Look very closely and you'll see those bottom two teeth.

No Cheese for You!

One more week down. Just over a week and Joe and Jan will be here. We can't wait. Our first Almaty visitors. I wonder what they will think. There hasn't been that much going on this week. It was a pretty usual school week. We had a spirit day on Friday, so I had to pull out the "wacky" costume for Wacky Day. I'll have to post a picture.

It's been one of those weekends where you get frustrated with being overseas. On Friday, Joe had a lock-in at school, so he was away for the night. I had to get a ride home since I can't drive the stick-shift in the hideous traffic here. (I know, I know. I need to learn!) Then, I tried to order pizza and couldn't understand the girl well enough to get what I wanted. I felt so helpless! I decided that I need Joe around to help me out in these situations, but I also decided I have to get with it and study some more Russian.

Grocery shopping this weekend was frustrating too. Sophia fell asleep in the car, so we decided I'd go in and start shopping while Joe sat in the car with her for awhile. Awhile turned into an hour, so I shopped by myself. What is it with these places? I needed lentils. There are always lentils, but not today! I saw them just last week at a different store, row upon row, but not at the supermarket I was at. Then, I needed cheese. I walked up to the counter. I stood there and stood there. There were about five girls down at the deli area and five at the bread area. None came over to me. I called over to a girl at the deli section. She said something in Russian which I took to mean, "Sorry, the cheese person isn't here." Okay. No cheese for me. I even came back 10 minutes later and still no one was there. I guess it was impossible for the deli lady to hand me a block of already labeled cheese. Joe said something like this happened to him once. He went to the fish counter and the lady was taking a break, right there. She refused to get him his fish because she was on break. At least when we take breaks we leave the area.

Grocery shopping is so frustrating as it is. We usually have to go to two different places to get what we want. The aisles are idiotically small. Who designs these places? Everyone bumps into you without saying excuse me or even acknowledging that they just hit you. Any remotely western product can be extremely expensive. You can buy a bag of pretzels which has one of those 99 cent discount stickers on it, but it will cost you 3-4 dollars. It's like they leave the sticker there just to tick you off. You can buy a can of parmesan cheese, but it's $8. You can buy tortillas, but they're $6. Why must they put these things here to taunt me? I guess it's good that at least they're available. At the same time, some things are just unavailable and it feels like they never will be. It's funny how much we appreciate the products and organization in America. We said it about Egypt and we're still saying it now.

Luckily, we went shopping yesterday, so we had today to rest. We haven't been able to shower all weekend since our bathtub is being repaired. It was leaking through the wall into our bedroom. Hmmm.... do you think that might be because there's space between the wall and the tub? When the guy told us not to splash so much, I wondered why there was actually a spray nozzle at all. Apparently, showers are not the same here. Actually, I'm just griping. Our place is really quite nice. It's just that things are done differently here, and we aren't always sure why.

Sophia is great. She's been cruising around in her walker, tormenting the dog even more. She's really into the phone and got a big kick out of Joe calling the other night. I have to do the ol' switcheroo and swipe it with her play phone in order to get it back before she chews on it. It's just play, play, play with her. I think she's finally growing a little longer.

Destruction!

As I write this blog, Sophia is tearing up the house. We bought her a walker last week on the nanny's suggestion, and now we are realizing that a mobile baby is a destructive baby! She loves her new-found independence. She's been wheeling around the house, running into the poor dog, and grabbing at anything within reach. Right now, she's scooting, scooting, ever so stealthily towards Leia.

Sophia officially has two bottom teeth. The little chompers have popped through the surface. Soon she'll be eating with the big boys.

Speaking of boys. Last weekend at our school play, someone actually saw Sophia and said, "Hey, big boy." That was seconds after a co-worker went on and on about how much she looked like Joe. That's it, no more ambiguous colors in public. The next day we went to a friend's house and I dressed her in a dress and headband. She has to go through the boy stage, I guess. I'm pretty sure I looked like a boy my whole first year. I had to get curly hair before I looked more girlish. Maybe when her hair gets longer.

It's been a pretty uneventful weekend. We decided not to do anything or go anywhere, but somehow with just a grocery shopping trip, it seemed pretty busy. Things are definitely more complicated with a child.

Here's a picture of our courtyard parking lot and the very Soviet playground. There are always kids playing down there and people hanging out on the bench. The parking lot isn't really a parking lot at all, just a space that has become a parking lot. There's an art to parking your car down there, so that there's just enough room for cars to get by without scraping you. So far, we've been hit twice.

Road Rage . . . Kazakh Style

Here is an interesting, although scary, story told to us by our coworker. First, you have to know that Almaty is really stupid when it comes to road construction. They will close the closest thing we have to a highway just to fix a pothole. They love to do it during high traffic times, too.

One of our office staff members was driving home the other day and witnessed this scene. There was a section near our house that had to be fixed last week, so they closed it and blocked off the traffic. A traffic cop was standing there redirecting the traffic. A black Mercedes with tinted windows pulled up to the traffic cop. Of course, the traffic cop told him to go around. He couldn't go through. The guy in the Mercedes inched forward, almost bumping into the cop. They proceeded to argue with each other. The driver would say, "I'm going," and the cop would say, "No, you can't go through. You have to go around." The driver kept nudging his car forward into the cop. They got more and more heated, but the traffic cop wouldn't give in.

So, what does the driver do? He steps out of his car, holding a Kalishnakov(AK-47), points it at the traffic cop and says, "Do you want some of this?" Now, I don't even know if the traffic cops have any weapons here. What could the guy do? He stepped aside. The guy in the black Mercedes got what he wanted and leisurely drove through the blocked road. I'm sure there was no punishment for this guy.

I didn't really believe it at first, but our source is extremely reliable. She said, "Why don't I ever have my camera when I need it?" We really don't know about the mafia here. Maybe this guy was mafia connected, maybe not. We do hear about mafia-run casinos (There are more here than in America, by the way.) Our accountant at school has several people whose business she has to list as a "holding company" because their business isn't really on the up-and-up. Interesting. I can't really comprehend it. We didn't have these issues where I grew up!

Another item of note this week. I can feel Sophia's first tooth breaking through the surface. We can't see it yet, but it's there!

Tidbits

Random photos...



We came home to find Sophia in an animal/toy fortress built by her new nanny. Sophia was happier than she's ever been.

My little ones at school. This is rain forest that we built on the wall. Nevermind that some of the animals are gargantuan. I'd hate to run into that spider. It could probably take out the sloth in the tree. They had so much fun building it, though.

Do-it-yourself Healthcare

Let me tell you why you shouldn't be able to go to the pharmacy and get almost anything you want. Joe's virus led to an ear infection Monday. He was in so much pain, so he went to the pharmacy and asked for antibiotics. They didn't have penicillin in tablet form, so they gave him some little bottles with powder in them. He asked in as much Russian as he could if he should mix them with water. Sophia's antibiotic was a suspension like this that you mixed with water and then she drank it. When Joe came home I asked, "Are you sure those aren't injections?" They certainly did look like injection bottles, but why would they give a regular person injections?

He said that he had asked the pharmacist. So, he tore off the top, mixed the powder with water, and chugged it down. Not just once, mind you, but twice. The next day, he went to see our school doctor, just to double check. Um, yeah, he drank two injections of penicillin. The doctor looked at him in shock. She asked if anything abnormal had happened. Nope. I guess you can swallow an injection without too many ill-effects. The doctor gave him a different prescriptions to try. Joe, however, said maybe he should go back to drinking injections as it seemed to have more effect. Don't worry. I talked him out of that.

It's so hard here to know how to take medication and to trust the doctors. A friend of ours from work told us this story last night. She had to go to the doctor here for minor surgery. I think it was a benign tumor in her breast, or something like that. So, she was in the surgical room with her arm up in the air and they were cutting out whatever it was. Then, the next thing she knows, they bring in an older woman. They strip her down. (She's unconscious.) They proceed to operate on her right next to our friend. One of the nurses was holding a baby food jar. "Gerber?" our friend asked. The nurse just nodded yes and they both started laughing. Apparently, when you need tissue tested, you have to bring your own jar in order to transport it to the lab. Since they are not testing it for bacteria or anything, it doesn't matter what the container is. So there she was, having surgery in a shared room with a naked lady having her tissue placed in a Gerber jar. Go figure. I don't know if my reaction would have been as laid back as our friend's. You just never know around here. We were all shocked when she told this story. That didn't seem very sterile. Our friend remarked, "We were both sterile. The nurses were sterile. I guess it was okay." Hmmm....I still don't know about that.

I've spent the week at home being a stay-at-home mom since we had to let our nanny go on Monday. Without going into too much detail, she just wasn't competent to take care of Sophia. It was so hard because you give someone so much trust and then they let you down. It took all week and lots of drama, but we found someone who we think will do a much better job. She came on Friday and spent an hour and a half with Sophia and I. She has experience and seems very qualified. We were talking with one of student's parents yesterday about how hard it is to find a good nanny. It seems everyone has the same problem. One of the ladies we interviewed was talking about how other nannies she knew would put the baby to sleep and then go out to the store!! Yikes! I guess there are problems like this everywhere. It makes you not want to leave your child at home. Let's just hope it all works out.

I'm looking forward to rejoining the working world tomorrow. On one hand it's been nice setting my own schedule all week, but it's also been a little boring. There's something to be said for adult conversation. I really had a good time being with Sophia so much, though. Joe didn't mind having supper on the stove when he got home either. The good news is that our new nanny will cook for us too. That will be so nice when we get home late. We will be so spoiled.