We dropped our bags off in our hotel room, then met our translator to walk downtown to have lunch. Our translator asked us what types of food we liked, and we told her that we didn't travel to another country to eat at McDonald's, so to please take us to a typical restaurant. We sat in an outdoor part of a restaurant, one of several in a long line of restaurants and bars in the pedestrian area of the city.
Even before our food arrived, there were four or five cats circling our table, as if to say, "Look, Americans! Maybe they'll take pity on us and give us a scrap!" Our food came, Scott's meal a chicken leg with vegetables, mine a pork skewer with tomato, cucumber, and mashed potatoes on the side. The cats were persistent, but easy to ignore, but one lunch guest was allowed to have its fill of Scott's plate of food: a yellow jacket. The bee would fly over to Scott's chicken, tear off a small piece, and fly away with it. I had never seen anything like that before, but I learned that I'm not the first one to have seen that and in some parts of the US, yellow jackets are called "meat bees." (They are not called yellow jackets in Eastern Europe, by the way.)
After lunch, we asked for directions to an electric shop, because the adaptor we bought for the plugs did not work, since the plugs there were recessed and round, and our plug was square. We found the shop, tucked away down a road I'd probably never be able to find again, and I paid less than $2 USD equivalent for the adaptor, which made me ill that I spent $13 on the one that didn't work.
It was time to head back to the orphanage, after Denny's nap. After the ten-minute drive from the hotel to the orphanage, we walked in again, and this time we were asked to wait in one of the corridors, walls made entirely of windows that overlooked a play area one one side, and another windowed corridor on the other side. The corridor was lined with plants, ranging from small hostas to snake plants, and while we waited, I followed the lace curtain as far as I could walk around, and realized that it was one long and continuous panel of lace. The section I followed was at least 20 ft. long.
Finally, Denny was carried out and handed off to me by a caretaker, and we made our way back to the playroom, by way of the balcony. Denny grabbed on to the swing as we walked past, and Scott received a nice bruise from being an inch too tall to miss the air conditioning unit sticking out next to the door we walked back into.
Once in the playroom, Denny seemed a bit more sluggish than he had in the morning, and there were no other children in sight. We were told he was just up from his nap, and after playing with him for about 15 minutes, he started to perk up a bit. Our translator talked to him, and he ate up the attention. We talked to him, too, and he leaned his face into mine, loving being kissed.
It was in the afternoon that I really noticed his teeth. The top teeth had a bit of plaque in the crevices, but his bottom teeth were not even visible, because of the thick layer of yellow plaque covering all but the very tips of what we believe are still baby teeth. We found out that morning that he was still bottle-fed, with the pureed version of whatever the other children were eating. Based on his bottom teeth, I guessed that he was just propped with a bottle, which would explain why he burped a lot in the afternoon.
Two hours of walking, dancing, climbing through the ball pit and up the therapy stairs passed quickly, and a caretaker came in to announce that we had 10 minutes left. I quickly began to dislike the caretakers opening that door, because it meant the end of precious time with my son. But Denny was tired... typically having one hour a day with someone who cares about you and 23 hours of mostly unengaged time, and then having 4-5 hours of attention in one day is exhausting.
So we left, back down the mountain to our hotel, where I fell asleep until time for dinner. We walked from the hotel to the pedestrian area again, and chose another restaurant. And oh, my first dinner in Denny's region is one I will never forget, and will most definitely try to replicate at home. I'm going to cover my favorite meals in another post, and hopefully I'll be able to find recipes or just wing making them on my own, so I can share pictures. Because I didn't want to be *that* person, the one with the big ol' camera at the dinner table, the "crazy American."
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