 2-4. It would have been nice if 1 or 2 of them were visiting in the morning so we could get to know some of the other families and have someone to talk to besides ourselves. One of the other fathers said that it was probably better that we visited in the morning - 7 families is a lot at one time with the limited space for visiting and apparently they've missed 4 or 5 visits because TV crews, dignitaries, random other people have been coming to the baby house at that time and they weren't allowed to visit or reschedule to the morning. A TV crew is coming to the baby house tomorrow so we will not be able to visit at all we were told today and the next day is Sunday so no visits. We were certain to have Zhanara explain it would be 2 days before we came back and the caretakers said they would explain again tomorrow that we couldn't visit for 2 days, but that we are still coming back.

By the time we left the baby house it was raining, but since we had very little water left, after dinner Mike headed out to the Ramstore for a little shopping and to haul home 2 5 liter bottles of water. Having to carry home groceries isn't too bad, it's the constant need to carry home large bottles of water that gets old - mostly for Mike since I've only carried home 1 bottle myself. 4 people go through quite a bit of water in a day between drinking, making coffee and using it for cooking any pasta, soup, or veggies. I also got a nice surprise after dinner - my friend Linda called. It was great to talk to catch up and find out what's going on in DE and at work. I'm not sure what we'll do this weekend. 2 days without going to the baby house makes for a lot of time in the apartment. We won't be going back to Duman on Sunday as planned because Tim has lost that privilege, which in the end I think punishes us more than Tim. Hopefully it won't rain this weekend and we can at least get out for a walk. Hey, maybe we'll check out the new supermarket a couple of blocks from the Ramstore. It's the same chain we shopped at in Almaty when we returned for Matt. It's called Gros Market - makes the food sound appealing, doesn't it? Aaah, such little things like a new supermarket become so exciting here. I may also try to figure out how to get the VCR to record. The documentary that was partially filmed with the kids at Biaterek is supposed to be on the Kazakhstan TV station at 2 PM tomorrow. The guy took lots of film of all 3 kids so maybe they'll be Kazakh TV celebrities.