Taking the Metro to McDonalds

The boys slept all night long (as far as I know) and got up around 7 AM. They had a great day with Oksana and then with John and Andre when they came home for school. At 6:30 I told them to get their coats and shoes on and we would go to a restauarant. We walked a bit to a place where I could change money then took the metro. The boys have probably never been on an escalator and certainly never on the metro. The escalator was very itimidating at first (especially as the subways are very, very deep in the ground in the former Soviet cities I've been in. Little Oleg almost fell getting on so taking no chances I picked him up as we got off. As I'd always walked to the restuarant I wanted to go to (a buffet-type place where language doesn't come in to play unless you really need to know what is in the mystery meat) so didn't know which entrance to go out. We wandered for a second and then both boys made me understand that there would be dire consequnces if we didn't locate a toilet right then. So we quickly retraced our steps to the McDonals at the metro entrance. I reached my saturation point on McDonalds meals many years ago but I suppose it is a mandatory visit for our two little future American citizens. They might even require previous knowledge of McDonalds to get their US visas for all I know. So in we went. They really enjoyed it but barely got through their french fries without even getting to the cheeseburger. I begrudgingly helped finish oen extra burger off. The metro ride back saw the boys gaining escalator navigation skills, with Sasha leading the way passing people on left and right. We finished the excursion off with a visit to the supermarket for Sasha to buy a new toothbrush as he had managed to lose his in less than 48 hours. The supermarket didn't seem to be a foreign environment to them so perhaps they had been in one before they went into the orphanage. They were pretty good about pestering me for unneeded items - except for ice cream. The night ended with another long bath/swimming session in the local bathtub.