October 3

Mira came at 9:45, and we headed for the International Clinic to have Josie's official checkup for the Embassy. Judy stayed back with Liam. The checkup was simple, and everything is fine. The bummer, of course, is that her bronchitis didn't magically heal itself, so we got some antibiotic syrup. Also, he confirmed that the sore around her nose is fungal, so at least we know what to put on it to make it finally go away. Then we were off to the Embassy, to deliver all the forms for her visa. We got there right at noon, and they were gone for lunch. So we dropped off the documents with the assistant, and Mira promised to call later to make sure everything was accepted.

Back at the apartment, we rounded the troops and headed back to Xeti for lunch. Did we mention this before? Xeti is Uzbek, and there are also 2 other restaurants in the same building, Caramel, which is European, and a Japanese place. So for lunch, we each had food from a different one of the kitchens. I had sushi, Judy had risotto, and Brian had Uzbek noodles (in the shape of thick, crinkle-cut boiled rice-noodle fries), and what was basically basil chicken (if you've ever eaten Thai food with us, you know the significance of this).

After lunch, both kids went to sleep at the same time. So Brian and I went shopping. We got some standard souvenirs, and a few nice pieces for Josie's room. And we bought ourselves some shoes. The men's shoes are all very long and thin-toed here (not sure if it's the next European fashion, or just the Turkish influence of this area).

Back at the apartment, I brought Liam some more ice cream (boy, the junk-food and no-car-seat withdrawls are going to be terrible when we get home!). We started to pack a little, and when Josie woke up, we went up to the square for dinner. We (Judy) cooked a lot at first, and we tried to eat in most of the time. But now that we're getting to the end of the trip, we regret not having tried more restaurants, so we are trying different things every day for lunch and for dinner.

Brian and I finally started watching some DVDs last week. We are about 9 episodes into Season 3 of Alias. Thank you to the Thunes' for supplying the addictive entertainment! After dinner we put Liam to bed, and keep Josie with us in the living room. She has some interrupted sleep at the beginning of the night, so she dozed on the couch while we watched 2 Aliases. Then bed.

Mira never called to confirm that all our paperwork was accepted by the Embassy, so we sure hope that they have a visa waiting for Josie when we go tomorrow at 4:00pm.