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Apparently,
the chief judge thought so too. We may have arrived to see him shortly after
9am, but he clearly thought 10:30 was a more reasonable hour to start his
day. Inna, Rada and I filed into
his office after an hour and a half wait. I had passed the time by showing Inna
and Rada how to play scrabble using my trusty palm pilot. I am ashamed to say it was a close game
between the two non-native speakers and me, the English major. *sigh*
Anyway,
back to the judge’s chambers.
We sat down, he flipped through my file and first asked me about my
family and specifically asked me how many brothers and sisters I had. I almost lost the game right then. I was
trying to say something coherent when Inna jumped in and saved the day.
I’m not sure what she said, but he nodded and moved on. Then he asked me a lot about my ability
to afford this baby, given that I am single. What if you lose your job, he
asked. And I thought – is he
channeling my mother? He actually
got into the details of my mortgage payments. Then he asked if I thought my job would
fire me because I was a mom now. I
thought that was an interesting question. I said, no, lots of moms work and he
said, “well, it seems strange to me that a corporation would work against
it’s own interests by hiring women who are mothers”. I obviously didn’t pursue it the
way I would have liked to, but merely responded that many companies in the
Hurdle
#1 cleared. Now, only the actual
court appearance left to go.
From
court it was on to the hospital for an abbreviated visit with the kiddo. Here is the visit in pictures and
videos.
1)
Feeding Time (note the copious amounts of milk still pouring out her mouth as
she adjusts to my new bottles)
2)
Sitting up progression:
3)
Attempted to video our flying time. This is a hard angle to film by myself, but
you get a flavor of her laughing while she’s in the air. Kid is definitely the next evil knieval.
4)
Loving the kid
After
visiting Belly girl, it was off to a celebratory lunch with Andy and Allison at
the Rainbow Room. I know, doncha
just love that name? Sounds like it should be in a basement with smoke, lounge
lizards and a frank Sinatra crooner.
Instead, it’s just a restaurant with slow service, good vegetarian
pilaf (among other things), and good beer.
After
lunch, not being content to slink back to our respective houses just yet, we
headed out on a big time adventure: our destination? “The
Oh,
you think I am kidding?
Laugh
not my friends, laugh not.
Yes,
that is a stuffed flamingo, native bird of
These
next pictures are a little more of what I expected to find in this museum.
After all, I’m no expert on Central Asian history, but wasn’t this
the area that was run over back and forth by Genghis Khan and his type?
Sadly
for us, the capitalist spirit hadn’t yet caught up with The Kokshetau Museum of History, evolution,
world war II, the local weather, and of course, a few Kaz warriors. With some
textiles thrown in. And a yurt. There was no gift shoppe to while away a
few more hours and most particularly lacking was the ability to buy a flamingo
lawn ornament to remember my time in Kokshetau with . I don’t think I could find one of
those anywhere else in the world. So sad.
PS-
Sorry to everyone I’m taking so long to respond to emails. The internet has been giving me problems
and it’s all I can do to upload my journal entries. I am answering emails
but only a few at a time!
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