Day 8

Today was great! We were stuck inside in the morning but at least we had a little plastic tool set that we’d picked up the day before. We fixed all kinds of things…and then the boys turned into surgeons of some sort (at least that’s what I’m telling myself) because they started taking the tools to the stuffed animals. Hmmm….

After lunch Igor (our translator) took us to the Dostoevsky house/museum. He lived here during exile from Russia in the 1800’s and his house is actually right outside our back windows. It was really interesting because they had all kinds of antiques from the 19th century…but from this side of the globe. Some were very similar but most were very different. On the street he ran into some tourists from Belgium and Ireland and helped them translate some stuff. Apparently they had tried to go to Kyrgyzstan but because a revolution has broken out there they ended up in Kazakhstan. Still don’t know how they got all the way up to Semey, but it’s certainly sounds like an interesting trip!

In the afternoon we put some new clothes that we’d brought from home on little M and it made a huge difference. I can’t really explain it but it was like he was really our kid all of a sudden! It’s so strange here because they don’t speak like us, they don’t smell like us, and they have these crazy clothes on…at times it really makes it difficult to feel connected. I’ve heard other parents talk about the clothing and how they couldn’t wait to give them a bath so they smelled familiar, but I never got it…until now. It really sounds lame to people who haven’t gone through this, I’m sure, but we all felt completely different seeing him in some “normal” clothes. He really seemed to be excited about it too and he was sad at the end of the visit when we had to put his old stuff back on him.

typical of most shots of the two of them together!