Day 11 of 14 - Happy Paska!

Hello again from Petropavlovsk. I had posted last weekend asking about why Easter didn't seem to be a big deal here.....well that is because Easter (Paska) is celebrated a week later by the Russian Orthodox. Lots of stories to tell from the last couple of days. Firstly, Darya is awesome and each visit seems to go by faster and faster. We can't believe that we have spent our 11th day with her today. Wednesday this week will be our 14th day and the 'offical' 14 day bonding period will be over. We are still waiting to hear when the doctor will be coming to examine Darya before we can get our court date scheduled. The whole doctor thing is a bit of a long story. Let's see if I get this right. Unlike our American friends who are here adopting from the same baby house, we must have Darya examined by a Canadian doctor. Since Canada does not have an embassy here in Kazakhstan (Kazakhstan-Canada business is handled through the Russian Embassey), we use the services of the British consulate here in Kazakhstan. They apparently have two doctors in country, one in Almaty and one in Astana. That means we need to fly one of them up here and have Darya examined before we can have the court date assigned. It is still all theory at this point because we don't know when the doctor is coming. Hopefully it will be early this week so that we don't have to wait longer for a court date.....those balls are all still up in the air but we aren't too concerned about it yet. Sveltlana the Kaz coordinator is coming to meet with us tomorrow and hopefully we will have some more details then....
In other news, Kim indulged at the 'spa' here in the hotel and got a pedicure the other day. It was real cheap comparied to what you would pay back home for someone to wash and paint your toe nails for you. They go the extra mile here and actually embossed a decorative onto each of her big toes made with tin foil. We are not sure what the decorative is supposed to look like, Kim says it looks like a bird - BKKAAWW!
Last night we were downstairs with Lee and Laura having dinner. Everything was the same as usual....that was until we found out that the TV sitting on the bar doubled as a Kareoke machine. The waitress working that night, Valentina, fired it up and just started singing some Russian songs. She had a great voice and we were all looking at each other saying too bad they probably don't have any english songs.....but we were wrong. Valentina brought over the book listing all the songs and there were quite a few English tunes. Now we had to sing...Laura jumped right up and started singing Donna Summer's 'Hot Stuff'". Unfortunatley for Laura, that seemed to be the super-long extended version of the song......she was up there for like eight minutes. Kim then went onto sing some Brittany Spears and Shane sang Jimi Hendrix's 'Foxy Lady'. By this piont we were drawing a crowd from around the hotel...the cooks came out of the kitchen and the hotel administrator came into the restaurant to check things out. They were all laughing at us. Hey! How many people can say they sang Jimi Hendrix at a Kareoke bar in Petropavlovsk?

Sonny and Cher? Not!!!

Today's visit with Darya was a blast. We have had her in the baby walker the last couple of days and she really likes to boogie around in it. The music room where we play with her is great for that - she can roll around all over. She really likes to move around - a lot. She eats really good and then burns it all off at play time. In the same room, there is also a play traditional Kazakh house (Like a native teepee) where she likes to go and hang out with Mom. Unfortunatley there is only so much we can do in the music room with Darya.....although it was beautiful outside this afternoon, they will not allow us to bring Darya outside for a stroll. We cannot wait to be back home in Canada and hang out in the park with her.




All the homeless whoofers here is hard to see everyday for dog people like ourselves. Kim broke down and brought some food outside for some dogs after dinner outside the hotel. I am sure the hotel people don't want stray dogs hanging out at the front door.....but it is hard not to give a dog a bone once in a while!

More whoofers hanging outside the baby house