PLAYING CATCH UP

I know, I know. Cut me some slack though, I mean, who has any news in March?

One fun thing we found to do here is a gigantic indoor playground at a Chinese Mall called Megapolis. The kids have a blast there and it is reasonable safe. I have only heard 1 story about a little girl who fell off something, the safety netting broke, and she broke her arm. After weighing the odds of an accident against yet another day spent listening to the kids whine, argue, ask for snacks and juice 10 million times....we packed up the car and headed to Megapolis. Afterwards we headed upstairs to the "food court" (quotations b/c food court is a VERY liberal description of where we were). There was a little Moldovan girl running around that was absolutely obsessed with Anna...as you can see from the pictures. By the way, shortly after the picture of the kids walking on the balance beam was taken, I had to scramble up and rescue Anna. She quickly realized that she was about 6 feet up and there was no way down, unless she dropped into the netting...the same netting that didn't hold the girl that fell to the ground and broke her arm. Good call Anna!

A few weeks ago Will, Mike and I went to an animal shelter on the outskirts of Chisinau. Apparently there is a foreign lady here who runs this shelter and takes in dogs from the city, fixes them and then returns them to the streets. I have heard that there are upwards of 30,000 stray dogs in Chisinau. I have also heard that the government rounds them up occasionally, takes them to an enclosed area and beats them to death....gas and euthanasia being too expensive. Anyhow, Mike needed to go out there and William and I invited ourselves along to see the puppies. We picked a beautiful, rainy 40 degree day and came home completely covered in mud and who knows what else. Here were some of our favorites doggies.

Here are some new pictures from the market and my egg lady. This lady was SO hard on me when we first got here. The numbers 10, 12 and 20 sound very similar in Russian and I would invariably tell her 20 when I wanted 12, 12 when I wanted 10, etc... Due to this confusion, we would always argue about money because I thought she was trying to rip me off, when in reality she was giving me the number I had asked for, not the number I thought I had said. Anyhow, I'm pretty good with my numbers now so we are finally buddies. Oh, you can't really tell in the picture, but all the way on the left is a stack of broken eggs, which people bring a little bucket to buy. Why, you ask, would people buy broken eggs? Because they are cheaper. The warm weather has not brought much new bounty to the markets yet. Strawberries and cherries are right around the corner and I can hardly wait!

We have been busy planting seeds for our garden this summer. So far we have; tomatoes, gourds, eggplants (my new favorite veggie, seriously!), apples, beans, and some flowers. Our backyard is VERY small so I'm not quite sure where all this is going to go...but that is next week's concern.

Ok, this has taken all morning to write and the kids are running around like homeless children so I need to wrap this up. Hope you all have a great week.

~L