Kávé, mosoda & the English teacher

Kávé (kah-vay) is coffee...and we LOVE our coffee. We really miss working in the church coffee shop and getting to experiment with all sorts of different lattes, cappuccinos and mochas. There is a little shop around every corner here selling cappuccino for about $1.00 or $1.50 (but they are only about 6 ounces)...but even that can get expensive.

Our coffee maker cracked the first day we turned it on, so we make coffee in our apartment every morning with a filter over a cup. Luckily we have a water boiler that makes hot water in about 30 seconds. Works pretty good!

Today I felt crafty and attempted to make cappuccino, whisking milk over the stove to froth it. It frothed up nice and foamy, and poured over half a cup of extra strong coffee with a sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar it was the perfect cappuccino! Yey :)

It's also mosoda day around here. That's laundry. It's every other day, actually. Our teeny tiny washing machine is great, it's just teeny tiny. And it takes about 2 hours for it to wash one load...and it sounds like a helicopter taking off in the bathroom. Then the fun part comes, and we get to hang everything up on the rack that I drag outside. Oh, how I miss my dryer. Evidently very few people in this country have dryers...they are too expensive I'm told. I think I'd take out a second mortgage to buy one if I had to, if I lived here.

I was in the pool playin around in the deep end with water monkey and miss Water Wing yesterday, and a man and two women were laying in their lounge chairs watching us the entire 45 minutes. I'm used to this...people stare at us all the time because we are rare and speak English, and especially because we have a little girl speaking Magyar, calling us Apa and Anya. Makes everyone wonder what in the world is going on.

But later on in the hot tub we got to talking with the woman. She spoke English!!! What a rare treat to have a conversation with someone. She was an English teacher in a high school in a town nearby...and we learned how she wants to go to the US so bad, because everything is so much better there. From what she has seen in movies, anyway. :) Jobs don't pay much here for teachers...she said janitors make more. I didn't tell her that teachers are underpaid in the US too. They think it's so NEAT that in one country you can snow ski, go to the beach, climb a mountain, and drive through the desert, and go to a big city. She wanted to know all about adoption, and why the children are being adopted...and agreed it was sad how they can get "stuck" in the system for so long, like our little girl did. If the birth parents keep contact with them for even once a year, it keeps them "ineligible" for adoption. I guess Princess was visited regularly for a while, then it tapered off but was still more than once a year for her first 6 years. I'm told she didn't really know who it was, just that a friend was visiting. I don't have any pictures or info about the bio mother...kinda wish I did.

The English teacher told us they were watching me and the kids so intently because they were interested in how much "love" we showed to each other....mixed in with the fact that I was "Anya" to a Magyar child. I was teaching them how to swim, and playing ball and squirt gun with them the whole time...laughing and giggling and having fun. You don't see many more moms in the water playing with their kids - they all lay out to get a tan here. Another way we stick out like sore thumbs, I guess. But I thought that was a great compliment :)

Progress: Today in school we practiced letters in a tray of sugar, tracing the letters with our fingers. I turned into the English teacher, teaching her the names of the letters. She still can't say "S", "R", or "Z" so we work with her on that every day. Today she finally said R and Z!!!! I taught her how to stick her lips out, and "nem" use her tongue like "L" ...and growled like a dog...finally she said "rrr" and she got a cookie, a high five, and a twirl around the living room on daddy's shoulders to celebrate.  Then I showed her that Z is actually an S sound along with a hum...and after a lot of practicing she started "buZZZ"ing like a bee! More high fives and another twirl. Speech therapy class done for today. Time for another cappuccino.

Today it's been 2 WEEKS since we got custody of Princess. She's really coming out of her shell, and fitting in with us, picking on us even, very well. She can be very funny.