Aqua Magic

Last week we tagged along with some expat friends to a local waterpark for a day of excitement. 

They had a great children's area with a great range of slides, from itty bitty to quite big (but still kid friendly). 

The water was a little cool in the morning--most of us were fine but poor Miri was teeth-chattery and shivery (but still refused to be removed from the water for more than a minute at a time). 

Those big slides on the far right were the biggest in the kids area (though they had adult slides elsewhere in the park). I thought they looked really fun and I talked Niko into doing two of them, both of which he hated. Ah well! Gotta try!

While we mostly hung out with the kids, Jesse and I (who played hooky from work) each took a minute to go to the adult swim area and swim a bit. It was very refreshing!

We had lunch at a little spot in the park (which, unlike US waterparks, has not learned that they can increase their prices due to a captive audience) with a few other families. 

In the picture above is Quentin, a friend of Niko's from preschool (he's in the picture below too, but this one actually shows his face!) His family is from Germany, and while his mom speaks fluent English (seriously impressive), he speaks German and Russian. Communicating with him is always fun--I always want to try in German, but then my brain starts to insert Russian words and phrases and accents, and I start to switch into Russian! Luckily he's a nice kid, and he's patient with me while I switch back and forth ;) 

The other boy with Niko is his friend Zane. They also went to preschool together and have become best friends, though if I remember right, at the beginning of the year they were bitter enemies (by which I mean they had little squabbles often and there might have been drawn blood once...). Zane was the only other American in the class and I think Niko enjoyed having at least one friend that he can speak English with. 

Zane's family is moving to Moscow this week, and we got to say goodbye to them at his sister's birthday party on Wednesday. It was at an awesome indoor play place called Panda Kids, with tons of cool stuff for the kids to do. I tried to get a good picture of the boys but this was the best I got: 

Bon Voyage, Zane & co.!