"I am from Russian"

The past few weeks a woman and her son have been visiting from Russia.  They come here and to China to get medical treatment for Sasha.  They are LDS and have been here before so we were put in touch with them by other members of the ward who got to know them the last time they were here.   We've really missed Russia since coming here so it was such a treat to be able to speak Russian again and get to know them.  Sasha is such a sweet little guy and quite a miracle. He got a staph infection as a newborn and was pronounced clinically dead several times.  He wasn't supposed to come out of the coma and certainly was never expected to function on any level.  He is making great progress.  Tanya, like so many Russian women, is very resilient and faces challenges and difficulties without asking "why me?" or feeling bad for herself.  Tanya wanted to keep busy and see as much as possible while Sasha wasn't at doctors' appointments so we had a fabulous time going all around Singapore together.  Apparently, we told people often about them and that they were Russian or from Russia because Samara said to someone the other day, "nice to meet you, I am from Russian".

Bonsai Garden.  You can see how thrilled Samara is to be in the picture.  Tanya loved taking pictures every where we went.  She put me and the stereotype of a camera-happy Japanese tourist to shame.

 

We visited the turtle museum again.  We went there when April and George were visiting and Samara has been asking to go back ever since.  This place boasts the world's largest collection of turtles and holds the Guinness Book of World Records for it.

We feel it is important to build a child's self esteem and boy does Samara ever feel good when she is up against a turtle.  She wins every time.

I had no idea turtles could be so freaky.  This is only one of the many bizarre turtle species they had there.