Доброе утро from Kazakhstan

In response to the question about the progress of our Russian language skills, Seth has been burning the midnight oil.... learning the cyrillic alphabet. Blythe, on the other hand, has actually been memorizing some meaningful phrases. Our title for this post is pronounced "dobray ootrah" or "good morning", which is one of our 5 favorite things to say. It's a great conversation opener, and closer in our case. Seth has found "shtoh eta?" ("what is that?") to be pretty useful with the kids, though he can't understand the answer. All that in one week! At the speed we're going we are confident we will be fluent Russian speakers by the time we leave.

We are having an easier time communicating with the kids than we were at the beginning. They are doing their part as well. Kostin knows how to say "bubbles", and says it pretty often, actually. He and Mama were humming a song together today, so hurray for the unifying power of music. Alina is very patient with us. We struggle quite a bit to understand her when our interpreter, Denara, is out of the room, but she doesn't get frustrated. That's more than we can say for ourselves. This morning Alina tried to get out of music class by saying she was sick in order to get to see us earlier. Two days ago she was running away from us on the playground, so we have had some progress here.

Blythe took a few pictures in the kids' living area today, which we thought we would share. Shoes are left outside the meeting area (note Kostin excitedly putting his foot wear on to come meet us). Clothes are placed on the lower peg before lunch for boys getting their hair cut (note the Monty Python reference, which clearly didn't come from Blythe). The meeting areas and bedrooms are very organized. How long does anyone think that will last stateside?

Today's primary activity was painting, at which Alina proved to be not only very adept but organized with the other children as well. Actually all the kids seemed well schooled in keeping both their work area and their brushes clean.

Kostin was pretty tuckered out by the end of the day, but Mama made everything better with a little snuggle time. Mom's are good that way.