Sun Showers In Uralsk

Thanks for hanging in there with us while we tried to upload the blog. The connection has become very slow and drops calls about every 2 minutes if not more frequently and so it can be impossible to do anything. I am just tossing a bit up at a time so we will see how long this will last. I will have to probably cut down on photos and therefore some text…which will probably please my Uncle as he was tossing around college words like loquacious in reference to my blogs…Anyways….

We set out with simple goals for today – see Joseph, do a bit of shopping, see Joseph and toss in some eating along the way! So once again it will be a simple day today and may mean a bit of a drag for your reading but after awhile there really is not much going on here with us. Upon waking we tested the water and alas, no hot water. Although it was not frigid it was not warm – somewhere between the two. So we boiled some water on the stove to wash and to shave (yes, Mom even I thought skipping two days of shaving would be too much!). It takes some getting used to but makes getting ready in the morning a bit quicker. We got ourselves to the baby house and Joseph came in all happy and smiles. Today was my turn to greet him at the door when Olga brought him in. As I was reaching for him from Olga, we both gave him a hearty “Good Morning Joseph!” and he responded with an equally hearty belch! “Nice” was my response. He has great comic timing already! We sat down and played with his toys and especially his truck which has become one of his favorites. He have been to working on his ability to sit better on his own and the truck actually works as a good distraction for him but also something he can grab if he begins to tip over. Although the caregivers do the best they can, the kids do not have as many opportunities to practice such basic skills and so are a bit behind. It is amazing though to see how quickly Joseph has improved over just a few days.

After our morning session we wanted to do some more souvenir shopping and so headed to the Chinese open market. I was looking for a wallet to give Joseph when he got older – perhaps around 14 or so but did not find much that we did not have at home. I do not mean just styles of wallets but actually the same brand names which makes sense since so many of ours come from China. We get him a few other such things as well as a few things for ourselves. We had an interesting exchange, or rather Olga did, with one of the vendors. As Laura and I were browsing he was asking Olga where we were from, what we liked to do in Uralsk, what we ate and drank and then how long Olga had been studying English. Olga thought perhaps he had not met an American before. He was actually one of the friendliest looking guys we have seen in Uralsk as many people here do not seem to smile very much at least in public. When we decided on what we wanted we asked how much, he responded with the classic “It is 1600 tenge…but for you 1400 tenge.” – I got it for 1100 tenge. I really enjoy all of these open markets for their energy, variety of goods and the fun of bargaining. It is really impressive you CAN get a kitchen sink here too! (I meant to show you a photo of one.) We finished pretty quick so after we were dropped off at the apartment we struck out to the cafeteria we went to the other day. It was such a good deal, good food and it was a beautiful day we could not resist. After we ate, I ran into the grocery store while Laura was sunning on the promenade which was fortunate because Laura was able to capture this next photo of two girls in the last weeks before graduation. Yes, they look like French maids but they wear these outfits prior to graduation as they are uniforms which were worn 40-50 yeas ago. We have seen them about town but did not know what was going on. Olga finally filled us in and Laura got the shot.

We thought that since it was a nice day we may be able to go outside with Joseph so we brought with us one of his hats Laura bought for him in Kazkakhstan. Unfortunately as soon as we got inside it started to pour outside although the sun was coming in and out. We explained to Olga that we call it a sun shower which she did not know. I then remembered that I left the window open in Igor’s car but she said not to worry as he was going to get his car washed! I told her that is how we know it is going to rain. As the opportunity to go outside was no longer available, Laura had Joseph model one of his hats for the camera. Unfortunately I did not capture the fringie things hanging off the back but he still looks cute! We had another good visit with the man but it ended with a bit of fussiness. We are pretty sure he is teething so we had to break out the yellow star again so he could self-soothe!

This evening I had to do some science work and Laura set out to organize the gifts we brought. These are gifts for people at the baby house as well as Olga, Igor etc. in addition to some gifts which we bought for donations to the children in the baby house. You can see from this photo the amazing thought and preparation that Laura did before we left. Not only the gifts for each of the people, but gift bags and even collapsible storage boxes containing the donations which the baby house could use later for storing other things! I walked into the backroom and saw all of this and was amazed. I mean I knew about the gifts but not all of the accoutrements! Boy, are our bags going to be lighter on the return flight!

So that was about it for our LAST Friday night in Uralsk! We closed the night by watching two episodes of the Dick Van Dyke show on my laptop in bed! Yes, we even got to do the Twizzle in Uralsk. We will see if the internet is better for tomorrow’s blog.

Da Zaftra!