Three Hour Walk-in Heels!

We won't start with the walk, we'll start with our morning with Jill. We left at 9:30 again today and got there about 10. We didn't try to go outside because the bugs were so bad again. Tomorrow we may ask her doctor if we can use the bug repellent wipes on her and go outside. Vika says they may say no to putting something on her skin, but we'll ask. I'd like Wade to see how different she is outside, so relaxed and less busy. She kind of seems 'nervous' in the playroom we use, but never acted that way when we were outside. Today we gave her the Discovery Toys stacking cups we brought to play with. There are 12 cups of different sizes that stack together, there is only one right way to get them to all fit biggest to smallest. We put them out one by one all over the table so they'd be mixed up; she started putting them together. Whenever she would get one wrong, she'd take that one out and figure it out. Sometimes that meant taking out two, putting in the one she had and then putting the two back in, etc. She DID NOT want help and stuck with it until she got them all together and then clapped for herself as Wade clapped along and I gave her a big yay and hug! I found this very impressive. CHI says to calculate their age that they are 'like' to divide the number of months they've been in the orphanage by 3, then subtract this from the number of months old they are. So, she is 45 months old and she's been in the orphanage her entire 45 months, 45 divided by 3 is 15, 45-15=30 months, so she should act like a 30 month, or 2 years 6 month old child. So I thought the way she sorted the puzzle pieces on our last trip and the way she worked out the stacking cups today to be very impressive for a 2 1/2 year old.
After resting awhile and talking to my parents and our boys via Skype (what a great thing!!!!) we headed out for another walk/dinner. I decided to try to fit in and wear my heels with my shorts and tank top. All the Russian women walk around in heels, and I mean like high stilleto heels! Mine were the all-one-piece-so-I-don't- fall-down-heels which still weren't great for walking through the gravel, sand dirt, broken up pavement, etc. I really don't get how they do this??? I feel like I stood out wearing tennis shoes yesterday, but after today I think that I don't really care! I gave their lifestyle a try and now I'll go back to my sandals or tennis shoes.
The good thing about our walk was that after getting a litte lost we stumbled upon what I call the "chicken hips restaurant"! The last day my dad and I were in Astrakhan Vika took us there with Catherine and Mandy. They have an English menu and we took a picture of the page that had things like "beef in cheesy chocolate sauce", "chicken with chocolate icing" and "chicken hips" on it. My dad ordered the chicken hips hoping that they would be chicken thighs and they were! And, they were really good! So we made it there and there was a waitress who spoke a little English. We asked her what she recommended and she told us that the beef in cheesy chocolate sauce was her favorite, "it's SO good" she said. Someone at home told us that they thought the chocolate sauce was probably a gravy-chocolate colored gravy-being that chicken hips was loosely translated we figured that was probably true and it was their word for gravy. So we ordered one order of that and one of the potatoes I had gotten before stuffed with cheese and mushrooms then wrapped in bacon. Well.....the beef was like an okay steak breaded and fried like country fried steak. It itself was good, but that was after scraping off the cheesy chocolate sauce that was made out of, you guessed it, cheese and chocolate! Not good. The potatoes were great though and we had bread and the meat was good enough without the sauce, so we did end up full. I also had a strawberry daquiri with ONE whole piece of ICE in it! (I do believe I've mentioned Russia doesn't serve drinks with ice.) Now that we know that the menu is correctly interpreted, we know what to try and what not to try. There are three more things on there we think sound good, so we'll go back. There are two more couples coming Sunday night that will be here for a week, so we'll show them all around town! And I'll tell them not to wear heels!
PS These homegrown strawberries are SO good!!!!! We're almost to the end of them so tomorrow we'll go buy cherries!!!