Saturday the 15th

Had a morning visit today and have decided that we definitely like them better because it gets us up and out. We had a good visit and little girl cashed out on us again - she does that a lot especially compared to Serik two years ago. We shared the playroom with the Spanish lady and her little girl, as well as her interpreter. Her interpreter kept staring at Serik and asked about what our neighbors at home thought about him. We told her that there are a lot of adopted kids in our area and nobody really thinks twice. She commented that he's beautiful and we said we agreed.

After the vist we went home, had lunch and napped. Kurt has ponose (spelled phonetically in Russian) - you can look it up to try to decipher it. While we were waiting for Murat to pick us up Serik was saying 'is that murat, is that murat?' And finally, 'Look there's Murat' with great glee. Murat picked us up and we went to buy tickets for the circus (we're going tomorrow) and then went to do a little window shopping. We wandered around one of the shopping centers and Serik took the opportunity to run into every toy shop he layed eyes on.

Serik got hungry after a while and we hit the grocery store downstairs for a snack for him. Since we still had time to kill until Murat picked us up we went to the little cafe in the shopping center so Serik could sit down to eat. We got some tea and Serik and daddy played choo choo train zooming around the restaurant. Baha called Irina and Serik wanted to talk to him. Irina put him on the phone and Serik immediately said, 'kok de la Baha' - (how are you, Baha) no coaching or anything. We were just flabbergasted that he actually is starting to speak the language.

We had to get some copies of passports etc. made for court and while we were doing that Serik was charming more Kazakh ladies - one who helped with the copies and also sells the Domino Donuts. She said that he was 'marvelous' via Irina who translated. As we were outside waiting to get picked up I started mimicking Serik's whining (which he's been doing a bit of lately - large bit) and he said to me, 'no, don't whine'. Hmmmm. He also told us in the car on the way home that since ' i am two so i get two donuts' - good rationale but no dice there kiddo.

One of the neat things that I keep forgetting to mention. Throughout the day - either when we're getting ready for bed, waking up or around nap time you can hear the chanting/praying from the mitchet (main mosque). It's a beautiful, ethereal, almost haunting sound - one that I had never gotten to hear before.

More later.