I was nervously anticipating the social worker meeting today, but it turned out much better than I expected.. We were interviewed by three people (one man, two women). We were all cramped into one tiny room, along with our interpreter, Juliya. James did come with us and did fine (thank goodness he napped before we went). Interestingly, they focused quite a bit on him. James was even asked if he could count to ten in Russian, and he was able to comply, sort of. He counted all the way up to number 8 (vosem) then immediately asked in English, "what's number 9?" because he couldn't remember. That made everyone in the room laugh and kind of broke some of the tension, because - trust me - it was pretty intense in there. After comparing notes with the other families, it was obvious that the social workers were asking everyone some pretty probing questions. I don't think I recall ever being in a more intimidating situation, will three people sitting no more than four feet away from you (or in my case, sitting right next to me) having the ability to say "yay" or "nay" to whether or not they can make a positive recommendation for us in court, which they eventually said they would. They told us at the end of our meeting, "Okay - we will see you at court." Having gone through this, maybe someday we will look back and fondly remember this part of the process as "The Interrogation."
Because of the social worker meeting this afternoon our visits with Michael today were cut short. However, they were still good visits. We split the visits up again today (I got the morning visit, Sean got the afternoon visit) since James is still recovering from being ill, and we wanted him to rest and be in the best possible shape in the afternoon for the social worker meeting. Michael is still on the go crawling everywhere and pulling up on everything, and he seems happy to see us every time we come in to see him. I won't gross you guys out with TMI about his horribly messy diapers, but let's just say he gave us a couple of winners today! Sean blames me for the really bad one he had to change when he arrived at the Baby House for Michael's afternoon visit, as that one was not fully contained in the diaper. Sean says I didn't do a good enough job of securing the diaper when I changed him at the end of my morning visit with him. I don't know, but Michael must have been doing handstands or somersaults after I left the morning visit. Let's just say it was bad enough that his outfit had to get changed again into one of the regular Baby House outfits since the outfit we put on him that morning got really messy.
Not much more to report, other than after our social worker meeting Sean got his hair cut. Sean remembers the last time he and Bob Mechem got their haircuts in Kokshetau in '07, and straight razors were used to clean the backs of their necks - ha! We went to a salon called "Be Beautiful," which is where our interpreter, Juliya, gets her hair cut. We figured it would be a good place - after all, Juliya's hair is very nice, and the ladies walking out of the salon were perfectly coiffed. Juliya got Sean all set up with the stylist, then she had to leave. While Sean was getting his hair cut, a lady (another waiting customer) struck up a conversation with me. My Russian is extremely limited, but we were actually able to communicate a little bit. She asked me if my nationality (ethnicity) was Kazakh, and when I told her, "Ya ni Kazak" (I am not Kazakh), I also told her my family was from the Philippines. She nodded, told the receptionist in the lobby that I was from the Philippines, then proceeded to tell me she was Korean. As an aside, I have mentioned before that there is a significant Korean popluation in Kazakhstan which occurred during Josef Stalin's rule over the Soviet Union. Anyway, the lady asked me if I was American, to which I responded, "Da, ya Amerikanka" (Yes, I am American), and then told her I was with my husband. She then nodded like she understood me and probably thought we were here for my husband's work, and then she said some more stuff in Russian that I didn't understand. However, she was very nice and thought James was amusing as she would chuckle every time James would say something (he happened to be acting out some kind of scenario at the time). Once Sean was finished, we bade each other, "Dasvidaniya" and each went our separate ways. Amazing how it's still possible to communicate without fully understanding each other's language. And, as usual, James continues to make friends. He played a little bit with who I think was the salon owner's daughter (looked about 6 or 7 years old), and even got an ice cream from our driver, Vadim (who is also Natasha's husband) while we waited for Sean to get finished.
So, that is our post for today!
That's all for today. Love to all!
