To Stay or Not to Stay?

Z seems to be feeling better and better each day, but I fear that she won’t completely kick this bug until she leaves the baby house. Z is at that stage where if she is down on her tummy, she wants to roll over, and if she rolls over she wants to then stand up, and if she is standing up she then wants to peak around to see everyone, and then she wants to down to get something, and then up again………rarely is she content with just lying there and being lazy………geez do you think that she has done that enough in her little life already.

I am feeling a bit emotional today, very undecided on whether to stay one trip or come home and do the two trips. There are so many pros and cons each way. I hate to leave Z, I don’t want to break this bond or any trust that is being formed, and I don’t want to be jet lagged while bringing her home either. On the other hand, it is more expensive to stay (which is something that I inevitably have to consider) and I know that I will desperately miss home………soon. As great as bonding is, and as wonderful as my hotel is, just being around other people that understand you is a wondrous thing. It is a crazy feeling to be a total minority and to be at the mercy of your interpreter. I am absolutely free to do whatever I would like, shopping, going to the bakery / coffee shop, site seeing, etc. but when you are here alone you just aren’t as adventurous, especially as a woman. I do have Laurie, which is nice, but we are with different agencies, have different drivers and are living in different parts of the city, so it isn’t like having a husband here with me. What to do? The biggest part is my sadness for leaving Zahria here. She is now used to being played with at least once, if not twice (on most days), times a day; for her to then go to nothing for 2-4 weeks will kill me. She needs stimulation! Her little brain is growing like crazy right now and she needs more than eating, changing and sleeping. Her little laugh needs to continue to pop out more and more and his will not happen if she is in her little Room #3.

On another note, yet kind of the same, it is too funny to get into Ceric’s car (when our interpreters are not with us) and between the three of us, Ceric (Russian), me (English) and Margo (Spanish) try to communicate. We are all laughing and doing quite a bit of sign language, it ends up being a messed up game of charades each time the 3 of us try to communicate. Tonight Ceric was trying to tell me about his daughter that is at the Academy in Almaty and how she has a black belt in Taekwondo, and he would do sign language for Taekwondo, then said Academy Almaty, then said Negro. Oops! That was one of his Spanish words that he knows and he was using it in English, oops! He realized his mistake and started to laugh looking for the English word for black. Good thing I know some Spanish, so I caught it and said, “Oh she has a black belt?” Then I showed Margo my belt and she said belt in Spanish, and we all laughed. We can communicate, see! It is just so darn hard and takes so much energy to get one sentence comprehended that you almost say screw it and become a mute while here. Earlier today Ceric was making Sheep noises looking for a word, so I said Sheep? Nyet. No. Ummmm okay, what else could it be? Then he made the sheep noise again and signed like a goatie on his chin, Ahhhh I said, Goat? Da. Yes! He is a riot! When we leave his car we say, paka – meaning bye (not sure of the real Russian spelling but this is how it sounds) and he responds with See Ya. Haha, you expect him to respond in Russian and he pops out the English version, it is great!