Day 9: Pringles Sales up in Aktobe

I know we stand out like sore thumbs when we go to the grocery store and stock up on Pringles and diet coke. They have been out of both for the last several days. Davis and I discovered the chocolate a few days ago. The brand is Mercier and it has to be the best chocolate I have ever eaten. He can polish off 4 bars at a time…I can eat more :> This is our new lure to get him to eat. If you finish all your dinner you get chocolate.

We also look very out of place pushing a stoller on ice. It gets the job done but after awhile, the tread collects so much snow, that it begins to veer off course. This is a picture of a sled they use to pull kids on. We have also seen people pulling their groceries. From the picture below you can see it snowing. They are so use to it here, this grandma is pushing her grandkids on the swing covered with ice.




Leah sounds like a cat purring. I can’t believe it’s been 11 days since we first met her and she doesn’t sound any better. She fell asleep on me today after making a total mess eating! We got the pleasure of trying to entertain her wrapped in a blanket because the nanny said it was too cold. Imagine trying to play with an 8 month old wrapped in a blanket on a couch for 2 hours! Needless to say, we sighed in relief when we saw her eyes close!

Tonight we tried to go get a classic Russian dish called bishbarmark. We walked for 10 mins in 0 degrees weather to a restaurant our interpreter recommended. Turns out it turns into a night club on some nights and tonight it was a night club. We walked 10 mins back, I fell on the ice and finally wound up at a Turkish restaurant near our apartment called Taksim. We forgot it was a Saturday night and walked in to find a very smokey teenage hangout. People were smoking hookahs which I did not have a clue what they were. Milon ordered a double decker hamburger, I ordered Pizza and Davis got chicken nuggets. Milon got him to eat all 4 strips by allowing him to have another sip of his beer. He wound up eating all 4 and by the end we think he might have had a buzz. He was definitely acting different and even dancing to the TV! Hopefully, he will sleep extra good tonight!