Day 4 – The One With The Vodka

Bonding Day 2, Wednesday, November 7, 2007

We had a small snafu this morning. Larissa forgot to tell Ladimer to pick us up this morning. So about 10:10, I called Larissa and she sent Pasha, another driver to come pick us up. She was horrified that she had forgotten to tell him. Pasha is quite a character. He replayed the phone conversation with Larissa in his very limited English. He drove very fast (a little too fast if you ask me) to get us to the Baby House as quickly as possible repeating “No Problem” and pointing to his watch over and over. They are coordinating 4 families at the moment so I understood, but I did lose about 35 minutes of time with BabyKaz.

All of the babies were a little quiet this morning including BabyKaz. I think the time cuts into their morning nap time so they always seem a little tired during our morning sessions.

We went to lunch at a place called Koffeeman today. It had a pretty good selection there. I got chicken fingers with a sweet and sour sauce and chicken soup. It was pretty good. A funny thing happened at lunch. There were six of us at the table with only one man since 2 of the other 3 families are also single women. Two men were sitting across the room and sent over a bottle of vodka with the waitress. We thanked them and expected them to come over and try to talk to us since we all know what it means when men send over alcohol to a group of women in the U.S. However, shortly after sending it they got up and left without talking to us. We were perplexed and mulled this over throughout lunch. When Larissa came to pick us up, we asked her to ask the waitress what the men said when they sent it over. She said they just said to send the bottle over to the Americans. Apparently, they were just welcoming us to their country. A bunch of single women, we always think there is an ulterior motive. By the way, we did not crack open that bottle of vodka. It was noon, after all. I’m sure Pasha is enjoying it as I write this.

This afternoon, I finally felt like I was starting to come out of a fog. I particularly enjoyed this visit with BabyKaz. We are working on his muscle tone by doing some baby exercises. I’m particularly working on getting him to sit up by himself. I don’t think it will take long.

After the afternoon visit, Mom and I went back to the apartment since we really didn’t need to run any errands. The other families along with Larissa and Olga are busy preparing for court on Friday. It will be an advantage to me to be able to watch them go through this process. You have to stand in front of the judge and prosecutor and give a speech which must cover certain areas and must be memorized. It sounds pretty nerve-wracking but my agency has not had a family be turned down. I think it is mostly formality. I guess I’ll start working on mine sooner rather than later.