Day 9—November 3, 2008

Well today was still cloudy and chilly but it was not raining. That was nice being we walk everywhere. On that note, Cindie wanted me to mention that we walk up 9 flights to reach our apartment on the 5^th floor of the apartment building. She also wanted me to mention that someone smokes in the stair way so as we are breathing heavy carrying our groceries up the stairs, we take in lovely gasps of 2^nd hand smoke. She says that if the stairs don’t take her out it’s the smoke. Smoking is very popular here if we have not mentioned that before.

Anyway, we were able to take Aydar to the International clinic today. We saw a western trained pediatrician Dr. and she examined Aydar. She was able to interpret the medical history summary the orphanage provided to us, and they will translate it to English in written form for us to pick up tomorrow. As we expected, she noted that he is healthy and his motor skills and cognitive abilities are normal. He is behind in some ways due to the impairment of the cleft pallet in means of nutrition and speech as well as lack of Vitamin D from being indoors so much at the orphanage. All of these items we will be able to help him with. With care and nutrition the Dr. felt that all of these items over time will improve and should all fall into a normal range.

We made another trip to the grocery store because it is easier to carry the smaller loads down the street and up the stairs. Being that Cindie has had a hard time finding something she likes, I had remembered seeing some Bacon in the meat cabinet. So I went over to find out about the price. For less than a half of a pound, it would have cost $8.75 USD. Ouch, we passed on that and will try another store tomorrow, maybe some good ole chicken.

Well that is all for now until tomorrow. Hope everyone is doing well! Give Karis hugs and kisses for us. _JH