July 3, 2007

After taking ice cold showers this morning due to lack of hot water, we started our day making a run to the Silkway store to find some more toys and snacks for Robert before our visit. Aigul, our facilitator, was picking us up at 9:15 am. After waiting for over an half hour for Aigul we called our interpreter, Anastasia, to find out what was going on. It turns out that Chuck and I have been operating an hour ahead of everyone else in Almaty! When we were here in 2004 there was a 12 hour time difference from CST. However, about two years ago, the Kazakhstan government decided they wouldn’t have daylight savings time anymore. Now Almaty is only 11 hours ahead of CST! Live and learn.

When they brought Robert in today he was upset and cried a little, but it didn’t last long. It’s definitely going to take a little while for him to get used to us. We brought him some Legos and he got interested in playing with them. We also brought him a juice box that he practically inhaled. We’ll be taking one of those with us every day! We did get a couple of smiles out of him when we tickled him, but he has yet to say anything. They have us staying inside with him because if we went outside he would want to be with the other kids. Hopefully, after he warms up to us we can go outside with him and he’ll want to stay with us. We’ll see.

After our visit Anastasia told us they had found our luggage and a man was meeting us at our apartment with it. Turns out they only found one of Chuck’s bags and it was soaking wet. So off we went to the Green Market so I could try to find a change of clothes. Shopping for clothes here is hard. The nice stuff is very expensive and it’s hard to find my style in the reasonably priced stuff. Maybe our luggage will still show up!