Bonding Day #4 and Out and About in Aktobe

Another morning session with Max, but a little more active today. They brought him in holding a piece of apple in each hand and we sneaked him a few handfuls of Cheerios as well. Previously, we had been told that he was able to pull himself up to stand, but since we hadn't seen it for ourselves, we were skeptical. No more...

So not only can he stand, but walk a little bit too (with some help)...

There was a lot of exploring like this...

and he even discovered my glasses...

The caregivers today called him Max for the first time. We were unsure whether we should tell them that we were planning to change his first name and keep his first name as his middle name. We didn't know if this would offend anyone. (When we adopted our dog Sydney, she was originally named Misti. We didn't like this name and had planned all along to change her name to Sydney. Her original foster mom that took care of her until we adopted her was very eager to hear how she was doing....until she found out we changed her name. Then we never heard from her again. So we didn't know if this situation would repeat itself.) We should have known it would be no problem since most all adopted kids receive new names upon joining their forever family, but you just never know who might be offended (especially since he is not officially ours yet). But we were really excited when we heard them refer to him as Max (our translator had told them of our intentions). So maybe soon he will start to answer to the new name.

In the afternoon, since it was such a nice sunny day, we took a stroll around our neighborhood which is actually the center of Aqtobe. We walked past the Mosque/Mall.

We saw the baby giraffe that lives out in front of the mall (very bizarre). There is a sort of mini-amusement park with 4 or 5 kiddie rides and next to these are the giraffe and two cages with peacocks. Right in the middle of the city (kinda sad for the animals).

We walked past the football (soccer) stadium where it sounded like a match was going on.

We walked to the nearby sculpture garden.

Here's a typical Kazakhstan apartment building.

But here's our fancy new building (we're located on the 12th floor).


We're back on our afternoon visiting schedule tomorrow.