September 29

More of the same today. Josie is starting to eat some carrots and rice, which is fun, and very messy. She is fully on the Calder non-schedule. She took a late nap yesterday, and didn't sleep until about 11:30 last night (thanks, Brian, for doing the late-night dad duties). She woke up with Liam at about 6:30am, then took a 5 hour nap from 9:00am til 2:00pm. I'm actually very glad. It feels like she is resetting her clock from the orphanage schedule. She is asking for food when she is hungry, and stopping when she is full. She is eating and sleeping different amounts at different times. To me, this seems like a very good thing.

Mira came at about 3:45, and escorted Brian and me to the square to help us buy a painting. It's not exactly traditional Kazakh art, but it's an original, by a real Kazakh artist. It's Liam and Josie. Can't you see the resemblance?

Then we filled out forms for the US Embassy, and Irina came to go over the final schedule. It seems that we will go to the Embassy and the Clinic on Monday, and have the final Embassy interview on Tuesday. This means we could leave Tuesday night. However, I then called Lufthansa, and it seems that while there are seats on the Tues/Wed (Wed 3:30am) flight from Almaty to Frankfurt, there are no seats on the connecting flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco.

So, it seems that we will be leaving Thursday night/Friday morning instead. We're going to make a call to Sharon, the travel agent back home, in just a few hours (give her time to wake up in the morning), just in case she has some trick up her sleeve. But most likely, when we visit the Lufthansa office tomorrow, we will be changing our tickets to Friday morning. We will leave here Friday morning at 3:30am, travel for about 20 hours, and arrive in SFO at 10:30am on Friday. Weird.

We have made plans to go see the South side of the city tomorrow, to the Central State Museum, and some shopping places. Then, on the weekend, we plan to visit the Central Park (with its amusement park and zoo), as well as a possible trip to the mountains (some old-world culture?). Monday and Tuesday will be Embassy business. And Wednesday and Thursday will be free to our whims (and packing).

And here are a few pictures of us and our kitchen, so you can see how we're living.

Dinner last night.

Cooking, cleaning and laundry, all in 6 feet.

And our messy fridge, just so we can remember.