Sunday, February 10, 2008

Bonding day 5 of 15

We woke up this morning to a very pretty sight out side. All the trees were coated with a white icy snow. They looked like they all had been sprayed with that fake snow.

Our visit today started at 9:30. Since it is Sunday, we only get to see him once. He is still not feeling very well. He was pretty cranky for our whole visit. He did perk up a little bit after we feed him his cottage cheese but it didn’t last long. He ended up falling asleep in Eric’s arms about 10 minutes before the end of our visit. It was so cute. He sucks on his fingers when he is tired or trying to sooth his sore gums. We are hoping he gets some extra sleep today and starts feeling better. I put some teething gel on his gums today. He thought it was pretty fun sucking on Mommy’s finger. That actually made him happy for a couple minutes. I will do anything that makes him happy. Tomorrow if he doesn’t look like he is getting any better, we are going to ask again if we can buy medicine at the pharmacy for him. We all ready asked once and were told no but if we keep asking maybe they will let us.

After our visit Biyanna, one of our translators, took us to lunch and shopping. There are a ton of shopping stores in Aktobe but most of them are expensive. Due to this, we asked her where the bargain shopping was. She took us to the indoor/outdoor market just outside of downtown. Lunch was good with nice size portions and it was very reasonable. We wished it was closer to our hotel. Since it is a car ride away we probably won’t make it there again. We bought a few bibs for Lincoln, the “drool bug” and tights. I hate to say we bought tights for our son, but we did. The baby’s wear multi layers of clothing. Bottom: diaper, socks, tights, socks, pants, and slippers Top: onies, shirt, and sweater. I think he is so skinny because he is constantly sweating. The temperature in the baby house is probably at least 75 if not hotter. After the market we went to the super market. Mainly we had to stock up on baby supplies for the week. We went to a different store than last time. Come to find out it is only a block away from our hotel. Excellent we now know how to walk to two super markets.

We decided to try and do some laundry today, we have been putting it off because neither one of us really wanted to do it. Eric strung us up a clothes line out on our enclosed porch. For some reason the sinks and tubs here do not have stoppers. This made hand washing clothes a little difficult. Eric came up with a great plan; put a plastic bag in the bottom of the sink. It worked!! So I washed the stuff in our little pedestal sink and Eric rinsed them in the shower. I told him we should have filmed it. It was a sight. We both just assume to never hand wash anything again. Gen & Joel are moving to an apartment tomorrow with a washer so they said we could do our wash there from now on. We can give our hotel our clothes and they will wash them. Unfortunately this service would cost about $10 for a complete outfit.

We walked over to Hotel Dastana where Gen and Joel have been staying, just to check it out. Then the four of us went to dinner together. We went to the Turkish restaurant, Istanbul. We walk in and sit down and the waitress hands us menus. We ask for an English menu but no they don’t have one. And no, no one speaks English. We called Biyanna and she ordered for us. She did a good job, we had more than enough food for four of us and it only ended up being $22 a couple. We will definitely be going back