Hey, what happened to spring?

It was so beautiful yesterday, and today while we had our visit at the baby house it actually snowed!! Just flurries, but in May it's a little tough to take. I will not win adoptive mother of the year admitting this, but we were pleased to have just one visit today (normal for Sunday) - so we could do some touristing this afternoon. We had lunch with our 'travel partners' at Johnnie Walker's Pub and then took a long, meandering walk home with a bit of shopping along the way. It was a fun day.

Our past few visits with Valeria have been good, and we've now officially passed the acting-angelic-for-these-funny-talking-big-people stage. She has been so sweet and perfectly behaved until today, when after a few minutes of chasing and having fun, her demeanor turned 180 degrees. She needed her space, as Russ said...or, was just tired of all of the attention. She lay down on the floor, wouldn't make eye contact and sighed disgustedly a few times. Oxana said this is normal 'testing' behavior at this point - to see if we'll enforce boundaries, and/or to see if we'll stick around if she's 'bad.' Or - she just wanted to go outside, and was annoyed that we wouldn't let her! Who knows. We ignored her and played together, as Oxana suggested, which worked like a charm. Before too long she crept over with a timid smile that melted our hearts, and climbed up into my lap. Can you imagine what this must be like for her?

Oh and last night, we had one of the highlights of our week (other than meeting our new little girl): finally getting the Skype to work so we could see Aidan, Kristin, Mom & Dad. (Well...we actually only saw Mom's robe on the screen...) It was literally physically replenishing to lay eyes on them, and to talk with them and hear about their week. Why Skype is free I do not understand, it was priceless to us last night!

Here is a cute photo of Russ showing Lera the snow outside, followed by a few pix of the city.

The first is City Mall, with the Circus building in the background. Our apartment is near here, so these are our 'stomping grounds' for the month.

This is our neighborhood, which we are told is where the professionals live! From all the BMW & Lexus cars, we think it's true. Note the pipes, which are everywhere -are for water and the city-wide steam heat.

This is the Karaganda Cafe, which has free wifi that has been our main connection to home these past few days.

This is Russ at a statue of the millionth ton of coal that Karaganda gave to the world (I think that is the right amount?) He drew a few stares with this pose...but heck, we don't know anyone here anyway!