An Arkalyk Update

Oh mommy! He he he he he he he. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. He he ha ha oh ho he he una hin hin hin. Stop! Mommy! Oh, mommy! I don’t like what you’re doing. He he he. Daddy! Look what mommy’s doing! Everything I say! He he he! “That’s what I said when I was putting it in the word document to post it on my blog,” says Jaden.

I learned to whistle while I was in Kazakhstan. I am homesick really really really really really really really badly. And every day I feel like I need an airplane that second to take me home. But the good news is I am going home right after court, which is in about 2 ½ weeks. I miss home, all my friends, all my toys. I’ll say one thing about it, I miss Colorado. And another thing, I mostly just miss the United States. Just because it’s my home and I just really miss it a lot. But I am happy I am here, because I am getting my little brother. And by the way, just to warn you again, his nickname is Tuma, his real name is Timorlane, but we don’t know what we are going to name him.

You can see like maybe 10 post up it feels like, where it says it’s going good or something like this, where it took 45 minutes for him to stop crying. But right now we can get him to stop crying, as he always cries when he comes in, in 2 minutes. And that is really good progress. He played some ball with daddy and me today, and I thought that was big progress too. And he didn’t ever want to take stuff from us, but today he did that too. And I thought this day was the best day we’ve ever seen in Tuma’s adoption process.

I’ve met about, maybe 16 different Kazakh and/or Russian kids and I thought it was cool to meet my first, maybe last, Kazakh friends. But it’s probably not my last, I’ll probably make more through my adventures. They’re just really cool to hang out with, and I think I am going to remember them and this trip probably my whole life. Well, as you know they call soccer ‘Fudball’ here (said ‘Food-ball’), and that’s almost exactly the way they pronounce it. We are playing Fudball and they play ‘Monkey in the Middle’, except they don’t throw it and catch it, they kick it and stop it, and also once it hits the person in the middle, the last person who kicked it is the new monkey. Just to be funny, monkeys say “ooooh, ooooh, aaaaah, aaaaah, ooooh, ooooh, aaaaah, aaaaah!” I will teach you to play Fudball Monkey in the Middle when we get home.

I think their culture is really interesting. All of the Kazakhs have mostly dark skin and most of the Russians have light skin. I like their language. I’ll tell you some Russian words:

Spa-koy-ney noche means “Good night”. Good is ‘Spa-koy-ney’ and Night is ‘noche’. In Espanol, it is almost the same word, but what is different about it is that it’s Buenos noches, not spa-koy-ney noche. Another word is ‘Zdras-stvee-chye’, which means ‘hello’. There is ‘ne plach’ which means ‘don’t cry’. There’s ‘ya ne pin-a-my-o Pa-russki’ which means ‘I don’t understand Russian’. And there’s ‘ya ne pin-a-my-o Pa-ang-leuski” which means ‘I don’t understand English’. The words I use with my brother are ‘Fso Hari-sho’ which means ‘It’s OK’. ‘Ne plach’ I also use with my brother.

Bird- P-teat-sa
Car- Ma –Shih- na
Eat- Ish (in Kazakh) and Kush-a (in Russian)
Juice – Sok
Moon – Luna (this is also like Espanol!)
Kitty- Kosh-ka
Dog- Sa-BO-ka
Water- Va-da
Tea- Chai (not the kind my mommy really likes though!)

I’ll share some more Russian words later! But for now, Paka! (that’s bye!)