A little cooler

John was up briefly coughing a few times last night, but overall we both got a good night’s rest. We left for the market at the Historical Museum Metro stop (near Alec and Nadya’s church) at 9:15. We found good-looking $3 sunglasses for John, hats that will fit for both of the boys, another light-weight shirt for each of us, carry-all bags and a host/hostess gift. Last week while looking for John’s shorts one babushka vendor used Russian and then switched to another language we didn’t speak. We had to convince her we were Americans. Something about the dark pants we were both wearing made her think we were from Poland. This week, buying the shirts from two older women we were mistaken for Germans. We wandered through another of those multilevel, multi-vendors per department stores and found buttons for the sweaters. We went to McDonalds for beverages; unfortunately I was doing something goofy with John’s sunglasses and spilled my latte all over the table and my skirt. It wasn’t hot enough to burn, just large enough to cause a mess and a bit of embarrassment. A mom sitting at a nearby table offered us their extra napkins and then some wet wipes. She was very considerate and I thanked her. Fortunately we were done shopping at that point, so I carried the shopping bag in front of me and we took the Metro home.

I put some photo files on the extra compact flash to have copies made at the Kodak shop near the church tomorrow. I took a bunch of family photos for Bill and Susan while Losha was all dressed up for Children’s Day yesterday. We have a couple more to put in the caretakers albums and the one of home and family we will begin to show Nick and Dennis on Monday. Hurray! Somehow we will start to explain that we will be taking a train to another big city (Kyiv) and then a plane to London, and then another one to “home”.

Later we walked to ‘Andre’s’ Supermarket, stopping at the “слон” first. The word “slone” means “elephant” and the store was just like a Home Depot or Lowe’s at home. We completed the host/hostess gift and picked up a plastic table cloth to sit on with the boys when the ground is damp, maybe even if it isn’t. The main purpose of going to the supermarket was to get more of the multivitamin juice, but we found enough other items to give John a manly-man-weight bag to carry home. :) I carried the bananas.