Sleep and Smiles for our Second visit

We are getting into a routine here, which happened faster than we had anticipated. It's amazing what a good night's sleep will do. We went to see Kathryn a little after 1000 wondering what her reaction would be to us today. Maybe yesterday was a fluke. She proved us wrong. When we arrived she was sound asleep in her crib and did not want to disturb her. She awoke about 15 minutes later, turned her head and smiled at us. The time flew by and before we knew it it was time to leave. She continues to be semmingly intrigued by us. We played, stretched her out, fed her another bottle and she fell asleep just before we left. She is easy going and playful. We will keep working on getting her strength increased a little at a time.

Life here is fairly quiet for us. Not in the sense that there are no kids, but in that we don't have the constant input of things like work, television, driving. Honestly, I don't miss the television much at all. Yesterday, after our visit with Kathryn our interpretor, Inna, took us to the grocery store for a few things. I'm a little rusty on my Cyrillic so I was happy to have her help in selecting the correct tortellini, the one with cabbage and mushrooms, and not horse meat. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

On that note, Karie and our other house mates went to the store to purchase some beef to go in the chili we were making for dinner. To get their point across in making sure they were getting what they wanted, they were "mooing" at the lady behind the counter. She laughed and said "Da"(yes). The chili turned out pretty good, more like a Gulasch though. Other than a couple trips to the store, we have not ventured out. It really isn't that cold to be outside during the day. It's the fact that you cannot blend in anywhere. Most people are very nice, but I would rather not have the attention. We are trying to keep a low profile and all we have to do is speak English and they know who we are. We will venture out a little more in a few days to see what kinds of Kazak items we will want to take home.