court +9

eating - cheeks full!



yay!!!!!!!!

After another hot morning and hot train ride, we are back in our hot apartment. Shona is in a bit of a trance on the couch. I just had a very cold shower, so my temperature is temporarily below boiling. It feels good.
We didn’t sleep particularly well last night, but I slept better than Shona. She woke up before 6 and then got up around 6:30. I got up around 7. Tanis called, and Shona had a good chat with her. It’s good to hear from home. We left around 8:30 (as usual) and got good seats on the train. Today, Shona brought a frozen bottle of water that we took turns rubbing on our bodies while sitting on the train – particularly for the 35 minutes before the train starts moving. Actually, we mostly just held it or put it against our necks, heads, tummies, or backs – and it really wasn’t too sexy at all. I imagine it looked a little weird, us handing this bottle back and forth, but likely everyone else thought it brilliant as they figured it out. It did help. Shona is a resourceful little girl guide.
Once again, Ivanna’s group was outside when we arrived, so we quickly found her and she came over for hugs and kisses. We spent some time swinging with a girl from another group. For quite a while, we appeared to be quite the hit, with 4 or 6 other kids bringing us toys, balls, grass, and/or garbage to play with. These beautiful children love attention. I pray they are given good homes. As we were pushing Ivanna and another girl on the swing, I wished we could take more children home with us. After some time, we went over to the chickens and then up to the front of the building. Ivanna was quite interested in looking through the fence at cars and people going by. I went through the gate to film her a bit and she realized there is a way out and wanted to find it (and tried to climb the fence to get out!). I was glad to see that she is interested in exploring the world outside. Boy, is she in for a shock! She is going to see more world in the next 2 weeks than she ever could have imagined.
Shona here now. We have some wonderful news. No we don’t get to pick up Ivanna early. Lesya was over at our apartment yesterday to pick up our rent for the apartment. I’m not sure if it was the fact that she was here and realized just how hot it is (it hit 29.4 this morning) or that I had made a comment that we are really enjoying ourselves but just finding the heat hard to deal with. Anyway, about 2 hours later we got a phone call from her to tell us the owners were going to put in air conditioning and would we mind being out of the apartment for a few hours on Saturday (she had told us when she was here that they had talked about putting air in before but thought the weather this year wouldn’t be too hot so had decided to wait – I guess she persuaded them to do it now!). So I think we will make ourselves scarce for a while Saturday! We are pretty excited at the prospect of having a bit of a sanctuary from the heat (and won’t have to resort to camping out at the Andrews apartment that will have air). Hopefully we’ll sleep better with the temperature a little cooler. Oh ya. I almost forgot our other news from Lesya. She told us that Monday is yet another holiday here, so…yes that means it will be one more day until we can pick Ivanna up. We will do a fair amount of running around on Tuesday and Wednesday, so we may not pick her up until Wednesday. A bit disappointing but it probably is better for her to carry on with her usual routine than to drive all over the place and spend the days sitting in a car. We’re doing okay with this news and are really looking forward to getting the official papers that say we are her parents – even if we can’t quite pick her up yet. We will be thrilled whatever day it ends up being that we can bring her home to the apartment with us. Knowing it is so close makes it easier to take.
Later… a short nap, then the air conditioning unit was delivered. Oh we are plenty excited about that - just imagine how excited we'll be when it is installed!