Day 12 - Dec. 7

Steve here. Ugh. It was a wet and soggy day in Uralsk. When we found out we'd be spending most of December in Kazakhstan, we were fully prepared for subzero (F) temperatures and gale-force winds sweeping across the Asian steppes. Today it was 35° and rainy, on top of about a half-inch of snow. What a mess it made! There are no storm sewers in town, and only the main streets have any kind of gutters. The back streets and sidewalks were completely flooded. I soaked my sneakers during my morning run and spent the rest of the day with wet feet. We were told that October and November are "mud season" in Uralsk, while December and January are "ice season". If the mess outside freezes, then I think we'll have seen the best of both!

Our visits with Benjamin Aidos continue to be fun. In the 1 to 1½ hour visits we usually mix in activities that we've brought and toys from the baby house. We always go through our family photo album several times, so that he'll get familiar with our home in Oshkosh, Joe, Grandma ("Ah-zhee-uh" is the Kazak word for Grandma) and Grandpa ("Ah-ta" is the Kazak word for grandpa) Szyd and Earles, etc. We have since added some new pictures of his friends in his group, and he gets a real kick out of seeing them. We brought some simple puzzles a couple of days ago. He didn't understand them at first, but in just a couple of days, he has really figured them out. It was interesting that though the puzzles were both the same level of difficulty, Benjamin Aidos found the one with the cars and trucks to be much easier from the start than the farm animal one. He must have more distinctions about vehicles. This morning we had the extra bonus of having an hour in the music room. There's a lot more room down there and some fun noisemakers.