No Z Just Yet :(

No Zahria at our apartment yet. I got word this morning that the chief judge didn’t count this Saturday as the last day of our Appeal Period since it was on the weekend (???? weird, since last weekend’s days counted, but what do you do), so today was the last day of the Appeal Period instead. Sorry mom and dad, looks like you had a drink for no good reason other than that it was Saturday. Haha You best have another drink tonight! So, tomorrow I get Z. I visited Zahri this afternoon at the orphanage and apologized for not seeing her this morning; Bayan called me to see if I wanted to visit, but they would have come to get me in like 10 minutes, and I wasn’t prepared to go. I hadn’t showered or anything and I was in the middle of cleaning the floors and such. Check out the handy mop I made.
Haha, it is a broom that I just found, wrapped in a towel that is being held on by clips that were being used as clothes pins. Smart hu! Tomorrow it is! That gave me tonight to make up some mashed potatoes for a couple lunches for Z this week. I plan to add a little chicken (in the oven baking now) and carrots, to them to jazz them up a bit. My oven is totally a gas oven. No, no, no, not like our gas stoves, not only do I have to manually light the burners but I even have to light the oven to get it heating. Scary hu! Other than that we have porridge, formula, fruit juice, carrot juice, jarred baby food, teething biscuits, gold fish crackers, animal crackers, etc. I think we are good. We will see hu!

I am not yet sure if Z and I will share the bed, I made a blanket bumper just in case, I don’t want her to roll off. Or maybe she will sleep on the two sofa chairs that I put together to form a little bed. Hmmmm, no crib here so we have to get creative. I must say that this past month and a half of living lean has really helped me see just how little you truly need to get by, now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I am going to give up ALL of the finer things due to this journey (I still need facials & toilet paper, the essentials, haha, as if toilet paper is an essential.........gotta have facials still at least, hehe) but I am learning that I can live without a lot. I always thought that I would marry fairly young, mid 20s and our first home would be a little fixer that we would need to put pans under the leak from the roof to catch the rain (inside the house), like we used to as kids when I grew up, but that just didn’t happen. I guess that I get to live part of that life now! (Too funny, while writing this blog post, I just read my mom's comment on yesterday'spost that talked about my parents first home 30+ years ago and how my apartment reminded her of their first home. That is crazy that I was just writing about my home as a child and how we put pans under the leaks from the roof when it rained and my mom was thinking the same thing.) Uh - Oh, the lights keep dimming and getting brighter in my apt. Eeek! I did see where a couple tall candles were, but they aren't in holders or anything. Oh yeah, I have the rockin' flashlight that John sent with me, and I just put it in my backpack since I am now in an apartment, so I should be fine if I lose power. :) haha probably won't but gotta be prepared.

Here is our apartment play area, just like at the orphanage. :)








Here are a couple additional photos of our apartment building from the front, our room is on the third floor if you check out the set of 5 stacked apartments. I caught a couple fun photos of both men and women with their tall fur hats! I love it! There is also a photo here of the neighborhood park, this park is pretty normal for a kid’s park in Aqtobe. And last there is a photo of our little neighborhood convenience store, this is something that I love about Aqtobe, they make it so convenient for everyone to just pop in for bread, meat, pop, chocolate, canned goods, etc.














Since Z wasn’t able to come to the apartment today, I decided to put her frozen jump suit in her walker and stroll it around the apartment. Okay, I didn’t really do that, but look how funny this photo is!
I learned that hanging your clothes in the freezing cold porch, better yet outside on clothes lines, DOES NOT in fact dry your clothes, it just freezes them. I know that sounds obvious, but when you see everyone hanging out their clothes you question if there might be some way they are drying. I mean, why else would everyone hang their clothes out in this weather? You think, maybe the air is dryer here and they do dry, maybe they dry with icicles, but maybe they still dry???? Don’t laugh at me; you would have wondered the same thing had you come here first. Haha Anyhow, I talked to Bayan about this today, and she said that they don’t dry, I am right; they just freeze them to seal in the freshness and freeze any bacteria. Hmmmmmmm maybe that makes sense. She had told me about the bacteria thing a couple days back, but she never verified that the clothes do not dry, I still thought that they must dry somehow. Yah, Yah, you laugh but you are the ones that thought the dog in my trash photos was the bobcat that I talked about, when in fact the bobcat was the piece of machinery taking away the trash, not the dog that was in fact a dog, not a bobcat. Come on girls, I am in Kazakhstan, there aren't any bobcats (the animals) here. That was way too funny to read on my comments........from 2 people.

I must warn you, the following map rocks! Davy, Evy’s husband, is my John here, well; you will see what I mean. Look at this map, it is a map of Aqtobe, with all of the great sites to see and places to shop platted out for you! If you are coming to Aqtobe for your adoption, or just for sight seeing (haha j/k) enlarge and print this map out; boy do I wish that I had had this map when I arrived here in Aqtobe. I have a legend for this map too, I think that I will add this to my main page of the blog for future families to access easily. For those of you that don’t know my John, this is exactly what he would have done had he been able to make the trip with me.