And now for an added bonus

Tonight we had the added bonus of a wonderful Italian dinner with two other Reece's Rainbow families that are here adopting children - the Cornishes (Meredith and Mike) and the Parkers (Molly and Aaron).  Both families are working on bringing home two children each.  May God bless their courage and devotion to these children.  As many of you know Meredith is also the genius behind the wonderful adoption handbook and some of the electronic forms processing that makes this process that little bit more doable.  We were really glad and blessed to get to spend the time with these two families.

Through another step - Permission to visit Jenny

We completed our appointment with the adoption authority this morning and now have permission to travel to the region where the orphanage resides and visit Jenny!  It was a quick and pleasant meeting and we got to see a few pictures of our angel we have never seen before.  So cuuute!  Because we have adopted previously from Ethiopia and Guatemala the official asked us if we were trying to keep up with Angelina Jolie.  Thank you but no.  Jenny's description in the official file is "healthy and quiet".

The street where the government office was looks something like this.

From Adoption Trip 1

And this beautiful church was right next door.

From Adoption Trip 1

Last night we got to have dinner out, and stroll down the equivalent of Broadway in good old NY City back home.

From Adoption Trip 1

And now for some stupid American stories.

We have been getting groceries at a little store around the corner to eat some meals in the apartment.  We were interested in breakfast cereal, which our driver told us is just not normally eaten here.  We were so proud when we found a box with the familiar Honey Nut Cheerio bee, so we grabbed the box and marched off to the dairy section to purchase some milk to go with it.  There were some bottles that looked like milk bottles, and had percentages that looked like milk fat (1%, 2%,....).  Most of the label was in the native language, but in English there was a logo that said "Milk Life".  We figured we were golden, and went and paid for our groceries in local currency like real pros.

This morning we dished out our cereal and bananas and opened the milk ready to enjoy a familiar breakfast treat.  As we pour the milk we notice the consistency is something like thick yogurt.  We had bought ourselves a great vanilla yogurt smoothie type drink.  Very good for digestive health.  Not so good for floating your Cheerios.  We enjoyed our cereal and yogurt breakfast nonetheless and marched off to our appointment.  Later this afternoon we went grocery shopping with another couple, and this time we had our dictionary in hand to make sure we checked the label more carefully.  It's still a lot different then our milk at home.  Either it is not homogenized, or we bought coffee creamer.  Either way, it's going on the cereal tomorrow.

That is all for now.  Stay tuned for what happens when you lock two crazy Americans in a train compartment for twelve or so hours.