Ben about town

This one is more about ‘ben about apartment’. There wont be many pictures because I usually have no pants on when I am inside. It is way too hot. This is the excuse I have been getting away with .

I did find out that here in Aqtobe, they do have centralized hot water. Meaning nobody has there own hot water heater. They use this for hot showers and heat (through room radiators). Karla loves it. Over here I do not have to start a load of laundry at 6 am so Karla is guaranteed a long hot shower at 8. She has not run out of hot water in the shower yet and she has tried many times. All you women think this sounds great, but sometime in April or May they turn it all off. Then it is back to heating water on the stove if you want a hot bath (not shower).

My dishwasher still rarely works. It/she now only wants to dry while I wash.

We have been cooking at home.

It all started when we found chicken breasts at the store. Then we found flour, milk, oil, eggs, potatoes, butter, and some salt and pepper. It was like stone soup, only better. If you know Karla, you know where this was going, FRIED chicken and smashed potatoes and Gravy.

We ended up calling another adoptee couple,Gen and Joel, who live about two minutes away and asked them if they wanted to partake. They did and we enjoyed a very nice impromptu dinner. It turned out very good, even with the canned corn. The only thing missing was the chocolate flat cake.We are hoping to do this for the rest of the parents here. That evening, we almost forgot we were on the other side of the planet in another world. One of our translators, Aina, is also planning to come over to learn how to make this strange thing I love called gravy.

Friday night, all of us parents got together for a party at a pizza joint. It was a good change. The other parents did not to get to visit their babies that day for some undisclosed reason. We were lucky and got a morning visit. We finally got a hold of Rosa and Carlos. They are a Spanish couple who live in the Canary Islands with their other two adopted sons ages 15 and 10. We ride with them every day to the orphanage. They seem super nice. Their English is actually worse than our Spanish (seriously). But they bravely showed up and we celebrated their successful court hearing. They are doing two trips and left Saturday to go back and see their sons for two weeks. It was very emotional for them to have to leave little Maria.

Saturday, due to a holiday and no visits with Erlan, we invited everyone over for brunch. So it was off to the bazaar to find cream, for ‘Sunday eggs’ and baking powder for pancakes. No luck with the baking powder but I found cream, real cream not ½ and ½. When I got home planning to make French toast, Karla announced she had found pancake mix. (Yes, my wife brought pancake mix with her along with two boxes of homemade chocolate truffles. I only have two short sleeve shirts, but she did do the packing.) I bought way too much cream and had to dilute it with milk, because it was so thick. The eggs were really good and so was the ‘bacon’ I got from my crazy meat ladies. We made syrup with water, sugar and homemade jam I bought to go on Karla’s pancakes. It was a very enjoyable brunch. In the picture from left to right is Agnes (Belgium), Kami(NH), Karla, Eric (NH), Joel (NJ) and Gen(NJ). Joel sure did like his tea! (The group picture looks a little odd b/c we merged two pictures together so that you could see the whole group.)



Good night.