Cheeseburgers in paradise?

After a day off we’re back, although for how long we’re not sure as we just came back from a long hike down by the lake. As today is Saturday our bonding time was only in the morning. Today is day 10 of bonding so we felt a recap of Danny’s (and ours?) progress was in order. We are seeing a marked improvement as he now rarely cries, but instead often smiles and laughs. He more readily comes to greet us, and is in good spirits when it is time to say good-bye. He is not as clingy and enjoys sharing new experiences with us. He likes to walk while holding our fingers. The daily pictures that we need to take for court clearly show our increasing acceptance as parents by him (yeah!).

Since there was no entry in the blog yesterday, we didn’t mention our driver’s taxi breaking down (without us in it, whew…) thus we ended up walking the mile to see him last night (to our interpreter’s amazement.) So, after visiting him this morning, we took advantage of their potential guilt and had them help us restock our groceries. Actually they seemed happy to be of assistance with our being so independent usually. Boy are we glad we asked – to our amazement we found out that there is a produce market just below us and a meat market down the street. Cheeseburgers, “fries” and piva (beer) tonight! This after we spent last night commiserating about mac-n-cheese again, who knew paradise was so close?

The days seem to run together here with the same old routine, even the mass of movies and books we brought are beginning to become boring. We were at the point of having a long conversation last night about why there were cat animal crackers when you don’t eat cats, but no pig animal crackers when you do eat pork. (Yes we were eating Daniel’s animal crackers at the time to forestall the inevitable dinner.) The whole conversation was highly philosophical, believe me! But I digress…

The walk today was invigorating. We try not to be negative but the awful filth in other parts of the city, especially around the baby house, is sometimes too much to bear without a break. The fresh air was great, the blue of the lake wonderful and the wind and birds sounding in the trees almost heavenly. You just try not to look too close at the lakeshore or your heart will break at the sight of years of pollution.