The Land That I Will Show You

Graduation day. Expectations were high for fabulous fashions; the boys in dark suits, the girls in school uniforms (aka French maid outfits). Alas, many of them opted for simple dark dresses, likely in response to the prayers sung out over the megaphone of the new mosque.

We had mixed news about Sholpan today. The good news is she is feeling better and should be well for court on Monday. The bad news is they will not let us go visit her because we are not her parents and “the hospital is full of germs that Americans are not used to”. So, we visited Rinat and Zarina and sent Svetlana to see Sholpanka who was a bit teary-eyed when she heard we could not visit her but was relieved that we hadn’t just abandoned her completely. We sent her some snacks and some crafts and a jigsaw puzzle. She is apparently getting some rest, which is more than Zarina can say; she was up a lot last night coughing.

Rinat seems okay and always suppresses any desire to cough when the doctor is around. Rinat and Sholpan both wrote documents to the court today saying, in their own apparently humorous words, that they want to have us as their parents and to have their surname changed and to move to the US. Our court is scheduled for Monday morning. We hope to be back in Richmond Tuesday evening sometime.