Hooray! - Sunday, 11 October 2009

Hooray!

Hooray! We went to church today! Only 20 minutes from our apartment to the church (via a bus). We sat near the front, in the front few rows were mostly children, who spent Mass mostly bored and whispering. When we went to communion--bread dipped in wine--an old Russian lady handed Sophia some candy. Mass lasted longer than an hour, but then some priest talked forever after Mass, and then the children came forward to be blessed (not Sophia) and then the people recited some prayer, so in the end it lasted forever. But then Christie talked to some nuns who informed her that at 6 pm there is an English mass! Hooray!

Hooray! Sophia made a friend today! Christie's apartment building has a really nice, new playground, and we played there after church. I had to play for quite some time before Sophia and the Kazakh girl played by themselves without me. The girl was shy and spoke no English, Sophia and I played and I made very exaggerated movements and had the girl giggling quite a bit. The playground soon had plenty of kids playing, and I was the only grown-up in sight. Sophia and the girl played for about an hour together without me. A Kazakh boy talked to me a bit--when he heard us speaking English, he started saying to himself, "Hello. My name is!" So finally I talked to him and let him use his little bit of English in actual conversation. I let Sophia play until I could tell she was wearing out and then the girl said "do svedanya" and "pohka" over and over as we left. Hooray!

Hooray! Sophia ate today! I was beside myself with joy as she gobbled up the "hot dogs" she had made me buy at the store today. She insisted that I buy them, and I was completely willing to buy anything she said she might eat, but I was worried she wouldn't like them. They are called sausage here, but they look and smell like sausage, and Sophia ate them. Hooray! We also found frozen pizza--none that was plain cheese, however they also sold pizza crust with sauce on it, nothing else. We had mozzarella cheese at home, so I bought the crust and made her a cheese pizza. She ate the entire thing after finishing 2 hot dogs. Now I know what I can feed her for the rest of the year so she won't starve. Hooray!