Well, Dennis was our driver today since Igor had a wedding to attend. His driving was a bit more conservative than Igor's. Same amount of weaving and games of "chicken" with the pedestrians in town, but only about 120 kmh (about 75 mph) once we got on the open road versus Igor's 150 kmh (about 90 mph).

You'll notice by the picture at the top of this journal that for once it wasn't taken at the orphanage. There's a reason for this. I forgot to bring the camera. Which was a real disappointment for us since (as some may have noticed) they've dressed Kristina in the same blue and yellow jumper for 4 days straight. You'll have to take my word for it but she finally was wearing something different today. A pair of brown pants and a yellow top, I think. She had on really colorful socks that had red and pink stripes.

Since I have no photos, I'll just say that we had a good bonding visit that, thankfully, was a little less centered on the Pixter. It's great that Kristina likes this electronic marvel, but we were kind of missing the jumping/chasing/tickling games. There was a lot more in the way of activities today and only the occasional fascination with the Pixter.

The picture at the top is one of the breakfast cereals we've bought in the grocery store. Very sweet, has a boatload of sugar. Doesn't taste a thing like chicken, despite the picture on the box.

The picture with the "01" in the center has a funny story associated with it. This contraption hangs on the outside of the orphanage next to the door that we enter. As we were leaving on the very first day we visited the orphanage, Robin asked Yuri (the orphanage director) if it was "art." Once Igor had translated her question, Yuri started laughing and just shook his head. He replied that it was just firefighting equipment. To be fair, the two cone shaped objects were standing straight out from the building when Robin first posed the question. Yuri walked up to them and angled them down toward the ground. We all started joking then that perhaps Robin was reminded of Madonna's bra from one of her older music videos. We then decided that after Yuri had adjusted the angle of the cones that this would be Madonna's bra in about 50 years.

The screen capture from our TV set is a Russian version of the TV show "Married With Children" that we've seen while surfing the channels here. Can't understand a thing they're saying, but they look just as lowbrow and funny as the American original. Wonder if anyone is paying any royalties or whether it's just considered a derivative work.

The picture of the two CD's is my purchase yesterday from a music store here (with Igor's help). After sitting in a bar drinking beer with Igor, there have been two songs rattling around in my head which were played many times that night. One was the Russian word for "summer" which kind of sounds like "L-Yetta." The other one is all Russian lyrics, but punctuated with the English phrase "Columbia Pictures." The names of the artist are above each CD, and I haven't a clue what they are or how they're pronounced. Each CD cost 600 Tenge, which is a little less than $5.