Happy Mother's Day!!

Happy Mother’s Day! The holiday is not celebrated in Kazakhstan, but Joe made me breakfast all the same for my first Mother’s Day. What a great husband. After breakfast, we went to see Hannah who was particularly good today and played just about the whole time. It’s getting really warm here, but Hannah still gets really bundled up, still with two layers, and no skin showing. It may be why she has been cranky lately, so as soon as we got up to the playroom, we removed a layer and she played quite a bit.

At lunch, our coordinator, Larissa came by. This was the first time we had met her as right before we came to Karaganda, she was in a serious car accident. She has been working for us from behind the scenes (literally in the hospital) while she recovers. We took care of all of the last minute details. She went over questions the judge may have and luckily our answers were deemed acceptable. She also reviewed all of the gifts we will be giving. It is Kazakh tradition to give gifts as a thank you. We had brought gifts for the caregivers, the Orphanage Director, our driver, and Larissa. We were worried because there were people we didn’t know we needed gifts for but luckily we brought enough perfume to make up the difference. Because of the class system, we had to be careful not to give someone in a higher position the same perfume as a caregiver. As Larissa said “(so and so) is very important”. Pretty much we do whatever she says…She also seemed happy with all of the donations we will be giving to Malutka. With the 260 euros we had (donated by the American Women's Club of Amsterdam), our translator bought a specific type of outfit the orphanage requested. In the end, all we have to get are gift bags but we are actually giving gifts to (and this is for other ROTIA families who will be traveling soon) caregivers (8-9), Orphanage Director, Pediatrician, Lawyer (male), Coordinator (Larissa), translator (Olga), and Adoption Coordinator (at the Ministry of Education) .

After lunch, we headed to the bazaar/market. Olga, our translator, had written it down on a piece of paper so we could show it to the taxi driver. The market was great! And absolutely huge! It had pretty much everything you could imagine and the prices were excellent. We bought a few things but mostly just enjoyed roaming! For dinner, we’re heading to Mario’s Pizza, our weekly Sunday night dinner. For about $10, we get 2 pizzas and beers. As usual, we’ll be heading out with the other families.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers for court tomorrow!!

(sorry no pictures today, blogger is not working well for us......tomorrow we will try again)