Well, today was a very long day with not really anything to do. It was very windy and cold here in Russia so it was not a good day to go for a walk or do anything outside. With the recent snows everything is extremely icy. It has been getting to –12C at night and only to –2C in the daytime. So we were trapped in the hotel room. We have the translator and driver at our service, but where is there to go that is good for children in the wintertime? I don’t know for sure! I decided to take our daughter to the Circus. What a fiasco, but it was fun. We had to buy tickets from scalpers outside the circus because according to our translator, the tickets were sold for the circus a month ago and we would have had to purchase them at that time to get them from the ticket agency. She also told me that the only scalpers allowed to sell the tickets are the ones that pay the police to stay. They are all mafia controlled – great, now I am contributing to that too.. UGH… Anyway, I bought tickets for the circus, and it was very different than any circus I have ever been too. The circus was more like a play. They were acting out the Wizard of Oz, which was different to say the least. When it was translated into Russian, several things were changed such as the name of Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West, and the songs are not the same either. Dorothy was called Ella and the Wicked Witch of the West was called Beliza. Toto was called Totushka, which Ally picked up right away. There were several acrobatic acts, and then animals in almost every act. Out in the foyer when we first entered the circus area, you could pay 100 rubles (just over three dollars) to have a picture taken with the animals. They had the lions, bears, tigers, camels, monkeys, crocodiles, and a couple of other animals that I cannot recall. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any souvenirs to purchase for the event. I did purchase a program for 20 rubles (less than one dollar) that told the names of the characters in the “play” and then obviously kept the ticket stubs. There was nearly a fight in the foyer after the intermission because some women wanted to purchase something from a vendor and the vendor refused to serve them because the intermission was over. Ally got to have popcorn for the first time in her life. According to Helen, no one had popcorn here until after the Perastroika (?) in 1985. She has never had it either, but Ally wouldn’t share hers. In fact after she finished her little bag of popcorn (20 rubles) she was trying to pick up pieces off of the floor to eat (yuck…) I think she did get a couple of them but I caught her most of the time. She also got to get her photo with one of the tigers.
After the circus I stopped at a grocery store and bought some juice boxes, soda, cup of spagetti’s, pudding cups, and milk (small carton just for cereal) and it cost about 230 rubles (about $8). The grocery store is not far from the Marriott Grand and is the only grocery store that I have seen near the center, so it is convenient. It is also nice being able to buy and cook simple things in the room, the meals in the hotel are good, but they are big and expensive and I get tired of steak or big meals all the time. Occasionally, I would just like to have a cup of soup and some crackers. The items in the store are different than what we would see in the US, the spaghetti in a bowl remind me of the Cup a Soup from lipton, but they are German and marketed by Nestle. They do have chips and sodas from the US, but they do not have toddler foods, they only have baby food and then adult foods, so it is difficult to find things that are appropriate for Ally to eat, she is beyond the baby food, but I don’t want to put her straight onto adult food either, so I am glad I brought some Gerber Graduates with me for her. She doesn’t chew all that well so I want to keep the foods fairly soft.
Ally is doing well, she is trusting me more and more each day, although she doesn’t speak to anyone else, she chatters on incessantly with me, even though I don’t understand a word she is staying. After a while it is nice to have a little quiet, but now I only get that when she is sleeping.. :-) She is also testing me thoroughly. She is now testing to see how much I will let her get away with, this is normal I know, but sometimes it is frustrating because she pretends she doesn’t understand when I say nyet (No). She looks at me and does whatever I just said no too, anyway. This is totally typical, but frustrating. She is fascinated with Monsters Inc. She has watched it four times in the last three days and absolutely stops everything when I put it in. I have had to ensure to turn off everything when I am trying to get her to eat because she will not eat but rather play and then makes a real mess. She prefers me to feed her right now, although I know she can feed herself, she prefers to have me feed her. She is worried constantly about her clothes and spilling on them, as well as ensuring her hair is not messy. I bought her a little baby brush and comb and then I had to put them away because she refused to let them go and wouldn’t cooperate with me on anything while she had them. She now only gets them when she is finished with a bath or first thing in the morning, otherwise she will not let them go and will stand in front of the full length mirror refusing to move. One other thing that I have noticed is she doesn’t express when she needs to use the restroom. She will rock herself but not get up to use the restroom. When I asked the translator, she stated that in the orphanage, they had specific times that they used the restroom and she is just used to waiting until the specific bathroom times. We are definitely going to have to get her accustomed to expressing when she needs to use the bathroom, rather than us scheduling the times for her.
Well, it would be nice if I could go home but I am still her for four more days.. UGH.. I am tired of living out of a hotel and yearn to get back to a normal schedule but until the paperwork is done, we have to wait. Monday we will be going to the US Embassy then Tuesday to the Russian Consulate for registration. After that, we still have to get a visa for our visit to Belgium, but then we should be done. I just am hoping that all goes well with the Belgium Embassy, the other two stops our agency has everything in order, but Belgium is our responsibility, not the agencies, so needless to say I am more on tinderhooks with that. I must say that although our agency seemed very slow and it took forever to get here, now that we are here, we have hit no snags (knock on wood) and everything has been smooth because the agency did everything right before I came. Let’s hope that continues through this week.
