Thursday, January 18, 2007

Shopping, cats and fruit salad...

Today was pretty uneventful. We again went to the baby house for our 10:30 visit and then decided to come home for lunch. Tom wasn't feeling well so he stayed home and rested up during our 2:30 visit while Aliya and I went to the babyhouse.



The picture above is the atrium where we do most of our grocery shopping. It is a small mall with a grocery store built into it but there are also 2 restaurants.... Dixie Pub (where Tom enjoyed Chicken Fajita's) and MacJohn's which we frequent several times a week and they serve good pizza and burgers as well. We'll have to post a picture of Nader (the owner of MacJohn's). He's fascinated with Americans and loves to hear our impression of his food. He greets us each time we come in with a big smile and usually sits down with us for a bit to chat and practice his English. I don't remember if I've put anything in the blog about him yet, but he's an Egyptian that spent 5 years in Lebanon working at a Pizza Hut so he could learn to make American pizza and bring it back to Kazakhstan. Interesting concept. It's the best pizza we've had here but it's not like our Pizza Hut at home.



This is the front entrance to our apartment... we use the brown door on the right. The cat is one of the many strays that live around here. There are plenty of cats and dogs roaming the streets around here and they all seem pretty friendly. This one followed us into the building and hung out in the stairwell for a while. The stairwell is concrete and has an interesting aroma... It sort of smells like the cats and dogs have left their mark in there on occasion. And, of course, who would blame them! It's not horrible and having grown up around farms, it's just part of life here I guess.



This is the fruit salad thingie that I've talked about having when we've eaten at Kamelot. It's really pretty good. Diced cold chicken on the bottom, with apples, oranges, pineapple, bananas and some parsley and olives thrown in for conversation pieces.

(Don't forget you can click on any of the pictures in our blog to see them at a larger size.) Don't forget to post some comments and let us know what you think or if you have questions you'd like us to answer for you! Our lives are an open book and we're happy to share this experience with you.

Take care and Be Blessed!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Hypes Family! I've been following your blog faithfully. My husband and I adopted our daughter Lisa from Uralsk in 2001, and stayed in your apartment! I have a picture of that very same cat .. unbelievable! Either that or it has a twin. Or an offspring. Whatever! Good luck on the rest of your trip and tell Olga hello (not that she'll remember us .. our daughter's name was Asel K., adopted from BH2 in November of 2001).

Amy said...

Fruit salad with chicken in it!?!?!?! Gross

Anonymous said...

Cute Kid Tom... She looks just like me.
Love to you and Jenni.
Good Luck and God bless Brother.
Craig

Anonymous said...

You write very well.

Jenni said...

Thank you, Misty. We had a great time documenting our trip for our family and friends and can't wait to share it with Emily when she's a little older!

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