Children's Protection Day

Today was Kazakhstan’s national holiday celebrating children, roughly translated to Children’s Protection Day. We were treated to a special show featuring many of Danny’s group. (The easiest one to point out is the only little girl) The children sang, danced, recited and played games with the teachers (in costume). Many of the dances were to (we presume!) their cultural folk songs.

We didn’t understand hardly any of it, but it was fun just the same and will be an important addition to his life book. Danny seemed to enjoy it as well and clapped along with the tunes, and was rewarded at the end with a bag of sandbox (beach to us!) toys and a really messy chocolate covered sandwich cookie.

It is customary to give your children gifts or in this case their care-givers. We presented the orphanage director with a box of Russian Bonbons for the staff (I don’t know how it made it 2 days in the refrigerator untouched!) which he seemed to be genuinely surprised and pleased to receive. We'll see tomorrow after he opens the card which we signed in cyrillic if we did it right...
Danny is showing off his new pair of shades (and American attitude!) in this photo.

It’s been raining and will continue to do so for a few days. The mud here is terrible so even if it stops for a bit it is not too inviting to venture out. Still stir crazy in our apartment – today Eric tried to cheat Sue out of her turn to wash dishes for something to do – unsuccessfully. Tomorrow is the last official bonding day – then it’s waiting for the court date which could be a few weeks out. We’ll see…