A Little Sightseeing

Friday, May 26th

Mr. Sasha has made a shocking realization. Stella has more clothes than he does! He only has ONE pair of jeans, she has TWO. She has other pants and lots of shirts. He has 4 shirts. This gross injustice MUST be rectified! I explained to him that we knew what size Stella was and so it was easy to buy clothes for her and bring them with us but we did not exactly know what size he was so it was more challenging to bring stuff for him. Now on a side note he DID give away 2 shirts, a pair of shorts, and a pair of shoes to Andrey. So it is not quite as one sided as you might think. We made plans for a big shopping adventure with the company of our trusty Nastya and headed out to the Zoom. Now Sasha is a very discerning shopper. He knows the look he is after and it does not matter the cost that must be sacrificed for the complete look of an outfit. He is not interested in say “just” a pair of pants. He is going to push for the matching shirt! How could we want him to be seen in just a new pair of pants when that t-shirt would make the complete ensemble… and just when you think he is ready to make a purchase he looses interest and walks away and kinda shrugging his shoulders.

Stella on the other hand, when you pick up a cute skirt goes “oh, yes!”, and claps her hands, tries it on and sings a little song as she dances out of the store carrying her bag! Sasha tends to be most distressed with you when he doesn’t get what he wants and will possibly not talk to you on the way home till he works out of it. And he is working out of it…new parents…new rules…lots to figure out. It’s tough on a little guy. They have a tendency while we are out to keep up with how much you have spent on this one and that one. This severely irritates their parents! I know all you seasoned veteran parents are snickering right about now. I am having flashbacks of my own childhood when I may have had a few imperfect moments and us leaving a store a little… shall we say, prematurely.

All in all we are having a glorious time. The kids are great and every day is another opportunity to learn more about them and this whole thing called family. After shopping we were invited by Sharon and Ron from Canada to go visit a Russian Orthodox Church about 20 minutes walk from here. The church is very elaborate inside and out and is just about 8 years old. There is scaffolding on the inside of the church where they are painting a mural on the ceiling. It made me snicker because my cousin Stephen and I traveled Europe in high school and it seemed like every beautiful and historic building we went to was covered up by scaffolding. The inside of the building is carved wood and very beautiful. There are many paintings two and three stories high. Nastya attends this church and she says they have services that last 2-3 hours long. We noticed there were no benches and she said they stand for the whole service. It’s very different from home. We met one of the Priests at the church and he asked if we were Protestants or Catholic. He told us it did not matter because we all serve the same God.

There was a very loved Priest that died about 9 years ago here in Karaganda. After his death, he was made a Saint. They have his body in a coffin at the church wrapped in a shroud with a small glass window on it. People of the church pray to him and kiss the coffin and believe he answers their prayers. There are other differences in their beliefs from ours too. They have a cross that looks very different to ours with three crosses vertically in one but we don’t know why. Nastya says they have their own Pope in the Russian Orthodox Church. He is in Russia. I think she said his name is Alexander the 2nd. I could be wrong about that…I know it is the 2nd though.

On our way home we stopped at another grocery store/mini mall. Their malls are all in one two to three story rectangular buildings. Makes sense with their cold winters. Then we headed home for dinner. It is so nice to just show up at 6:00 and have dinner waiting on you. It really helps us to be on a schedule and that helps the time go well each day. Although we are definitely NOT bored!

Tomorrow we Aqua Park!!! Can you feel the excitement! They have only asked me 14 times “Mama, you swim?” I am praying for blue water!!!!!!!!