Jen here.  Our apartment is great!  After reading the description of it in our program manual, we were expecting the worst.  But this is better than graduate school! All the rooms are bright and clean and spacious - the furniture is generally old, but the appliences are new. We have a new stove, refrigerator and washing machine (Its a Bosch, so we feel right at home :) We can only do micro loads in the machine - but that's ok because without a dryer, we need to hang the clothes all around one of the bedrooms. The bathroom is also new and I had a nice hot bath this morning (Can't gain any weight while here though - or I won't fit in the tub - it is very narrow. It would embarassing to get stuck in there.) (And here is the best part mom - there is a Nora Roberts novel in a closet here that I have never read before!)  The front door is amazing, too.  There are three locks and Steve says that it feels like the door to a bank vault.

We are sitting in the kitchen after our morning visit. This is the first day we have been able to cook - so we both had cravings. I had eggs - Steve had pizza (yes, you can buy them at the bakery - not bad either). Shopping in Kazakhstan is very neat - the stores have little counters, each with a specialty (dairy, meats, fresh fruits, bakery, canned goods, whole foods, alcohol, teas, cleaning supplies ...) and everything is very nicely displayed, and the counter girl wears a brightly colored uniform like a maid in a movie. You go to each counter and ask for what you want (or if alone, you point and say "nyet, nyet, nyet, da!") Then they ring it up (everything is inexpensive) and you pay and they give it to you (no sack unless you buy one). You don't pick out or touch anything before you buy it. They don't give change smaller than 5 Tenge, so if they owe you a penny or so, they pay you in the universal currency - matches!?  Generally nothing is packaged, if you order 6 eggs, they hand you 6 individual eggs. We bought a kilo of crackers (yes - that is a lot of crackers! Steve is munching on them as I write.) and they did put those in a sack for us (but they were all loose to start.) We bought everything to make spagetti for dinner tomorrow night. The Javines will join us for dinner and a movie.  Tonight we'll go over to the Hotel Chagala (the fancy and somewhat Americanized hotel in town - the name means "Sea Gull") to say farewell to some of the other adoptive parents in town who are heading home tomorrow.

Steve here.  Aidos was fairly quiet at our morning visit today.  We're wondering if some of that has to do with yesterday and his coming realization that he will be leaving the baby house soon.  So we relaxed in what we've come to call the "visiting room" - it's about 10x15 feet with shelves of toys around the walls.  We sit on the floor and play with the baby house toys or ones that we've brought.  One of our favorite activities (that's Jen and me) is to build "Battle Bots" with giant Legos.  Many of the Legos (and the other toys) are broken, but there's enough life left in them that we can create giant monsters.  Aidos likes to watch us battle each other until one of the 'bots falls entirely apart (it's usually a rather short conflict).  Today he built his own and got involved in the fight as well.