Short visit today for Mike

Mike here.

Our visit seemed terribly short for me today, because I spent much of what little time we had with Mia before it was time to go off to the "sauna" with Sveta, running paperwork errands. I didn't even take any good pictures of little Bacca.

We learned the other day that there are, in fact, a lot of German-speaking people in Kokshetau, because many Germans were relocated to Kazakhstan during the war. Today, I walked into the bank across the street to get smaller bills (all I had was a 5000 Tenge note -- seldom used here), and the guard at the door immediately waved over the guy who spoke German. They both recognized me from a couple of days ago. Heh. The only disadvantage to being able to speak German in a situation like this is that I had to be creative when he started asking me what we were doing here, where we were staying, etc. I said we were tourists, and visiting friends.

Including today, we have exactly one week left as a three-person family. Whoa. We're going a little stir-crazy right now, and addition of the little monster should at least break up the monotony. See below for Linda's post, and pictures.

Finally, I just want to add that we really, really appreciate the comments that people post to our blog, or the emails they send us. Have I mentioned that we're going a little stir-crazy? Well, any correspondence is very, very welcome -- even little one-liners from people telling us they read something we wrote is a gem.