June 14

June 14

They changed Andrew's schedule and today I visited from 4pm to 6pm, right before his bedtime. The storm that blew through last night cooled things off about 30 degrees so today we spent most of the vist inside. This was the first visit inside in about 2 weeks so he redisovered all of the indoor toys like the jump-o-lene which he likes to rool around in. He misses Rob dragging him all over in it.


Sometime he looks like he is concentrating a bit too much in there so I am not sure if he's just squeezing out another bit of BM Energy.






He also likes to look at himself in the mirror. He gets a really confused look on his face when the kid in the mirror in the weird orange shirt is staring back at him and mimicing his moves. The only thing that concerns me is that he often tries to kiss the other boy in the mirror.....with an open mouth kiss. Is that normal for a one year old?

I bought a couple shirts for him tonight so hopefully he won't wear the orangetank top every day now.





This is a look that I have learned recently. It means "I just ate and you have been rough housing with me and I have a mouth full of half chewed food returning". When I see the look I now know not to toss him over my head so I back off for about 3 seconds and he swallows his lunch again. This also works for the massive quantities of drool that teething brings. I have learned these lessons the hard way....and do laundry most nights.





This is the bush next to the soccer stadium across from our apartment. I guess they are into spray painting the bushes here but it does look very cool. I am not sure if they did it for the World Cup or not. Around 8pm the bars here pack and men from all over come in to watch men in shorts on TV. There was another game tonight next to our apartment(obviously not World Cup league) but with our visit moving to later in the day i did not get to see the game. It's cheap entertainment for about $2.




Today was laundry day as just about every day is with the tiny washer we have. We washed one of the sheets and needed a place for it to dry so we laid it over a ring of chairs from the dining room table. Once we saw it I said "Hey that looks like a Kazak Yurt"and took a picture. Another sign that I have been here too long....or that the honey bread I had for breakfast just wasn't right.





In our continuing series of "What We Ate For Dinner", here's is tonight's edition. I could leave you guessing for hours as to what it is but I will not. It was eggs, onions, peppers, zuchinni I think, and breadcrumbs, topped with tomatoes and more onions, with a side dish of potatoe periogies and a bowl of sliced apples. MMMM, mmmm good. Natalie, my roommate cooks alot better than Rob. we also made an experimental dessert that's chocolate something like pudding that you pour over stale cookies. We'll see how that turns out after it chills over night.


Here are some pictures we ran across on the street. Looks like a car got a little out of control on this street and they took out a street sign or 2. I can understand how it happens. It is very dusty here and they water the streets a couple times a day (I have a 90 second video of it). That makes it quite slick and cars take intersections a big fast, and one slalom driver probably got a bit over excited. This is the same intersection that they closed just after Rob left. It's right in front of the soccer stadium. The day they closed it and started digging a ditch about 10 feet wide and 1o or 20 feet deep we lost our hot water, so I am guessing they knocked out a pipe. I never realized how cold a COLD shower was-- my scalp was numb. When they closed the street they put up 3 cement barracades, then about 5 metal fences that look like picket fences. Well, the cement things were evenly spaced and creative drivers just got out of their cars, moved the metal fence, ignored the big sign with the red circle with a white horizontal line (which I beleive is international for "Don't go here"), and sqeezed by. The police saw this after a day or 2 and decided to put in more cement things so a car would not fit through them.. Again the drivers showed their creativeness and just drove up on the sidewalk, around the barricades then down the road. The police finally resolved this by putting more cement barricades up. Drivers here are interesting, they move the fences as the cop watches, and honk and heckly the cops if they are standing in teh street.

This picture is of the Dept Of Transportation (probably called the Ministry of Transportation because they are all fancy here). I thought the truck was far too pretty to actually do real dirty work, but it looks like these guys are legit and doing work.






At dinner the other night we got these desserts. We went to dinner then it started to pour rain for about an hour so we had to stick it out in the restaurant. The dessert may look good, but they were horrible. I am not one to turn down dessert but coconut covering a rock hard ice cream ball with icy flakes was not my idea of yummy.