Seriously long winded tonight...

First off, we only had one visit with Joshua today. We met with Lisa Brown who is in our region preparing to pick up the two little boys she adopted from the same orphanage and she offered to take us to a restaurant here. Although we hated not seeing him today we really wanted to connect with another person who has been in our shoes who could help us along in this region and most of all someone who speaks English.

Let me just start by saying she was an absolute help and just a wonderful lady. We so enjoyed our time with her and for the first time since coming here we actually enjoyed a real meal and knew what we were eating! We have not been very outgoing in our dining choices but after she showed us this restaurant and how they had an english menu and ICE for our drinks... well we will be going there again.

So our morning visit with Joshua went very well. The boy is always smiling when he is lifted and handed to us. And today we feel he really had some moments of truly "connecting" with us. Normally we would allow him a play time and when he would appear to get tired we would usually carry him and walk the grounds. Normally he would lay his head on our shoulders briefly then pop up like he just wasn't sure of getting that relaxed with us but today he spent more time laying on our shoulders and moving into our kisses on his cheeks. He actually fell asleep on Dave's shoulder and it just melted our hearts and felt like a break through of sorts. We know that it will take some time for him to really be comfortable etc but we are heading in the right direction for sure. Here is the video from today- for some reason the sound never came out on it. I have another disclaimer of sorts.. usually I am very accurate in my bubble catching but today it was windy and I caught one bubble for him to pop so in the video you will see my hands darting to try and catch them...:)


I am going to now explain some of our mishaps in our adventure and some not so good moments- might get long winded so you might want to get something to drink. Anyway in the capital city one night we were suppose to meet other families at the TGIF restaurant. Our driver was going to take us but had been running with another family and was running late so we said we would walk. I mean how hard could it be.. we would use google map. Well after almost an hour and 1/2 we had to give up and work our way back to our apartment with empty bellies but one good thing was we found a store that had toilet paper which was like gold for us since we could never find any. We made it back to the apartment with our big find and opened the package to find that they were paper towels. See paper towels are packaged and about as wide as four toilet papers and the toilet paper is actually even less wide... Then after realizing our toilet paper error we looked at the map wondering where we went wrong with TGIF and realized we passed the road we were suppose to take twice...Anyway I wanted to show you our "bed" for those first few days.

So originally they wanted us to stay in the capital till early Sunday then travel to our region however we knew it would be cheaper to live in region and we wanted to get comfortable in the home we were going to be in the bulk of the time. So we get on this:

And we spend the next 15 hours in this:

We did buy out all four bunks so we could at least lock our area and try to sleep. Mind you the compartments do have some air conditioning but only when the train is moving so when we hit the multiple stops the ac stopped as well. Good news and believe me it is good- I only had to use the bathroom once in 15 hours, bad news I was a bit dehydrated at the end of the ride.

We drove with our translator to our new temporary home and the first thing I do while walking on the pot hole filled street is biffed it. And not gracefully either. It was an all out fall to the ground. Tore my knee up badly and my pride took a severe beating as well. Mind you I was wearing tennis shoes- imagine if it would have been the stilettos Dave was prodding me to buy. Our new home is what they call four stories up.There are 15 steps turn a corner then 15 more... you do that four times...Surprisingly my butt is still just as big as ever. Below is our flat, it is on the top floor just left of the white enclosed balcony. Below that one is our view from our balcony

Our flat as we were told was brand new.. new renovations and no tenants as of yet had been in it since the remodel. We walk in and this is what we see.

New dishes.. new everything. Well new is not always better. First day our air conditioner leaked so we had to catch the water in a pan till it was fixed. Then the washing machine leaked and while waiting for the man to repair that, Dave went to use the stove top hood or exhaust that you see hanging on wall(glass) in the above picture and he touched it and the whole thing came down on him and he had to stand in place and hold it till someone came to fix it. All was fixed until tonight when taking a shower the shower began to leak and the bathroom had so much water on the floor. We used the couple of towel we have to soak it all up and went to throw it in the washing machine located in the bathroom and Dave felt an electrical current through the towel when it touched the inside of the machine. We will be calling again tomorrow so we can at some point do some laundry and take another shower lol.

Sorry for this being so long winded but one last true adventure was today. Apparently in the capital city I got athletes feet. Funny on only one foot but I know both feet were in the shower there lol. So it is getting painful to walk and walk is what we do here. So there are places called antecas which are pharmacies and Dave thought he would get out the russian alphabet to write athletes feet. So we walk into it and hand the gal the paper and she smiles and heads to the counter and says no spray. I say that is ok I can just rub the cream in and she proceeds to pull out all these different containers. I point to my feet and basically ask for feet? and she nods then points to wrists,back, knees, and says all over. Confused we just grab one, pay for it and go. Apparently their definition of athletes feet is similar to arthritis or joint pain because she gave us what amounts to icy hot or bengay. Tomorrow we try to write in russian.. foot fungus and hope we do not get kicked out or laughed at.

Again sorry for the long winded post and tomorrow hopefully we will have more pictures of Joshua and video. Continue to pray for us please- our court date is June 29th and we are really hoping to be either back in the states or at least flying back July 20th so we can make it back for my sons leave from the Navy!