Monday in Petro

We are still trying to update from the internet cafe, which isn't a cafe at all, but just a room with six computers and no air conditioning. At least the connection isn't as slow today.

Keith and I went to the baby house this morning. There was only one available girl who fit our requirements. We spent the morning with her. We took down the information required by the Vanderbilt clinic (height, weight, head circumference, birth mother information, you get the picture), and as soon as we find a way to upload pictures, we will send the information to them for their opinion on her medical condition. Physically she appeared just fine to us, in our humble opinions as parents of two babies. At 11 months she is crawling and pulling up onto furniture, just starting to cruise. She has four teeth and a headful of hair. She has a little touch of Asian in her. Her birthday is July 3.

Hopefully we will find a way to communicate with Vanderbilt soon. We need to send them pictures, and once our translator gets us the medicals in English, we will send those as well. I promise to upload a picture if we make a decision soon.

Keith and I braved dinner on our own tonight, and ordered shashlik in the park. Shashlik is meat on a stick, like a kebab. It was super good. The weather cooled off today after a huge storm blew through (in 5 minutes), so we ate outside and really enjoyed it. Keith orders, with some basic Russian and holding up two fingers. He said he should learn to say in Russian, "Whatever is best," and then let them just bring us something. I'm okay with that, as long as it's not horse. I don't think tonight's dinner was horse, but we're going to look it up in our Russian dictionary to be sure. The only other eating adventure we've had was when I unwrapped the new package of butter to make toast, and found that it was dark brown. A little investigating, and we found out it is chocolate butter (by investigating, I mean I tasted it). Never seen that before, and we're glad it's just chocolate.

Tomorrow we are visiting the baby house again to spend another couple of hours with the little girl. It's hard to think of her as ours, but hard not to. Her name is Irina, like my great-grandmother (at least, the Russian version). Hopefully more news tomorrow.

Goodbye from the wasteland.