Visit #13, Bishparmak, and Gorky Park Revisited

Busy day today! And hard to believe that a week from today we will be well into our 15+ hour flight home. We visited the Baby House once today, from 10:30am to 12 noon. When we arrived at Bryce's Group to pick him up, the entire group was up and in their crib - all 7 of them. His group ranges from some babies that are less than 3 months old to Bryce who is just over 11 months now. We took Bryce upstairs to play for the morning. He was babbling a lot to us today. He must have had a busy night to tell us about. We played with blocks, read some books, and fed him some Cheerios. He seems to like Cheerios. He also practiced standing again. We don't visit on Sunday, so the next time we will see him is on Monday. But all next week, we will have 2 daily visits. We are looking forward to that! On Monday we will also go to the agency office to fill our more paperwork - I'm guessing that this set of paperwork has something to do with our court appearance. We are tentatively scheduled to go to court on Friday - we'll know for sure next week.

After our visit, it was lunchtime and we headed to the Dastrakhan restaurant for some more traditional Kazakh food. This time we had a dish called bishparmak (spelled phonetically, but probably not correctly). Bishparmak is a dish of meat, onions, and broth served over noodles. I (Barb) really liked it, but I think Chuck favors laghman and some of the other dishes we have had so far. We visited another big market after lunch. It had stores that mostly sold clothes, shoes, toys, and furniture. The place was huge! I can't imagine shopping there!

Since the weather is great today (another sunny day with 70 degree temperature), we walked over to Gorky Park this evening. To our surprise, the amusement park rides and food stands were open and the place was packed. We walked around a bit and went on some rides (not quite up to US standards, but we survived). We went on the ferris wheel for a great view of the mountains and the city. Then we swung on what I have been calling a "Kazakh swing" - a big two person swing that can really get moving (see photo). We also walked over to the lake and boated on a paddleboat. There was only one set of pedals, so I (Barb again) was the horsepower while Chuck steered. It was lots of fun and a great thing to do this evening!

Afterwards, we walked back to the apartment for dinner and some Foodmaster ice cream cones for dessert. Everyone sells plastic wrapped vanilla and chocolate ice cream cones made by a company called Foodmaster. They are great and sell for only 35 Tenge. Yum!