Beers

Igor has been mentioning that he and I need to go out for some "beers" practically since we got here. Last night he called at about 7 pm and we agreed to head out and have a drink. He lives within walking distance of the apartment we're staying at, so he stopped by our place. Robin bid us goodbye and we walked over to one of his favorite watering holes.

It was a rather small bar with bench style tables and seats. We grabbed a table and ordered a couple beers which the waitress brought along with two small bowls and an ashtray. One bowl had some pistachio nuts and the other contained some snacks that were akin to very tiny, heavily seasoned croutons. The ashtray underscored the fact that the bar was already enveloped in a blue haze of cigarette smoke that would only get more dense as the evening wore on.

I enjoy beer fairly often, but I am not one to just sit down and drink it for the sake of drinking. But this was a social occasion and I wanted to enjoy the discussion and opportunity to learn more about Igor, Kazakhstan and what life is like in central Asia. We sat and talked for hours and consumed many beers. It probably wasn't much for a veteran drinker, but 6 or 7 beers in the time we sat in the bar was as much as I could handle.

Igor phoned a friend to come pick us up and give us a ride home. This was fortunate since I was having trouble walking in a straight line and didn't want to weave my way back to the apartment. Igor had mentioned earlier that if the police suspect you've been drinking that they will just walk up to you on the street and arrest you. Whatever the inside of a Petropavlovsk lockup looks like, I had no desire to see it.

Anyway, I can report that the friendship was rewarding and the beer intoxicating. Intoxicating enough that I awoke with a pounding headache and a queasy stomach this morning. Even with several doses of Excedrin, I spent the hour-long car ride to the orphanage hoping I wouldn't embarrass myself by vomiting all over Igor's car. In contrast to the way I felt, Igor looked normal and chipper as we bounced along the bumpy roads at 90 MPH.

A big question for Robin and I was how well today's bonding visit was going to go following Kristina's behavior yesterday. We never got a chance to post an update, but another adoptive couple (a local couple from Kazakhstan) and their little toddler boy named Roma shared the playroom with us. Kristina spent a good part of the visit focused on Roma and fighting over the possession of toys rather than bonding with us. It wasn't until the last half hour that we salvaged something of a union between the three of us. Definitely not satisfying.

The good news is that it went much better without the distraction of the other couple and Roma. Kristina was back to her usual, playful self and she bounced balls, did somersaults and jumped like mad. Not to be left out, my stomach did a few somersaults of its own.

Our little singsong phrase for Kristina is "Kristina Ballerina, Have-You-Seen-Her?" and Kristina will echo it back at us fairly often. She's also adept now at repeating the names of her 3 siblings-to-be, along with the dog (Nugget) and the cat (Buddy). It's cute to hear her high-pitched little voice rattle off these words with her heavily-rolled Russian R's.