A longwinded day...

Lunch Saturday was very much a John Belushi sketch. We went to a Georgian restaurant called the Plaza, which was all gold leaf and marble, very fancy. Unfortunately for Chris it was Georgian the country, not barbecue and peaches. They had a giant menu of at least 10 pages, and we were waited on by the owner himself. According to the owner, off of the ten page menu, our options were noodle soup, soup “with different meats,” beef with vegetables or vegetables with beef. The conversation with our translator and the owner was pretty funny, she does not back down easily and it involved a lot of shouting in Russian. We of course also had to have the ubiquitous Kazak cheesy bread, even though I loved it at first I am so sick of it that I never need to see it again. I started with the noodle soup, it was basically chicken noodle soup made with whole chicken thighs and a ton of fresh dill, pretty tasty. Then they served giant platters of the beef with vegetables family style. I think the “vegetables” consisted of a few chopped scallions on top, but the beef was just like an american pot roast and very good. Chris also tried some fine Georgian wine, which he said was very good if you are fond of drinking vinegar.
After lunch we went back to the orphanage to “make practice” for Court. It all seems pretty strait forward and I feel like we are well prepared. I did have to laugh when they translated the official petition, it says several times that we have always wanted to adopt “a small girl”. In my mind I keep picturing a two inch tall shrunken child on the end of my finger.
We topped off last night with a visit to the billiards hall. Pool here is very different than in the states. The tables are at least 30% bigger, and all of the balls but one are white. You start off using the one colored one as a cue ball, then after that any ball can be your cue ball and you just keep score by how many you sink. That sounds like it would make it easy, but the balls are larger than usual and the holes are smaller- you have at best ¼ inch clearance. We were feeling pretty wild because we stayed out all the way until 9:00! An evening here is definitely cheap, a few rounds of drinks for ten people and two hours of billiards was about $30.
Today they changed our schedule, now that there are fewer families we will go a little later in the morning but get a longer visit. It was great because now she has snack time during our visit so we get to feed her. The snack today was a plate of what looked like an entire shredded apple, some type of cookie and a cup of tea. It was probably as much food as I would give our kids for a regular meal at this age at home, I can see why she is a big healthy girl!
After the visit we went about ½ hour outside of town to a couple of interesting spots. The first was a little area on the banks of the Irtysch river where there are some special trees. It is traditional in this area that when you get married, you climb to the top of the tree and tie a champagne bottle on for good luck. After that, we went to a site where there is a spring of holy water. The legend is that a religious leader saw the Virgin Mary there and she led him out of the woods. There is a natural spring on the site, and water from the spring is supposed to have restorative powers. We walked all the way down to the river and Chris put his hand in, he thinks he might get the feeling back by the time we go home.