Day 2 The Adventure Continues

Today was our first complete visit (2 1/2 hours). The visit began with great enthusiasm from all 3 of us. Walking hand in hand with a caretaker down a hallway to greet us, LMS screamed out with excitement the moment she saw her visitors in the lobby. WOW, such enthusiasm from only a brief 20 minute or so introduction the day before!

Privately, in a room just off her group room, we entertained ourselves for the next couple of hours tossing a blowup ball around, coloring in a coloring book, making moving vehicles with legos, etc. She expresses great enthusiasm when she gets excited about things. Her eyes (incredibly beautiful I must add) lit up wide every time we brought out something new to do. The ball, though, was most certainly her favorite.

She seems to be speaking well but it is difficult to tell since she is speaking Russian and her words, at this point, are few. We brought our talking pocket translator to help us communicate during our visits but I'm not sure it's helping us. She looks at us funny whenever we try to mimick the voice on this device.

We wore her our physically with all the activity during our time together and ended our visit with LMS curled up on her new "Momma's" lap where she sat almost motionless for many mintues. We thought she was about to go to sleep but I now believe she was just enjoying being so close. A caretaker then took her to join her group for lunch. As Brett and Laura crossed through her group room to leave, she waived good bye from her lunch seat as did the rest of the group.

The balance of the day we spent just walking and familiarizing ourselves with this very charming town. It seems that people prefer to use their feet rather than motor to get around so we were not out alone. We were also the most casually dressed in town (even in the middle of the day). Women with perfectly groomed hair and makeup in fur and spiked healed boots were all around us. Everyone is trim, we assume from all the walking because the food is ridiculously inexpensive and delicious! We ate lunch at a small Russian pub which included large beers. We spent around 1100 tenge which computes to less than $9.00 US.

Still not fully rested from the many hours of traveling, we came home and crashed at around 4pm in the afternoon. I (Laura) am writing at 3am here since I've already received my full days rest....guess we've got a bit more adjusting to with this 11 hour time difference.