Pervae Maya (May Day)

Happy May Day or rather Pervae Maya to everyone! Yes today is a holiday in Kazakhstan and in many countries although not in the USA. What is interesting is that this day has its origins in the USA and, in fact, in Chicago! The holiday began in the 1880s in the USA, linked to the battle for the eight-hour day, and the Chicago anarchists (Haymarket Riots). The day is known as the international workers day as well as the welcoming of Spring. Right on cue, today was full of brilliant sunshine! The only bit of a downside today was that it was the day the other adoptive families were leaving Uralsk for Almaty and so we will miss them and their company. Laura and I were very excited to receive so many of your comments to the blog and once again want to express our gratitude for your continued support.

We started this day with preparation for our visit to Joseph by preparing our own baby bottle so that he could be introduced to an American style bottle. As we are still at the hotel we are a bit limited in sterilization equipment and, although I would not recommend the following for the laboratory, it seemed to work out well for us. As you can see from the photo, you can do a lot with cooking/meat string, a UofC issued binder clip (size small), and a 2 liter electric kettle to sterilize nipples etc! So with bottle sterilized and a combination of apple juice and water we were off to the baby house! As the other families were leaving, Olga did not accompany us to the baby house but would meet us there after she said her good-byes. Joseph came out to us in a good mood and we had the whole music room to ourselves and a chance to try out the home made bottle and juice. Laura sat him down and he was able to adapt his drinking technique to the new equipment. You expect this sort of thing from an expert like Joseph. Needless to say his Mom was happy too. We played some ball, read some books and then Olga arrived announcing it was time for our morning visit to end.

We figured that as this was our official 11^th day of visits, we should try to do a bit of shopping etc prior to having Joseph with us full time. We talked to Olga about hitting some of the open markets we missed last time and so we took off. There are three major open markets here in Uralsk, the Moscow, the Chinese and the mixed market. If you remember, the other day we went to the Moscow market and so today we hit the other two. At both of these markets, which are very close to each other, there are rows and rows of vendors selling everything from clothes, to shoes, to consumables. These are of course where you can bargain and although I did well by tossing out a “daragoy” (expensive) here and there, each of my proposed costs were accepted right off which is an indication I was still paying too much! Laura reassured me we were still doing okay so I was happy. We really enjoyed walking around here and seeing all you can get.

After the market, we asked Olga and Igor to drop us off at the Atrium so we could go to Mac John’s restaurant. I guess Mac John’s is owned by some guy who used to run a Pizza Hut somewhere. It has many American style fast foods and is recommended by many of the families visiting Uralsk. Laura got a fahita (spelling is correct here) and I a chicken filet along with two Coke Lights (Laura and I have decided we think the Light term used everywhere else is more appropriate than our Diet terminology). It was crowded today because of the holiday which was centered right outside on the “promenade” and Abay square. After lunch we stepped outside and walked down to the square. There were TONS of people outside walking, sitting, chatting, eating etc. Everyone, young and old, were having quite a good time – sun shining, music playing, food vendors etc. It was really a big change in what we normally see around Uralsk. All the way down the walkway there were a couple of marching bands and then finally in the square they had a big stage setup. From the photo you can see this band was dressed in brightly colored traditional costumes and accompanied by the woman singer in the hat. She had a very strong voice and sang in something similar to an opera style. The place was packed and in fact they had closed off the main street which is normally loaded with cars. We hung out here for awhile doing some people watching, listening to music and enjoying the little kids running around with their flags and balloons from the parade which happened earlier during our visit with Joseph. We were even witnesses to a universal experience in a child’s life, another lesson in elementary science – the concept of density as demonstrated by a helium balloon slipping into the blue sky followed by a child’s cry announcing the injustice of it all! Time was drawing near to our next visit with Joseph so we headed back to the hotel to prepare.

We had two surprises awaiting us at the baby house this afternoon. When we arrived Olga thought that today would be a good day for another venture outdoors to the playground and so would ask when she went to get Joseph. She returned with our little guy bundled up, not in the San Diego Chicken outfit from before but in a blue fuzzy outfit. We snatched him up and all went outside to the playground. He is alert and just soaked it all in as Laura carried him down the stairs and out the door. When we got to the fenced in play area there were two neighborhood kids playing there and they were the most interesting to him. He kept his eye on them as they ran around, up and down the slides and ladders, and playing a game of tag. We took this opportunity for family photo (thanks Olga). A little bit later even more kids ran over from the neighboring buildings which of course interested Joseph even more. As this last group appeared they gathered and invoked an American favorite to decide who was “IT”…a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors! (As an aside, while recently watching our limited TV I did get a chance to see an international competition of Rock, Paper, Scissors – believe it or not.) After about 30 minutes we decided to head back inside.

When we got back inside and started playing, one of the caregivers came into the room with a bottle for us to feed Joseph! This may not seem like a big deal, but it is as you usually do not get more than one or two opportunities to do this in the baby house. Maybe it was the holiday, or the bag of cookies we brought to the caregivers today, but whatever it was we were happy – and so was Joseph! Laura and Joseph got into position and down it went. He really gets into his food and cranks up the sucking power to pull the formula out of the glass bottle and through that huge nipple. In fact afterwards, he usually has a slight red head and has worked up a bit of a sweat! He was happy, his mom was happy and I got a birds eye view of it all. After a bit of burping and settling we took the remaining time to do a bit of playing on the blanket to the musical stylings of Neil Diamond. To those of you who are fans, move over, ya got some company – Joseph Maxim Roman. Maybe it was the sunshine, the warm bottle or the music but whatever it was our little Joseph was in a good mood and the whole family had a great time together. Time of course came to an end and we had to say goodbye for today but we all left with a good feeling.

After we left the baby house we told Olga and Igor we did not need to go anywhere and since it was a holiday we all should go home and relax. We dropped off Olga, Igor dropped us off and we headed back to our room. We decided that we had a full happy day and took the remaining afternoon and evening for TV, music and blogging. We thought it felt like a pizza night and so headed to the lounge. We brought with us the dominoes and had a great pizza – really this is great pizza – and a tremendous cup of pea soup. The meal ended with some tea and Laura kicking my butt in dominoes. Not even this loss could taint our Pervae Maya. See you tomorrow.