Symbat was a bundle of energy today. It was hard to get decent pictures because she was such a squirmy worm. We played in the small bonding room today for the whole time. Apparently they had a new key made. While it was nice and sunny outside, it was pretty windy so we opted to stay in.
Still no translator, but after our visit we were dying to know when we get to have our Guardianship meeting and fly back home. Using our handy dictionary/phrasebook again (Barron’s Traveler’s Language Guide - Russian) we managed to find the list of days and started asking questions. We managed to understand “America” and “Thursday” and “1, 4”… and we’re taking that to mean that we will fly back on the 14th. Our coordinator also said 3:00, and Kara gave the universal symbol for “night” (pretending to sleep), and the coordinator said yes. We know that the flight to Frankfurt leaves Almaty at 2:55 AM, so we took that as another good sign.
At this point we’re seriously wishing we would have studied our Russian more before coming over here. It would be really handy to know the days of the week. Counting is a must… 1 to 20 at least, and then the hundreds, and the thousands up to 5000 so you can count the money, or at least understand what they tell you something costs without having to write it down. (In lieu of learning numbers, bring a small pocket calculator with you. They can punch in numbers and it makes life a lot easier.) Learning restaurant stuff would be helpful too. Work on these words: I want, drink, the different meats, what do you recommend? (it’s in the Barron’s book… but it might be nice to have a good comeback when they ask you what you like), one more (I’ll give you this one for free - “yesho adin”), and check please (okay, one more freebie - “shot pashalusta” (the o in shot is long)). Just study the phrase book.
Tomorrow we go again at 3:00. “Zaftra tree.” We hope we understood correctly today, because it feels good to know when we’ll be heading home.
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