May 20, Part Jen

May 20

While we were at the Art Museum yesterday we took this picture of a rose. Normally we would not have, but since out neighbors are the Roses, we felt we needed to take the picture. The artist is a guy from Kostanai, another city in Kazakhstan that many people adopt from.

Last night we had an exciting evening of surfing the web at low speed access, and uploading pictures to the blog. We forgot to have dinner so around 10pm I decided cereal would be a good idea….since I was too lazy to walk across the street to Kazak 7-Eleven to buy bread and cheese. Last week I bought ‘generic’ Froot Loops. The box of Cheerios I bought was about $4.00, and this bag of generic cereal was about 30 cents. I do think it was left over from the Soviet era. I’ve had an upset stomach since the Beet Salad night, and the Loops did not help much, but at least they were filling.

I am also lad to report that we have conquered the Phone Card issue. SpeedyPin was nice enough to call all the way to Kazakhstan to confirm it was a legitimate order and we are back in business. Of course it look us over an hour, on PULSE dialing, to figure out that if we want to call from Kazakhstan to the USA, that it’s a DOMESTIC call and not international. Go figure. 50 cents a minute is a lot better than $5 a minute, so when we get bored we’ll be making a lot more phone calls. And for all those people that told us about skype….well that would have been a fascinating solution to our phone dilemma, had someone ensured our laptop had functioning sound prior to departure from the USA. But I’m sure it works in Linux.

Rob has caught on to my toilet paper hoarding. I brought 24 roles and we are burning through them faster than expected, so I needed to tuck away 3 rolls to use for the 3 weeks I have left after he leaves.

The visit with Junior was good today. We got to the orphange a little before feeding time and junior was still sleeping and they let us go in and take a picture. I accidently bumped his crib on the way out and he instantly woke up, saw me trying to sneak away and started crying. So much for nap time. It was on to feeding time.

I fed him again and the caregivers did not need to step in and fast track things. At one point I pu tthe plate of food down so i could wipe his face, and he got quite impactient thinking the gravy train had left the building. I have not figured out how to give him a drink yet, so our translator did it. She put the tea cup up to his mouth, tis it and he slurps down about 1/4 of the cup ata time, with about half of it missing his mouth. I think the sippy cup will be a good change once we get home.

It was rainy out, and very windy, so we spent the day inside playing with the stacking cups and on the slide.

After the visit we went to a dirt cheap restaurant with really good food. We had some kind of thick pasta with a bowl of meat and vegetables in a reddish broth. For the 2 of us, for salads, 2 main dishes, bread and drinks it was about $7. Lunch took about 2 hours since it takes a while to order and then get your bill.

We spent the rest of the day in the apartment surfing the web, reading, and cleaning. Now that I emptied the vacuum bag, it sucks like a Dyson. I needed to move one of the smaller oriental rugs so i just sucked up the corner, moved it, put my foot down on it and yanked the vacuum away....saves me the effort of actually bending over. We planned to go to the soccer game across the street, but it was rainy, coldy and windy.....not very nice weather for fair weather fans!

Now that we have mastered the ability to get a phone card, and actually dial a number, we called the RoseRoses and Robbie was a new man after talking to Big John about juvenile manly things. We had lots to talk about, and it was like being home again. But i'm not sure if Rob did get an Awwwww from Heather, but she got one from us.

As we were out driving around on our way to lunch we passed the end of down, where they must park all of the cranes. There were about 10 or 20 of them, but the car was moving so fast that I would only get the tail end of them.













Since we don't get a lot of English TV here (just news, and I don't care to watch news) maybe someone could add a comment for whats happening on Lost, Desperate Housewives, American Inventor or Survivor. I'm sure tivo has them covered for me, but I doubt I will have time to watch TV when I get home.