Mar 8
Sleep is still a little bit of an issue. The cell phone Bulat gave us rang in the middle of the night, apparently a wrong number since they were speaking Russian. There’s an extremely confused rooster who starts to crow at least one hour before the sun comes up and then continues to crow throughout the morning. It’s amazing to be in an 8-story apartment building in city center and have a rooster wake you up. Russ was dreaming of a nice, fresh chicken dinner!
We worked on some school work today and Sara came over to introduce us to Abyet and Chopan, the Kazakh family who lives on the 4th floor of this building. Abyet works for Interlink. Chopan will clean the apartment for us and also cook meals if we’d like her to. They have 4 children, 3 girls and 1 boy. The girls are studying English and enjoyed “talking” to Brooke and Paige.
After that, Sara walked along with us to a small bazaar where we could purchase some food. We came back to the apartment just in time to leave for the orphanage. Today is a Kazakh holiday “International Day of Women”. Bulat gave flowers to Brooke, Paige and I. We had purchased some flowers for Julia and we also stopped and bought candy and some sweets. This holiday is a combination of Mother’s Day and Valentines Day and is a BIG deal here.
We visited with Julia today, Vasya went with the other boys on a small field trip and we only got to see him for a few minutes. Julia and the girls from her group enjoyed looking at Paige’s Colorado history textbook, a John Fielder book of Colorado in the fall, and the camera of course!
The internet connection here is very unpredictable – many times we have to dial over and over to get connected. We’re keeping a daily journal on WORD but may not be able to post each day since we aren’t sure we can get a connection. So you may see a few days post at the same time. Tonight we tried to connect for 1.5 hours and finally gave up. Mornings seem to be the best time to connect, and we’re still working on getting those circadian rhythms back into synch, so we’ll probably end up doing most of our postings then.
Everything here is going well. We’ve had no problems at all. We’re getting comfortable enough to do some short excursions on foot. We’ve got the Kazakh equivalent of a small strip mall about 10 minutes walk from the apartment, so we can get what we need and still find our way home. We are soooo glad that we got this apartment instead of a hotel. The extra rooms and the kitchen are going to make this a lot more like home.
We worked on some school work today and Sara came over to introduce us to Abyet and Chopan, the Kazakh family who lives on the 4th floor of this building. Abyet works for Interlink. Chopan will clean the apartment for us and also cook meals if we’d like her to. They have 4 children, 3 girls and 1 boy. The girls are studying English and enjoyed “talking” to Brooke and Paige.
After that, Sara walked along with us to a small bazaar where we could purchase some food. We came back to the apartment just in time to leave for the orphanage. Today is a Kazakh holiday “International Day of Women”. Bulat gave flowers to Brooke, Paige and I. We had purchased some flowers for Julia and we also stopped and bought candy and some sweets. This holiday is a combination of Mother’s Day and Valentines Day and is a BIG deal here.
We visited with Julia today, Vasya went with the other boys on a small field trip and we only got to see him for a few minutes. Julia and the girls from her group enjoyed looking at Paige’s Colorado history textbook, a John Fielder book of Colorado in the fall, and the camera of course!
The internet connection here is very unpredictable – many times we have to dial over and over to get connected. We’re keeping a daily journal on WORD but may not be able to post each day since we aren’t sure we can get a connection. So you may see a few days post at the same time. Tonight we tried to connect for 1.5 hours and finally gave up. Mornings seem to be the best time to connect, and we’re still working on getting those circadian rhythms back into synch, so we’ll probably end up doing most of our postings then.
Everything here is going well. We’ve had no problems at all. We’re getting comfortable enough to do some short excursions on foot. We’ve got the Kazakh equivalent of a small strip mall about 10 minutes walk from the apartment, so we can get what we need and still find our way home. We are soooo glad that we got this apartment instead of a hotel. The extra rooms and the kitchen are going to make this a lot more like home.
posted by The Petersons at 4:47 PM
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