Bonding Day #11

Today was another morning session and it was very crowded again with the same four families as yesterday (though the Belgian girl wasn't quite as hyper today). Max was in good spirits and had lots of fun, but he did keep trying to take the toys that the Belgian family had brought. Aside from that, it was business as usual. He does seem to be initiating more walking (with assistance), not needing to be convinced as much as before. Shannon hadn't seen him in a week, but yesterday said that he looks different to her (in a good way). That made us feel good.

The caregivers have been dressing him in some of the clothes that we brought. We take his hat off as soon as they bring him in, but we don't try to peel off the layers. He had an undershirt, a polo, and a hoodie on today with two layers on the bottom. Here's his hoodie with the puppy on it.

We do love how ticklish Max is.

We just returned from a short walk on which we took a picture of a statue of Abul Khair Khan. He was a leader of the Kazakh Little Juz, which was located in what is now western Kazakhstan. He ruled in the 18th century and was allied with the Russian crown at the time. The statue is located just to the west of our apartment building, across the street from a nice park. After strolling past the statue, we went to the AHBAP (pronounced "anbar"), our local market. We have just about run out of the food that we brought (what in the world are we going to do when we are here for 6 weeks?), so we needed to pick up some water, eggs, cheese, fruit, etc. Here are a couple of photos of the statue.

And here he is on a Kazakh stamp that I found on Wikipedia.