This morning we took Kristine to the bus and it came right on time. They don't play around. You'd better be ready to get on the bus or it will leave without you.. Rob had to even pry the door open as the driver tried to close it before Kristine could board. I guess part of that was our fault because we were hugging and kissing Kristine goodbye before we'd let her on the bus. She was totally embarrassed by the way. LOL! Another funny thing...we had told her that she needed to get up at 6:45 a.m. to get ready but she insisted that she not get up until 7:00 instead. Our solution to that was to set the alarms for 6:45 anyway and just tell her it was actually 7:00. Problem solved! :-) We enjoy the morning walks to the bus because it's usually snowing and so beautiful. We get to see all of the locals heading to work or school, shoveling the snow off the sidewalks, etc. and for a moment we get to pretend we live here. The strange stares from the locals, remind us that we'll never blend in. Oh well. We're just the American freaks as far as they're concerned.
We were a little nervous about putting Kristine on the bus by herself but she insisted and her children's home director and Ilga said it was okay. Rob and I were actually glad to have a little time to ourselves. I'm a little embarrassed to say that instead of sight seeing, we went back to the flat and went back to sleep. We had been up late the night before so we were exhausted. By the time we woke up, it was almost time to pick up Kristine at the bus stop again. YIKES! She said she could come back on her own but we insisted.
In the meantime, we got word from Leila that Olegs said today was a "special day" at school so he would be getting out early and could catch the bus to our flat earlier. Rob and I chuckled because he had never mentioned this before and we think he may have found a way to skip a class so he could come be with us. It's not for us to say though. If they say he can come over then we want him to come over and hang out with us as much as he can. So we had to be at Kristine's stop at 2:20 and Olegs' stop at 2:00. That meant Rob and I had to split up. He waited for Olegs and I waited for Kristine. I waited and waited for Kristine as buses with her number came and went. It turns out that her bus had already come and she had gone looking for Olegs. Finally, since she couldn't find him, she came back to her normal stop and met up with me so we could walk back to the flat.
A short time later, Rob and Olegs arrived at the flat. Olegs was so excited to be there. We all had an afternoon snack and he helped me work on our puzzle while Kristine did her school work. Afterward, we went to the grocery store so Kristine could get some paper and paint that she needed for her art class. This was a frustrating trip because we realized after we got back to our flat that we had all of our groceries but somehow the paint didn't make it into our bag. We got on Kristine's case about this so she started pouting, etc. AAARRRGGHHH! We finally decided we had no choice but to head back out to get more paint. We told her to be more careful because we had to pay for the paint twice!! While we were at the store, the kids helped us get extra minutes for our Latvian cell phone. Thank goodness they were able to figure out how to add the minutes to the phone for us. We would never have been able to figure it out.
Once the pouting finally subsided we took the kids to Lido again for dinner. This time we had fruit, sausages, etc. and I had this awesome chicken dish with cheese and spices and crispy things on top. We were all in heaven. By the time we finished, it was time to get Olegs to the bus back to his children's home. This has actually worked out pretty well. Since they kids have school ID cards, they get to ride the buses for free. That's a tremendous bonus!
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