TGIF in Astrakhan

Friday, August 10, 2007, 4:15am. I am awake, and lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. At home every one is enjoying their Thursday evening. Here I am still fighting the time change. Today is cool, I mean almost cold, in fact I just turned off the air conditioning. Outside it is bright and sunny. The Volga river ambles by with a steady current, carrying tons of heavily polluted water to the Caspian sea. Birds eat trash off the river banks and, sandal clad construction workers are plugging in extension cords to begin their day of jack hammering. There is major construction going on all around us. In fact, today it appears workers on scaffolding will be outside our window, fun. We were supposed to see Lilia this morning but plans have changed and we will see here around 4:00. She was really talkative yesterday and said ca ca once and dada, that’s what I heard, maybe daddy I love you, yah that’s what I heard. We went for a walk in the cool of the morning and then went to some huge kids type department store with another American from the hotel. The department store was pretty big and full of stuff for kids and many discussions on what size Lilia is and how big is a 19mm and could she choke on this, and “no you can’t buy that sword.” It was …fun. We ate a meat and cabbage pie last night for supper and it was pretty good. Apparently, these pies are a Russian dish and so we, being the adventurous type, tried it. We will post the excitement, as the adventures are sure to continue.