Wednesday - Soccer tonight

Well, it’s Wednesday in Czestochowa and all is well. The temps have cooled off a little bit so we’re sleeping a little better. Our daily routine goes something like this…
7-8a Breakfast and lounging with the kids
8-9a daily trip to market for water, juice, milk, etc.
9-10a Tom goes to internet café to work and I play with the kids in the apt
10-1 Walk and do some sort of activity
1-3’ish Nap (Tom usually works and I either nap also or go for a run)
3-4’ish Movie on computer for Hayden, play and exercise for Paulina
4-7’ish Walk, play in park, KFC, run around park (Hayden is now running at a full sprint for 30 minutes at a time in the park. It’s great because he crashes around 9pm and sleeps the whole night, but it’s getting hard to keep up with him!!!!)
7-9p wind down with movie and go to bed.

Repeat daily :-) This morning we attempted to actually tour Jasna Gora, but Hayden and I were wearing shorts and shorts are not allowed. So, we instead explored the many, many souvenir kiosks along the streets surrounding it and picked up a lovely horse and cowboy toy set, circa 1950, for Hayden. It was the best $5 ever spent! He actually rode happily in the stroller all the way back to the apt and continues to play with them on the sofa. I think we’re on to something that might just change our lives. Last night after a really long walk (and 30 minute sprint for Hayden) through the park, we bought him a popsicle and were actually able to sit down and have a beer at one of the outdoor cafes around the corner. Astonishing!!!! Bribery… it’s the best thing ever!! Undoubtedly we won’t receive any “Parent of the Year” awards for this new technique, but we are in survival mode here and must do what works :-)

Here are a few pictures from our walk last night of the park and promenade. We’re going to a local soccer match tonight, taking the train and everything. It should be interesting… we were going to try and go to Krakow for a night or two, but because we don’t officially have custody of Paulina yet, we would have had to use an orphanage driver which was going to cost a small fortune and give us absolutely no flexibility. So, we’ll just make that trip later in our stay J The crowds are already starting to arrive here for the August 15 celebration at Jasna Gora. Every day there are parades of people making the pilgrimage from other parts of the country. I neglected to take the camera this morning, but there were several groups of high school age kids singing with guitars around the church. I’ll take it with me in the morning so we can get some video to post – very interesting…

Glad to hear Edouard (sp?) didn’t do much damage. BBC World gave it 15 seconds of coverage and said only that the storm provided much needed rain to “drought-stricken Texas”… pretty funny.