The butcher

I often stop at the butcher around the corner from our apartment. There are two ladies who work there with the occassional other worker. I feel like the two ladies have gradually warmed up to me. I'm not sure if it is just that they have gotten use to me coming in or if they appreciate my effort with the language. I like to believe that they appreciate my efforts. It is one place where I have been able to steadily get better with speaking Czech. When I started I would just point and then pay. Since I couldn't really see the register and couldn't understand what they were saying i would just blindly hand them money. I gradually was able to understand the amount and hand them the appropriate amount of money. I still didn't know how to tell them how much of somethng I wanted though. They would say "kolik" and I would use my fingers to show them how much I wanted. I can finally walk in and say what I want and how much of it I want!! When I went in to do this for the first time the other day it was a very warm day so they had to door open to the outside to let in some air. This is really not an American thing to do since there were a lot of flies flying around inside the store. If I walked into a store in the US that had all these flies I would probably walk out but here it is normal so I just ordered my food. Ali was in her stroller pointing to the flies and clapping her hands like she was trying to catch them. It was the first time that I ordered completely in Czech and it was the first time that the two ladies spoke about the girls. They thought that Ali was really cute. Maybe they would have thought Ali was cute anyway but I felt like I had graduated in the eyes of the butcher!