December already

We can't believe it's December and we've been gone for three weeks. We got up this a.m. to find that we had no water. We had heard that this might happen but hadn't had the pleasure of experiencing it yet. Went for a walk this a.m. and to the Internet cafe to print off a copy of our court speech (thanks for the brief Shannon and Thomas) and then we walked to a couple of different markets to check out what they had. We ended up going to our old standby the Ramstore to get the things we needed for dinner tonight (cooking for the Brabsons) and to pick up more jugs of water in case ours didn't come back on. We got to the baby house and helped change Serik Bekbolat into a new outfit then it was off to meet the Brabsons in our makeshift playroom (less crowded w/ families). Not too long after we got there little man passed some gas that dropped daddy out - turns out it was more than gas and then guy had far surpassed his diaper and had invaded onesie territory. Nice mess - dad ran to get a new outfit ( I think mainly to escape having to change the diaper) and I cleaned up our boy - wow - talk about indoctrination to motherhood!

The rest of the visit was thankfully uneventful. Afterwards we went to Air Astana to get Kurt's flights back to Almaty and the return to Astana on the 29th. Then home to see if we had any water yet. Turns out we did so we were getting ready to start a load of messy baby clothes and i opened the washer (front loader) and water spilled out everywhere on the kitchen floor! We had a fun time trying to clean that up - so obviously something is amiss with our washer. We had the Brabsons over for dinner and I made mom's special clam sauce with spaghetti for dinner. Also managed to find elusive salad and made some dressing for us - nice time with them. We cleaned up and went to start a load of laundry and Kurt noticed that the washer had filled up on it's own again - hmmm - will have to get it checked out or it could be a pain for the next month I'm here. Turns out that we'll be leaving Astana on Jan. 4th and heading to Almaty that day and then home on the 10th. Tomorrow we'll visit Serik in the a.m. and then head to the market and the Moscow Circus at 4pm. Will fill you all in tomorrow night.

Notes: So the kid apparently likes my toes - who can blame him? Also, all these pics are post apocalyptic diaper explosion.

Some of you have asked about what horse tastes like; sometimes it's like corned beef and the other day it tasted just like a roast beef or pot roast that had been cooked for 14 hours (which it had).