Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Full fledged citizen


Someone had asked me for pictures of the judge in Petro that heard our case. I can't remember where I saw that. Please send me an e-mail and I'll send to you personally.

Well, we headed down south Sunday after church to New Orleans. We received a letter about 2 weeks ago telling us to come to New Orleans for Almira to take an oath of allegiance to the country. We spent the night in a nearby hotel and got up Monday morning and headed across the interstate to the immigration office.

We could not bring in a camera at all, so Mom had to take it back to the car. There was only room in the small office for Almira and I so Mom and Sarah stayed out front in the waiting room. The waiting in the waiting room took longer than the entire process. They had a big thick file on Almira (or maybe it was on Jon and I). They pulled out her Certificate of Citizenship and she signed a few places and then took an oath and that was it. We were done by about 9:30. Our appointment was at 9AM and we got there about 8:40. They truly do not call you back until it is your appointment time. We got called back at almost 9:15.

Then we took our time coming home, stopping in Baton Rouge and taking the girls to the big mall there and then having lunch. Back to work today for me and another day hanging out with Memmie and Pawpaw.

Almira will go to the school on Thursday and get tested to see what grade they think she can go into. We are still thinking 6th, which would only be 2 grades behind where we are now. But she might surprise me and do well enough for 7th. I do worry about her being mature enough for 7th grade here in America. At times she seems much younger than 14 and at other times she seems older than her years.

Tonight we had Russian night at our house, kind of. We stopped at the grocery on the way home and bought stuff to make chicken salad. We just baked our chicken and then I put it in a food processor with lots of mayo (courtesy of Almira). Then she cut up tomatoes and cucumbers with lots of salt and pepper. We made Jon some without the veggies. Then we cooked Blinys. Almira wanted to do them almost all by herself. I helped her get the ingredients out and measure them. She cooked them all by herself and did pretty good. They were of course thicker than the ones we had in Almaty, but I think it is an art form to making blinys.

She is a pretty good cook and really enjoys cooking. I just wish I could get her to love cleaning up, although she does pretty good.

Things are going well here and the countdown is on for school to start. The girls go back on Wednesday, August 22nd.

Till later,
Kathy B.