July 21st

Our beautiful daughter Molly is 9 months old today. Up at 9:00am to do some much needed laundry. We are each down to our last pair of underwear. We're done at 10:30am and decide to reward ourselves with pastries. We head to the pastry place and find that it is already very warm out. The sun is shining and there is not a cloud in the sky. We eat our pastries and get ready to go to the baby home.

It's is even warmer on our walk to the baby home. We stop on the way to "chat" with our friends. Mama is there along with a few other women. Papa is not around. He is not feeling well we're "told". We say our goodbyes and continue our walk. We see the little boy we know running towards us. He shakes hands with Pat and Bob. I take a picture of the three "boys". We arrive at the baby home to find the kid inside. Bob, Beth and I go for the boys. Aidan is standing in the small playpen. He grins when I say hello and tickle him under his chin. He's wearing a cute teddy bear print onsie and socks. Asiem gets hats for the boys and we're off to the marble room. Pat and Molly arrive a few minutes later. She is wearing her sleeveless velvet tunic and white cotton biker-style shorts. Quite the look. Molly was on her back in the group playpen when Pat arrived in her room. Cate was there with Daniel and said that Molly had been laying there for a while yelling at everyone. The poor girl is teething and out of sorts. Aidan on the other hand is in a great mood - laughing, smiling and very active. Molly continues to "yell" in the marble room. She's not interested in playing with toys. I pick her up and hold her on my lap. This works for a while. Aidan wisely steers clear of his sister. When Molly begins to fuss again we load the kids in their Snuglis and go for a walk. Both Molly and Aidan are content to be outside. We do several laps around the baby home and stop to watch cars. We head back inside and it's time to pack up. Bob, Beth and I take the boys back to their room. Olesya accompanies us. We'd like to take pictures of the boys with Asiem and Mama Gelena. They are happy to have their picture take with the boys and we snap a few good ones. When we're done with the photo session we put Aidan and Nicholas in their cribs and meet Pat out front. We take the bus back to the hotel.

Dana arrives at 3:30pm. We're trying the Museum again today. Good news. We find the museum open when we get there. Tickets cost 50TT each. The museum is small but interesting. There are only two floors and the displays range from ancient Kazakh artifacts to WWII memorabilia. Also on display is the inside of a typical Kazakh yurt - the portable lodging of the nomadic Kazakh family. The yurt is similar to the Native American tee-pee. When we finish the tour we see a man sitting in the yurt display playing a traditional Kazakh stringed instrument. We listen for a while. He is being filmed. It's 5:00pm and the museum is closing. We discuss options for dinner and settle on the Gold Cafe. Bob was ill the last time we went and did not go with us.

Dinner is a bit of a disappointment. The food is good but the service is lousy!! The waitress is rude to Dana when she orders. We're told it will take 45 minutes to be served even thought we're the only ones in the restaurant. We suggest leaving but Dana does not want to go. Maybe this is not done here? Our meals arrive about and hour later and the waitress does not have anything for Dana. She argues with Dana saying that she never ordered a meal. That was that. No apology and she wasn't going to bring anything else. Beth shares her meal with Dana after much protesting. Pat suggest that we short-pay the bill - a 10% service charge is automatically included - but Dana say no we cannot do that. We leave and agree not to return. We walk Dana 1/2 way home and are back at the hotel by 8:30pm.

Pat and I write in our journal as we are both many days behind. We've been so busy. We find it difficult to remember the exact details of even a few days ago. We decide not to get that far behind again. Lights out at 12:30am.