Happy Father's Day from KазаKстан!

A very happy Father's Day to everyone back home. They do not have such a thing in Kazakhstan, but we celebrated it all the same. We have now developed a chant for learning English phrases. Seth & Kostin stomped around the playground singing "I am happy!" Subsequent verses include "I am hungry", "I am thirsty", and the ever popular "I am tired". As long as Kostin thinks it's a game he is happy to play along. Alina is making a real effort and is improving. We have her recite 5 English words at each session, and a little bribery with carbonated water never hurts. Kostin got to playing with his clay again, which opened the opportunity for Blythe to teach English names for colors. He liked saying "green, blue, red, orange, yellow, white". This may be just the inroad we have been looking for with him.

All of the children have taken a turn feeling sick. It is an orphanage, afterall, so germs spread like..... the plague. Kostin was first - we edited out the pictures with his nose running. Lauren's daughter Tanishka was next (and is still not allowed to go outside). Alina said she felt stuffed up today, although that didn't seem to curb her energy level. She has taken to shooting pictures with Lauren's camera (we're too uptight to let her use ours) and she seems to have a good eye for image composition.




We did alot of painting again today. Kostin and Seth played a fun game where Seth would put together several 20 piece puzzles Lauren had brought, then Kostin would destroy them. He is very talented. Alina broke out half way through the session for spa time (weekly bathing here at the orphanage). We didn't want to prevent that. As some of you have already been wondering, we are not looking forward to leaving the children in a couple of weeks. Once we have our mandatory court appearance on June 26th, we will head home the next day. The kids have to wait until their paperwork goes through and they get issued passports. They will be escorted by a chaperone to Hartford, probably at the beginning of August. So we think Alina will understand (though she will be sad). Kostin was crying for his papa the other day (according to the caretakers) so we don't think he'll handle it well. We plan to make a calendar with some pictures we have taken so they can count down the days until we see them again.














We will miss them of course, but neither of us are happy to be away from Asher for so long. Last night we spent an hour watching home videos on our camcorder so we could remember what he sounds like. As bad as it sounds, you start to forget stuff when you're away for so long. Kind of creepy.


This afternoon our driver took us to a place about 20 minutes outside the city to have lunch. This was in the hills above a hydroelectric dam on the Irtush River that widened it out to a lake for as far as we could see. We noted quite a few large boats, so we're guessing the lake went on for 10's of miles. We had lunch at a riverside place (on a barge, actually). A nice light fish meal with rice, and Seth indulged in a couple of beers.














Overall, a very lovely and relaxing afternoon. On the way home Denara took us to a bookstore where she said they had books in English. On examing the half of one row on one shelf that defined the English section, we realized this was probably the advanced reading list for university students studying English (of which Denara is one). Seth was out of reading material, so it looks like sci-fi will give way to George Eliot, Arthur Conan-Doyle, and Robert Louis Stevenson for now.