May 11, 2008

 

Lunch with Mariya and her Family

 

As we have said before, Nick and I feel like Mariya and her family have adopted us while we have been in Kazakhstan.  We have been very thankful for everything they have done for us and we wanted to show them our appreciation so we asked them if we could take them out to eat.  Nick and I were very happy that they accepted our invitation. 

 

We met them at the Slovenian restaurant at 1:30 for lunch.  It was nice to see Mariya’s mother and sister again.  They are all very nice people and we enjoyed spending time with them and talking.  We talked about some of the differences in the US and Kazakhstan, about growing up and about the different things we do in our lives.  We asked Mariya’s parents how did they raise two wonderful daughters as we will soon have two of our own.  They told us they kept them busy in sports and music.  They did not give them time to get in trouble.  They are interested in how hot our weather is, that we have snakes, alligators and spiders and hurricanes.  We find it interesting how life is lived in a city atmosphere.  You can walk almost anywhere and see young children walking in town.  Most families have gardens outside the city and grow much of their own foods so they eat more natural and healthy as opposed to the American processed food.  After lunch Nick and I headed back to the apartment to catch up on email and wait for the boy’s to call me for mother’s day.

 

It was great to talk to everyone at home and catch up on what they have been doing.  Between the phone call and emails we found out they have been having some interesting times also.  Steve and our friends, the Jessica’s, took the boys to miniature golf one night.  Remember, this is Florida, so the golf place also has alligators and performs a show.  They asked who wanted to sit on the alligator and Alex was the first one to say he wanted to.  I am attaching the pictures we received of the boys sitting on the alligators.  We are 9000 miles away so what can we do!  We also found out that Alex went to his friend’s house to play for a while on Saturday.  My mom was surprised when he came home with a welt on his neck and said it was because his friend shot him there with a bb gun.  When we talked with Alex and asked him about it he said “well, that was because I had just shot him in the temple.”  Then we heard the story about our cat bringing in a bird to put by the chair where my mom eats breakfast.  We are sure she enjoyed her present!  Otherwise a typical, normal week in the Hrenko household.  We also caught up on how their soccer games were this weekend.  Alex was unable to play because the hydraulics on his braces broke and my mom needed to get him in for an emergency visit to the orthodontist.  Because he was not able to play soccer Ben filled in for him, yes our 10 year old going up against 13 to 15 year olds.  We miss being with the boys and enjoying these times, but soon it will be double the fun.

The Hrenko Family

Adoption Journey to Kazakhstan

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Sasha, Olga, Anna, Nick, Julie and Mariya