A little bit about the capital city

Today (Sunday), we woke up, ate breakfast, and had time to take a walk through the capital city before packing up to leave for K's city.

We stayed in a quite nice hotel, with great staff who were very happy to help us out (in English!) in any way they could. The rooms were very up to date, and I was reminded of when we stayed in a tiny boutique hotel with friends of ours when we were graduate students and had a field trip to NYC for one of our classes.This is a view of our room.

The doors had very cool hinges. ;) I have to give the credit for noticing these to Matt. I'm not so observant about these things. But if you look, you'll notice that the part of the hinge that's on the door is made to nest inside the part of the hinge that's on the frame so you don't have to cut into either the door or the frame to make it fit.

I took this photo of the wallpaper especially for Leah. It had a deeply textured flower pattern and was a very dusky purple. VERY cool.

The swanky interior of the hotel was definitely a contrast to the surroundings. Here are a few views from our tiny little balcony. First, some smaller buildings that appear to be residential, though just to the left along the street there are some small shop fronts. I saw a cat run through this courtyard! Aren't the red tile roofs neat? Matt laughs at how intrigued I am by these. He has his hinges, I have my red roofs. ;) Even from the plane as we were landing I was mesmerized by all the red roofs.

We took the stairs up and down from our room most of the time, largely because they were fun marble stairs, but also because it's nice to be able to walk when we can. Each half landing had a window looking out at this:

(um, photo isn't working. I'll try again later.)

(just tried again, and still no luck. Oh well.)

(Ah ha! Trying again now (five days later) and it works!! Hope it was worth the wait!)

But there is also this view from our hotel room - the city is surrounded by mountains - very beautiful! The picture doesn't come even close to doing the view justice. So use your imagination a bit here!

We took a few photos on our walk this morning. This was the most notable building we saw - according to our hotel desk staff, it is the largest cathedral in the country. It was quite impressive.

One thing that was very striking to us on our walk was that despite the fact that everything here seems to be falling apart, there is still a level of care demonstrated through how tidy the city is. The sidewalks are incredibly uneven, and patched all over with concrete, or gravel, or not patched, and walking them is an adventure, but they are not covered with garbage - I think we saw two aluminum cans and one cigarette package laying on the ground where we walked - otherwise nothing of that sort. On two different streets we saw city crews out emptying the public trash cans into a garbage truck, and then going around after with brooms sweeping up the litter that was still lying in the street. We don't see that level of care where we live! Here (in MN) they send the street sweepers out once a year and call it good!

Here is a photo of the paving in one place that we thought was too neat to NOT photograph. It's also a good example of the different patching methods that are used when repairs are needed.

I also liked the flowers here - this was not the only place we saw something like this. Things are a little further into spring here than they are in MN (grass is green, but trees are not yet budded out), and I would guess that in another month when these flowers settle in, they are beautiful!

But I think my favorite part of our walk was this street sign near a playground area. Whoever designed this had a sense of humor!

And lastly, one photo from our drive through the mountains to K's city. Again, my photos of the mountains don't do anything to capture what they're really like, so I'll just share this one. I think this is a fantastic idea for gas stations - they have these periodically all along the highway. If you need gas, you don't need to get off at the nearest exit and drive until you get to a station; here they are right off the side of the highway - you just drive off, fill up, and then drive and merge right back on. Super easy on/off! (We're right up in the mountains here, and the mountains behind me are more significant than what you see in this photo.)

So that's where we're at! And since it's now 8pm here, it's high time for bed. ;) Lots to think about in preparation for our day tomorrow. At 10am (3am for all you Midwesterners reading this), we will arrive at K's orphanage, meet with the director for 15-20 minutes, and then we'll get to meet our boy!