Updates (from Kim)

It’s been hard for me to update because I try not to think about Thursday too much and I know Aaron already covered it.  I will just say that it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do – Oliver was trying to be brave and not cry, Amanda and the foster mother were openly crying and even the foster dad was tearing up. 

Friday and Saturday have been challenging for all of us.  Not just the language barrier but trying figure out everyone’s personalities and getting familiar with new environments.

We moved this morning to our apartment in Hajduszobozlo(Hi-ju-zoo-bo-zlo).  Try saying that 5 times fast.  On the way, we stopped at a large Tesco to pick up some groceries.  Try buying groceries in a store and you can’t read anything – what an experience!  The boys were well behaved in the store.  We decided to divide and conquer so Aaron took Sam/Hammi in a shopping cart and I had Drew/Christopher with me.  The store has these little pull behind carts and Drew pulled it for me and held my hand the whole time.  When we finished and were driving off in the car, the boys started arguing and George (facilitator) said that they were arguing about what we bought.  Sam said that we bought oranges (he was with Aaron and they picked out the fruit), but Drew said no, we bought apple juice (he was with me and we picked out the juice).  They are funny when they argue because we don’t know what they are saying but we can tell they are arguing, then they stop talking and both cross their arms and look away from each other.  This lasts about 10 seconds before they start looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes.  Then they start laughing and talking again.  We got to our apartment about 1pm and  - SURPRISE – there’s a washer/dryer for me!  Yes, I said washer/dryer because this is one machine that does both.  The landlord said that it wouldn’t get clothes completely dry but that I could hang them up on a drying rack to finish drying.  I’m not going to complain because I think this is a big deal and I know another couple who were just here, and the wife had to wash things in the sink because she didn’t have a washer and there aren’t Laundromats around here.  It’s a small washer/dryer.  I think I can maybe get 2 pair of jeans in it, but I’m not complaining.

The apartment is nice – bigger than we expected.  It has 2 separate bedrooms, a decent kitchen with a dorm-size refrigerator (again, not complaining just explaining) stocked with most necessities, and bathroom.  There’s even a small balcony.  Cornell (driver) and George drove us to the church (Saint Ladislaw or Szent Laslo in Hungarian) so we could find mass times and know the distance before showing us the indoor pool building and several restaurants and grocery stores.  If you want to Google the town name, you will see that it is famous for the water parks.

I’ve been looking forward to cooking for a while so I bought spaghetti ingredients.  It was not good.  The noodles were really sticky and the jarred sauce had a sweet flavor to it.  Aaron was nice enough to eat one helping, but the boys seemed to like it and both used bread to scrape their plates afterwards.