Ryan was just sparkling clean when we visited him yesterday. They really do take good care of the babies at the orphanage, but sometime we've noticed Ryan's hair to be a little, shall we say, un-shampooed. Yesterday he was so clean, he sparkled. We couldn't stop stroking his hair & telling him how handsome he looked. He's such a good little eater & we're so happy about that. We've fed him hard-boiled eggs, jars of baby food, baby yogurt, baby cookies, you name it. His fave is the cookie. In fact, when he squaks a little, we hand over a piece that promptly goes into his mouth. I know that's probably NOT what you should do when your baby fusses, but we can't help it.
Our new American friends, Mike & Leisa met Jean, Marilyne & us for dinner. They suggested the local Chinese restaurant and it was just like home-except for the little, little grey mouse in the house. I took his photo, using the red eye reduction feature.
Mike & Leisa have all sorts of great info about Kyzylorda. We now know that most people here speak Kazakh & most of the signage is also in that language. I guess the 3 words of Russian that we know was all for nothing. It was pretty impossible to find a Kazakh-English phrase book back home. Believe me, I tried. We had settled on a Russian phrase book and CD. The book has come in handy because a lot of people here know some Russian. We sometimes open the book & point to a phrase when we're in a store. That way we don't even have to attempt to butcher the language. Lyle laughs when we're buying something & we ask the clerk "Skolka" (how much). He thinks it's funny because they respond & we don't know what they're saying anyways. We grab a pad of Post-Its and a pen. I guess we don't even need to bother asking "Skolka".
We see that people are always handwashing their cars around here. Now we know why. Leisa says that the cops can fine you if you have "more than 3 days worth of dirt" on your vehicle. How do they keep track of that? Could you say you were on a really dusty gravel road, but only for one day?
Today is Women's Day and guess what my husband bought me...the chocolate bar for Men. His rationale is that the word "Men" is in Women's Day. I just think he needed an excuse to buy the darn thing. It weighs a ton. I think it's supposed to be a Man-Sized chocolate bar, kinda like King-Sized back home. Thank goodness our interpreter takes the holiday seriously. She bought me a jewelery box made in a traditional Kazakh style.
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2 comments:
Thank god for post-its and that numbers are at least the same as ours. I had no idea that there is more Kazak being spoken in KO than Russian. In Almaty it was Russian. We would be getting a fine over under washing our van. Things are somewhat melting here but you never know if that will continue. Happy Woman's day!
Happy Women's Day!
I swear, Darce, you should be a professional blogger- your posts keep me laughing, especially the one about Lyle's thoughtful Women's Day gift! Sam's favorite food is also "cookie" (can also refer to crackers, Puffs and pita bread), followed closely by cupcake (anything in the muffin/cake/pie category) so they should get along well!
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