We are home!!!!

We are finally home! We got in late last night and are quite tired, but glad to be home. Our next few days will be spent getting acclimated to the time zone, grocery shopping, doing laundry, buying clothes, and working on English. I promise that one of these days I really will get around to updating the blog...It just might not happen for a week or so! Thank you all for your prayers and support! It has been great sharing this journey with all of you!

May God richly bless you all!

I'm still behind....

I know I'm still a few days behind, but I'll catch up! In the meantime, please pray that will be able to find reasonably priced airline tickets home. When Fred called Northwest to see about changing my flight and getting flights for the girls, the flights were pretty full for next week and it would be over $6000 to fly home on Wednesday, there are no available flights on Thursday, and over $5,000 to fly home Friday. We may end up having to buy tickets on another airline. Please pray that we'll be able to work something out!

Thanks!

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Today was a very good day. It’s the first day we’ve done something completely different in quite a while! One of the drivers picked up Mark, Christine, and Kseniya and then headed to my apartment to pick me up. We all headed to the orphanage where we would meet up with the girls. Kseniya was teaching us how to make borsch and so we all headed for Amstor to pick up some ingredients. Amstor has a DVD/CD store in the front section and since Mark and Christine are leaving on Tuesday, they wanted Masha to have a chance to pick out a DVD and some CDs. I told Amina and Khrystyna that they could each pick out one DVD and one CD. I also let myself pick out a DVD and CD. We ended up with Happy Feet, the box collection of Cinderella (1,2, and 3) and Maid in Manhattan in Russian. We also ended up with some great CDs. After listening to the radio stations in Russian for the last 4 weeks, I can hum along with a lot of the songs and I had some favorites that I wanted to get. We were all quite pleased with our selections. The girls had only been to Amstor twice before and both times were with us and we hadn’t taken them to the food section. They were quite overwhelmed with all the food and they wanted it all! We started off in the fruit section and the girls wanted tons and tons of fruit! I ended up buying 6 apples and 2 pears for Amina and Khrystyna. They asked about oranges, peaches, strawberries, and kiwi too, but we had already put the apples and pears in the cart! We next headed over to the deli to pick up some salads for the girls. Amina and Khrystyna told me that they didn’t really like borscht very much so I wanted to buy some salads for them. Amina and Khrystyna initially picked out the same salad and then Khrystyna changed her mind and decided on a different salad. I figured that we would get a big container of the ham salad both girls liked and a smaller container of the crab salad that only Khrystyna liked. I ordered a big container of the first one and then Masha jumped in and ordered a container of salad for herself. Khrystyna jumped in next and pointed out the salad she wanted. I told the woman that we only needed a small container of the crab salad. Khrystyna and Amina started talking to her in rapid Russian and she pulled out another big container. I didn’t want to end up with too many big containers of salad, so I told the woman we only wanted a small container. She scooped up the same type of salad we had already ordered a large container of. By the time we left we had 5 containers containing 4 different salads. I guess that is what happens when your children speak more Russian than you do! While we stuffing our cart with salad, Kseniya was stuffing our cart with meat and produce for borscht. We finally made it to the checkout counter, paid for our purchases, and headed to the car. When we got to Mark and Christine’s apartment it was decided that Mark would entertain the girls while Christine and I watched Kseniya and took notes. I was a little unsure about how I felt about borscht. Actually, I didn’t think I’d like it, but I thought I should learn to make it so I knew how to make some type of traditional Ukrainian/Russian dish. We have been told by many people here that Ukrainian borscht is much better than Russian borscht. It took us about 2 hours to make the borscht, cut up bread, and serve it. During that time, the girls looked at pictures on Mark’s laptop and watched a DVD. The girls and I also talked to Fred on the phone while the borscht was cooking. They got huge smiles on their faces when they talked to him. I can tell they’re both going to be “daddy’s girls.” When it came time to eat, I took a very small portion of borscht. I took a bite and was very pleasantly surprised. It was delicious!!!!! We had picked up a few loaves of bread at the store and the fresh bread and borscht were fabulous! It is the best meal I’ve had on this whole trip! When we finished eating, we cleared the table and washed the dishes while the girls finished their DVD. After the DVD was over, we let them have ice cream before heading back to the orphanage. I had the driver drop me off at the internet café on the way home so that I could check my e-mail. It didn’t take long to check my e-mail and I then headed back to the apartment. By the time I got home, it was 8:00. I decided to catch up on my journaling before heading to bed. It’s pretty quite here in the apartment without Fred and since phone calls to the US are pretty expensive, I try not to make too many phone calls. I talked to Fred a few times today and will be glad when I’m back home with him. I miss him already and I still have a couple of weeks to go! ☹

Friday, June 8, 2007

Our plan today was to have our driver pick up Mark and Christine along with myself at our apartment at noon. Mark and Christine had a driver bring them to my apartment this morning and then they walked from here to the center of the city. I spent some time around the apartment this morning and then walked to the center of the city to get some pictures printed of Sergey, Khrystyna, and our family. I wanted him to have prints of the pictures. Also, I want Khrystyna to be able to pick out a frame and we will frame one of the pictures to give to him. The photo place was a zoo today and so it took forever to pick up the pictures I dropped off last week and have them upload the new pictures I want to have printed. As I walked back towards my apartment, Mark called to tell me that he and Christine were running a little late. They wanted to know if I would ask the driver to pick them up at Vivat time instead. I said that wouldn’t be a problem and headed home to get all the things we would need for the day. I grabbed the necessary stuff from the apartment and headed down to the car. We picked up Mark and Christine and headed to the orphanage to get the girls. When we got to the orphanage, the girls ran over to hug us and say hello. After all the hugs, Amina said “Mom, dad is America. I am sad,” I said “Yes, Amina dad is on his way back to America. I’m sad too. Are you sad Khrystyna?” Khrystyna put on a very sad face and said “Yes.” The sad face lasted about 3 seconds, then she put on a bright smile and said “Lunch?” It totally made me laugh! We let the girls decide where we wanted to go to lunch and they picked Vivat Time. While we waited for Kseniya, the girls all got in one of the cars and pretended that they were driving. Masha pretended to be our driver Misha, Amina sat in the front seat and announced “I am Papa” and Khrystyna waws content to sit in the back seat and be herself.” After Kseniya came out and gave instructions to our drivers, we headed for Vivat Time. My girls picked out a TON of food. You’d think they’d never eaten before. Our normal lunch bill for Amina, Khrystyna, Fred, and I has been 55-70 grivnas. Our bill today was 67 grivnas and I only got a piece of chicken and some mashed potatoes. Khrystyna had 2 salads, a piece of chicken, a sandwich, a large bag of chips, a large glass of juice, and a bottle of water. Amina had a salad, a hug plate of pasta stuffed with meat, a sandwich, a large piece of cake, a yogurt drink, a box of juice, and a bottle of water. They both ate everything but the sandwiches and they asked me to put the sandwiches in my bag so they could eat them at the park. When the girls had finished most of their food, we went through the flashcards I made. I added another 70 or so and they did a surprisingly good job with the ones we hadn’t taught them. After a while, the girls seemed tired of the flashcards and we were all ready to head to the park. We hopped in the car and headed for “Crocodile” park. We decided to only give the girls 15 grivna each, but that we would pay for their ice cream. Amina tried to negotiate how much money we were giving her, but I stuck to the 15. They paid to go on a few rides and then they discovered a playground that was back behind the roller coaster. You had to pay 1 grivna to get into the playground, but it was large and quiet. The girls tried out various pieces of playground equipment before settling on a large row of swings. They were all having a fabulous time swinging when they decided they should swing AND sing. Christine and I were quite surprised when they started singing “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands” in English. Christine and I ran over and joined them and then began singing it in Russian. We had learned it in our Russian class earlier this year! The girls then went through their repertoire of English children’s songs. When they exhausted their knowledge of English childrens songs, they began singing Russian children’s songs. They sang a really cute song about 10 bananas and a gorilla. It was a really fun time. After a long time of playing, we headed out of the playground to hit a few more rides before heading out for ice cream. Masha and Khrystyna wanted to go on the roller coaster and Amina wanted to go on the castle bouncy thing. I’m sure the lady who runs the crocodile was completely depressed when we ran by without stopping. I think she was counting on us to put all her kids through college! Mark and Christine went with Masha and Khrystyna over to the roller coaster and Amina and I headed to the castle bouncy thing. I think Amina was totally enjoying the peace and quiet of being able to bounce by herself! It didn’t last long because Masha and Khrystyna came over soon after to jump with her! The girls jumped for quite a while before time was up and we headed to the ice cream shop. We went to the same shop we went to on the first day with Khrystyna and Masha We had all talked about the shop, but none of us remembered where it was. We discovered yesterday that it is the coffee shop across from my apartment. We didn’t have our bearings when we went there the first time, so we had no idea where it was! We all got small bowls of ice cream and when we were done with our ice cream, the girls were all still hungry. I had the sandwiches Amina and Khrystyna had left over from lunch and they ate those as well as each having a bag of pretzels I had in my bag! The girls can pack away an amazing amount of food. We were quite surprised when we got our bills. This café has prices like we’re accustomed to in America. Each of our bowls of ice cream was nearly $4 and our bottle of water was over a dollar. It’s not quite like the prices at the other ice cream shop we usually go to! After ice cream, we headed back to the orphanage. I had the driver take me to the internet café so I could check my e-mail and then I walked back to the apartment. I was tired and hungry, so I made myself a small snack/dinner, made a few quick phone calls, and headed to bed! I knew that Fred would be getting in around 5am my time and I wanted to be awake enough to talk to him when he called! He ended up getting in closer to 7am my time, called to let me know he made it home safely, and then he went home and crashed. His trip home was about 36 hour of non-stop travel!

Thursday, June 7,2007

When we woke up this morning, we decided to go grab a quick bite to eat at the coffee shop across the street. We knew that Sasha would be coming today and he told us that it would take most of the day to sign paperwork, so we wanted to be ready when he called. We ate a quick breakfast and hurried back to the apartment. After an hour of waiting, Sasha called. It was 9:30 am and he told us he had to make a quick stop and then he would be over to our apartment. We waited…and waited….and waited. By a little after noon, we were hungry and we knew Fred wouldn’t have much of a chance to eat on the train in the evening, so we decided to call Sasha. Fred called Sasha and asked if we had time to get a bit to eat. Sasha said that he would be here in 20 minutes. We knew that wouldn’t give us enough time to get to the center of town to eat and we didn’t have much food here, so we ran down to the corner store. We bought a loaf of bread and rushed back to our apartment to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. After another hour of waiting, Sasha still had not arrived. It was very frustrating because if we had known that we didn’t have to do anything in the morning, Fred could have spent his last day with the girls! When Sasha finally arrived, it was 2pm. He asked us to pay him for train tickets and then we headed off to the notary to fill out applications for passports for Amina and Khrystyna. On the way to the notary, Sasha told us that we would be meeting Khrystyna’s brother at 4 pm. I was a little concerned about the time table because the train to Kiev leaves at 4:30pm. When I asked Sasha about this, he said that they would be taking the train from the capital of the city and that it leaves at 7pm. We got to the notary, spent 45 minutes filling out paperwork, and then got in the car to head to the orphanage. Mark and Christine were at the notary too and they got into a separate car to head to the orphanage. Unfortunately, Sasha had some things he wanted to take care of so we rode around in the car with him for an hour before going to the orphanage. I’m not sure why he didn’t have us ride with Mark and Christine, but who knows… When we got to the orphanage, Khrystyna’s brother was already there. When we got out of the car, the girls ran over to hug us. Khrystyna had been sitting on a bench outside of the orphanage with her brother and his girlfriend. It was easy to see just by looking at them how much they love each other. (I’m not sure if I’ve explained anything about Khrystyna’s brother, so let me give you a brief rundown… Khrystyna’s brother Sergey is 20 years old and moved in with the family of a friend when their mom stopped taking care of them. He is the one who arranged for Khrystyna to be placed in the orphanage because he knew they would take care better care of her their. Although he wished he could take care of Khrystyna, he is currently at the University on scholarship and is working 2 jobs. He doesn’t have the time or the money to raise a child, however, he has been encouraging her to find an adoptive family. She has turned many families down over the last few years! He visits Khrystyna regularly and makes an effort to always bring sweets or other treats to her when he comes to visit. Two weeks ago, he signed all the papers for court saying that he thinks it is in the best interest of Khrystyna to be adopted by us. Now, back to our meeting of Sergey.) The girls ran over and hugged us and said hello when we got to the orphanage. We decided to go introduce ourselves to Khrystyna’s brother. Fred and I both know enough Russian to introduce ourselves, so we introduced ourselves to Khrystyna’s brother Sergey and his girlfriend, Vika. They both don’t speak much English, but they were very nice. After a minute or two, we asked Sasha to translate and he came over and invited us all to come into the orphanage with him. Sergey, Vika, Khrystyna, Fred, and I all headed into the orphanage. We had to wait in the room with the loud bird until Ludmilla was ready for us to come into her office. We took some pictures of Khrystyna and her brother while we waited and then we headed into Ludmilla’s office. Sergey’s girlfriend, Vika didn’t come into the meeting. Khrystyna only stayed for the first part of the meeting and then Ludmilla told her to go play outside. During the meeting, Ludmilla told us more about Khrystyna’s brother and what a good kid he is. She also told us that over the years, both she and Sergey have really hoped that Khrystyna would find a good adoptive family. She said that they were always surprised when Khrystyna turned down an adoptive family and that they both kept praying that Khrystyna would find a good adoptive family. Ludmilla said that after meeting us in March and spending time in our home, she told Sergey that we had been handpicked by God to raise Khrystyna and she thought we would be a great family. She said that Sergey felt the same way. She then told us that now Sergey would be one of our relatives. At this point, he got up and came over and hugged Fred and then he hugged me. He hugged me like he didn’t want to let go and held on for a minute. It totally made me cry. When we sat back down, we told him that Khrystyna will be able to call when she wants and we got his phone number and address. We also told him to call us if he ever needs anything. Sasha suggested that he may someday want to come study in the states and we said that if that was what he wanted, we’d be happy to do what we can to help him. Sasha told Sergey that the most important thing he can do if he wants to come to the US is study English. Ludmilla also suggested that we give Sergey some money as a token of our appreciation. She had talked to us about this in March when she was visiting and she suggested we give him $100 USD. He was very appreciative. We wished we had more money with us to give to him! We had a few Master Spas polo shirts with us in Fred’s suitcase that were in still in the packaging, so we let Khrystyna give those to him after the meeting. She was so happy to have something to give him and he looked really happy to receive the shirts. After giving him the shirts, Khrystyna and Sergey started kicking the soccer ball around. We wanted them to have as much time together as possible. After a few minutes, Sasha came out of the orphanage and said “I’m leaving now. Fred, you are coming with me.” We told the girls that dad was leaving and to come say goodbye. It was the quickest goodbye ever since Sasha was already waiting in the car. After Fred left, Khrystyna went back to playing soccer with Sergey and Amina and Masha ran around acting silly. I have no idea what had them so amused, but they were both laughing hysterically. I was able to get some great video of Khrystyna playing soccer with her brother. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have to say goodbye to a sibling, knowing that it could be years before you ever see each other again. I wanted to have something to give Khrystyna so she could remember him and I thought video was a good idea. It wasn’t too long before Sergey said he needed to leave or he’d be late for work. Khrystyna hugged him and Vika and then they walked away. Khrystyna had the saddest look on her face as she stared after them! I can’t imagine what Khrystyna and Sergey are feeling. Today has probably been one of the hardest days of their life. After Sergey left, Mark, Christine, and I said goodbye to the girls and headed to Amstor for lunch. We were all starving at this point. We ate dinner, did some grocery shopping, and headed to the internet café. As our time at the internet café was nearing its end, total darkness and total quiet filled the room. The internet café had lost power. It was quite eery how quiet it was without the sounds of fans from 45 computers. The only sound to be heard was the shuffling of 90 feet heading toward the front counter. The front counter was directly behind where Christine and I were sitting. My laptop and Christine’s laptop provided the only light in the place. We quickly packed up and headed out of there before chaos broke out. When we got up to the street, we saw that the whole side of the street was without power. Thankfully, we were pretty much done in the internet café before we lost power. Our driver was waiting when we headed outside and he took us back to our apartments. I was completely tired and emotionally exhausted by the time I got home. I spent some time on the phone and then headed for bed.

Cirque de Satan…I mean Soleil

When we discussed going to the circus, I have to admit, I had preconceived notions. I was thinking elephants balancing on small platforms, lions, tigers, and leapords jumping through fiery hoops, trapeze artists balance precariously high over a safety nets, and lots and lots of clowns all jumping out of a volkswagon. Even after seeing the tent the other day, I imagined the same type of thing only on a smaller scale…baby elephants instead of fully grown ones, 6 clowns instead of 12, and maybe only 1 lion, with no leapords and no tigers. Boy were we in for a surprise! When we arrived at the circus, we already had our tickets. Our seats were in the 2nd row! Our girls had saved some of their grivna from earlier in the day and we decided to give them a little more grivna for souveneirs. We decided that we would give each of them 20 more grivna, but that we would start off by giving them 5 grivna. Khrystyna also told us she had saved a grivna from the day before, so she had quite a few grivna. The girls each bought yo-yo like things (they were small bags of sand covered in cloth and held together by lots of rubber bands. It had a long piece of a rubber band with a small loop tied in it for your finger that hanging off of it) that could kill a person with the crazy way they swung them around. They looked through the other souveneirs and headed inside. There were sets of wooden bleachers that went almost all the way around the inside of the tent. The bleachers had numbers painted on them and we quickly found our seats. While we standing around our seats talking, Khrystyna asked if she could go on the swing. The swing she was pointing to was a porch swing like bench attached to a long piece of rope with a karabiner (I’m sure I totally misspelled that) that looked like it was meant to hold your water bottle while drinking. It didn’t look very sturdy. Khrystyna told me that it was 5 grivna and that if she went on the swing she would have no grivna left. I told her that we could go ask Dad if he would mind paying for both her and Amina to go. While Fred was trying to decide how safe he thought it was, we looked over and there was Khrystyna…slowly being lifted into the air on the “swing.” She looked thrilled and we decided that in the future we needed to make decisions a little more quickly. We decided to pay to let the girls go on together. Amina gave the lady the money, but before Khrystyna had a chance to jump on the swing with Amina and Masha, two other little kids got on. Khrystyna didn’t get to go up with the other girls, but she got to go on it by herself a second time and she was totally content with that. By the time the circus started, Khrystyna looked exhausted and not too thrilled to be there. I think she is feeling much more secure around us now because when she gets tired, she gets a sad pouty look on her face and isn’t as communicative as she normally is, but she doesn’t go into meltdown mode and she’ll still smile when we make eye contact with her. The circus began as I would expect any other circus to begin. The ringmaster was wearing a tux and introduced the first act…trapeze artists. There was no safety net under the trapeze and the man and woman began with some cool tricks. The girls were amazed and tried to take lots of pictures. It was a little difficult with the lack of lighting. At one point, the man on the trapeze was holding the women with a harness that wrapped around his head and that he held onto with his teeth. It was awesome! Then a young girl came out with a few hula hoops. She did a dance and began slowly picking up hula hoops with her feet while continuing to keep the other hula hoops going around her waist. She got to the point where she was hula-ing about 20 or 30 hoops at the same time. She had them going around her waist, around her arms, and with her feet.It was pretty amazing. What followed was not quite as amazing. A woman came out holding a large round tray full of pigeons. For what seemed like the next 3 hours (although, it was only about 15 minutes) she would pick up individual pigeons and have them do tricks…like fly. She had them fly to a certain stand and then one that sat on her shoulder. It was bizarre and slightly disturbing. When her act was finally over, she walked around the ring, coaxing the pigeons to get back on the tray and leave with her. She left one pigeon and it wandered around for a while during the next act. The next act was a clown with a cute little monkey on a string! The monkey did some tricks and ran around the ring. The next act was a guy who balanced on some large rolling tubes. I don’t even know how to describe it…you’ll have to check out the pictures. The balancing man was followed by the woman trapeze artist, however, she was not using the trapeze…she was using a long dangling rope. She climbed the rope and dangled herself precariously in all kinds of cool positions! I think she may have been the best act of the evening. The next guy out was pretty young. His act was pretty much an example of everything you don’t want your kids to do. He juggled with fire and ran it up and down his arms, he laid on the ground and had a woman drop sharp knifes on his stomach, he jumped on glass with bare feet, and then laid down in the glass while having a girl jump on his stomach. While jumping on the glass he managed to cut his feet. He also jumped on a board with a bunch of nails sticking through it and then laid down on the board and had a man stand on his stomach. If that wasn’t bad enough, they then brought out a boa constrictor that he wrapper around his neck and swung around. He walked around the outside of the ring…a foot in front of the audience holding the snake. He then picked a young boy from the audience and had him come to the center of the ring and hold his arms out from his side like a cross, then he placed the snake on the boys arms. The snake probably weighed as much as the boy. I was pretty horrified. I was pretty relieved when it was time for intermission. The girls were really hungry since they hadn’t had a chance to eat yet. I got some popcorn while the girls looked at other souvenirs. I noticed that the clown was outside with the monkey and that you could pay to have your picture taken with the monkey. I asked Fred to take the girls to get their picture taken with the monkey while I waited for the popcorn. The girls had no interest in getting their picture taken with a monkey. I also noticed that they were allowing children to get their picture taken with the boa constrictor. If you paid the money, they would put the snake around the child’s neck and take a picture. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. After getting popcorn, we headed back into our seats for what would be the most bizarre part of the circus. When the ringmaster announced the next act, they turned the lights way down and 2 men dressed as grim reapers came out pushing a cross. They men were completely creepy. They just stood by the cross after they pushed it into the ring. Then a girl came out in a hooded robe holding a candle and chanting. It was like being part of some Satanic ritual. We were totally freaked out. Next a man came out dressed in an old Roman centurion costume. He had the shinguards and breastplate and he had a bow and extremely sharp arrows. He shot them at the center of the cross and then the creepy chanting woman in the robe blindfolded him and spun him around. He was pointing the arrow at various people in the crowd before he finally shot it at the target. There were a lot of scary things like this for the rest of the circus. At one point when the woman in the robe was chanting and doing a strange dance, I was thinking I really don’t want the girls to see this. I don’t want them to think this is normal. At that exact moment, Amina leaned over and said “Mom, that woman crazy!” I was relieved that she realized that! We were so glad when it ended. We took the girls out to the pizzeria after the circus and the girls each got a salad. Khrystyna took apart all the souvenirs from the circus and put them back together again. She then began doing that to Amina’s souvenirs and managed to break it. Amina was very gracious about it. Fred and I told the girls that we would take it home with us and fix it. We were able to use clear nail polish as glue and we were able to get it fixed! By the time we left the restaurant, it was well after 9 and by the time we got back to the orphanage, the lights were out and all the kids were in bed. We quickly said goodnight to the girls and headed home!

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

We decided that we would spend our morning getting some new 5 x 7 cards, getting Khrystyna’s sunglasses fixed, and spending whatever time we had left at the internet café. Kseniya called and told us our driver would pick us up at our apartment at 12. We told her that our cleaning lady was coming and that we were planning on heading into town when she got there. We asked if our driver could pick us up at the internet café at 12. She said she would call him and then call us back. She sent us a text message telling us that our driver would pick us up at 10 at our apartment. Unfortunately, we were out of minutes on our phone (all phones in Ukraine our pay as you go) and we had no way to call her back and tell her that we didn’t need a driver until 12. Our driver took us to the internet café and then we walked from there to get flashcards and to get Khrystyna’s sunglasses fixed. By the time we made it back to the internet café, we didn’t have much time left before our driver would be arriving to pick us up. We quickly checked our e-mail and uploaded some more photos to Picasa. When we arrived at the orphanage, Kseniya told us that we needed to have lunch somewhere in the center of the city (either vivattime or Papa Karlo) and then we would walk from there to the park in the center of the city. When we asked the girls where they wanted to have lunch, Khrystyna and Amina both said “Amstor.” Kseniya told them they had to choose between vivattime and Papa Karlo and they chose Papa Karlo. When we got to Papa Karlo, Amina and Khrystyna were able to translate what was in certain foods to us. We’re always curious as to what different foods are…is it chicken, potatoes, fish? They now have been telling what each item is in English. We’re so proud of how hard they are working on their English. After lunch, we headed to the park. We told the girls that they needed to play at the playground first and then we would let them go on one of the inflatable bouncy things. We decided that we would give them money again today since they did so good with it yesterday. Also, there was a vendor outside the playground who sold necklaces, blow up Scooby Do and Shrek, and various other inexpensive toys. The girls have asked many times if they can get one of the toys, so today we told them that if they wanted to use their money on one of the toys they could, but that money had to also pay for the bouncy thing and ice cream. The girls went on the bouncy thing first, then bought ice cream, then headed for the vendor with the cheap toys. After spending a while asking about the various prices, the girls walked away. I asked Amina if they were going to buy anything and she said “No mom, these 10 grivna, that (and she pointed to the bouncy thing) 10 grivna. We go that.” Although we still have some work to do on her grammar, we have been pleased at how well she has been able to communicate what she is thinking. After one more time on the bouncy thing, it was time to head home. We headed back to the orphanage and dropped the girls off. Then we decided to share a driver with Mark and Christine and go get circus tickets before heading to Amstor. After doing some grocery shopping at Amstor, Mark and Christine were going to go back to our place with us and then our driver would come back later to pick us up. The only flaw to our plan was that after buying circus tickets, we only had 20 grivna on us…$4.00. We were able to buy crackers and pretzels for Fred’s train trip back as well as bottled water. Mark and Christine only had a few more grivna than us and we were all thrilled to go back to our apartment where we could walk somewhere to get some money changed. I’m at the internet café now and I haven’t had a chance to write about the circus, but it deserves it’s own space. I’ll update tomorrow.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

The weather today was perfect! Thank you everyone who has been praying! We decided to try to get some time in at the internet café before heading over to the orphanage. We only had a few minutes, but it gave us enough time to update our blog. We rushed back to the apartment to grab our bag of Frisbees, racquets, balls, and other fun toys that we play with at the park and headed over to the orphanage. Mark and Christine arrived shortly after us and we decided to go to Amstor again for lunch. Amstor is definitely the favorite lunch spot of the adults. Amina likes it, but Masha and Khrystyna didn’t seem to be too thrilled about going there for lunch. We headed to Amstor for lunch and then went to the park with the crocodile. On the way to the park, we discovered that we weren’t the only creatures riding in our car…there was also a large fly. It was about an inch long. Mark, Christine, and Masha were able to see the fly from their car behind us. It had Amina totally freaked out. We first tried to swat it with a book, but we didn’t think our driver would appreciate bug guts smeared on his seat. We then decided to try smooshing it in a wet wipe. This was Amina’s idea, however, when it came time to implement it, she was too scared to get near it. There was a lot of screaming and jumping onto each other’s laps before I finally got brave and smooshed it. It was disgusting. Unfortunately, Khrystyna’s glasses were a casualty of our fly swatting endeavor. We somehow managed to sit on them and they lost a screw. We searched the car but couldn’t find the missing piece so I decided I would hold on to them and we would either get them repaired or replace them. When we got to the park, the girls immediately started talking about all the rides they wanted to go on. We decided to start working on responsibility today and gave each of the girls 20 grivna to spend for the day. This money was for rides and ice cream. All 3 girls decided together what they wanted to spend their money on and we had a very enjoyable time playing. After they had used up most of their money, they decided to head to the outdoor café tent in the park with the ice cream. Ice cream here is pretty expensive and they were each able to buy ice cream and have a little money left over. They used their left over money for fish treats (salted dehydrated fish…YUCK!) and lollipops. I think they each had 4 or 5. They were very willing to share their fish treats and I had a piece to be polite. It looked like shredded cheese, but it was disgusting. The girls all love them so we let them eat them! Also, in Ukraine there are stray animals everywhere. There was a cat who had taken up residence in the little outdoor café and Amina shared her ice cream and fish snacks with the cat. When the girls were finished eating, we ran through all the homemade flashcards I had made. The girls are really doing a great job of remembering English. They’re also starting to use it more regularly. Amina was pretty tired after all the rides today so after our English lesson, she stayed in the café and held the cat. I think the cat was narcoleptic because it stayed asleep no matter what Amina, Fred, or Mark did. It was the strangest thing. While Amina rested and Fred and Mark tormented the cat, Khrystyna and Masha played outside of the tent. After a while, Masha and Khrystyna decided they wanted to go to the playground. We all headed to the playground and stayed there for an hour. Amina and Khrystyna are getting very good at sharing. Since there is only 2 swings on the playground, Masha gets one and Khrystyna and Amina take turns on the other. When it was almost time for our drivers to pick us up, the girls decided they needed to head to the bathroom. Park restrooms in America are usually not my favorite, but they are nothing like Ukrainian park bathrooms. These bathrooms consist of a long stairway underground that ends in the restrooms…stalls with holes in the ground. I’ll leave it at that…it’s disgusting. I accompanied them to the bathroom, but waited outside. The girls all asked for wet wipes to hold over their noses while they are down in the bathroom. By the time we got back from the bathroom, our drivers had arrived and we headed back to the orphanage. We asked Kseniya if she would be willing to spend a few minutes translating for us. We wanted to explain what would be happening over the next few days. We told the girls that Fred would be heading home on Thursday and that I would be staying in Ukraine with them for another week or so. After we are finished our waiting period, I will take the girls to the capital of the region to get their birth certificates and other important documents, then we will get on a train and head to Kiev. In Kiev, each of the girls will have to get physicals done by the American Medical Center in Kiev and Amina will have to get some vaccinations. Children under 10 are not required to get these shots. When we explained this to the girls, Amina was horrified and Khrystyna breathed a very audible sigh of relief. Her sigh of relief was accompanied by a dramatic eye roll! We explained that we will be in Kiev for a few days and that we will have to go the US embassy to get their passports, but that when we have all of that finished, we will be able to head to America. We explained to the girls that we would work on English everyday at home, but that we will also have an English tutor that they will go to 2 times a week. We tried to explain as much as possible and then we asked if they had any questions or if there was anything they were afraid of. Amina immediately spoke up and let us know that she was fearful that she wouldn’t know enough English by the time school started in the fall. We told her that we thought she would be just fine, but that we would be happy to get additional help for them if they were to need it. Khrystyna didn’t have any fears…she just wanted to know if they would be able to go to camp. We told them that they could go to daycamp for 2 weeks this summer. Khrystyna told us that she wanted to go to camp for 5 weeks. We’ll probably have to work out some kind of compromise. After our talk with the girls, we headed back home. The weather had been cool all day so we weren’t as exhausted as we usually were at that time of day. I had been hoping to buy more of the 5 x 7 card stock I had picked up the other day to use as flashcards. I really wanted to make more flashcards. Fred and I walked over to the store that had the flashcards, but they were already closed. We headed to the mall next to see if we could find any good Russian/English phrasebooks for the girls. We didn’t find any that we really liked. We decided that we should probably grab a bite to eat on the way home since it was already almost 7 pm. We stopped at the pizza place that has American style pizza and split a pizza and got juice and water. All of our food was under $3 USD. We were pretty impressed. When we finished eating, we headed back to the apartment to re-evaluate what we needed to send home with Fred. When we packed his suitcase the other night, I packed all my pants and long sleeve tops, but since we’ve had some cooler days, I thought I should probably hang on to some of that stuff. Also, we called Sasha to see what time we would be meeting to sign documents. He said that since Fred’s flight wasn’t leaving til Friday and since Fred was staying here until Thursday, he decided to come on Thursday morning instead. He also said that a woman would be coming to clean our apartment tomorrow morning at 10. She had to come to clean last week and while she was cleaning we had to be out of our apartment. After talking to Sasha, we did some laundry, started planning for tomorrow, and are now getting ready for bed.

Prayer requests and praises

**PRAISE** Our court appointment went smoothly and we were able to book a return ticket for Fred
**PRAISE** The weather finally cooled down. Although I’m not a huge fan of cold rainy weather, I wasn’t specific when I asked for the weather to cool off! My prayer has definitely been answered. Maybe next time I should pray for sunny and low 70s! (I guess you can consider that a new more specific prayer request)
*Pray for safe travel for Fred
*Pray for Amina, Khrystyna, and Masha to pick up English quickly and to not be apprehensive about moving to America
*Pray for a smooth transition when we all head home!
*Please continue to pray for our previously mentioned prayer requests

Monday, June 4, 2007

Today is the day we have been waiting for. When we woke up this morning, we were both excited and nervous. We decided that we would pick up our girls and take them to an early lunch, bring them back to the orphanage, and then head to our apartment to change for court. We took the girls to the café at Amstor. We decided on the way there that we would let each of the girls pick out one DVD to take back to America. They really enjoyed looking through the DVDs and picking out DVDs for themselves! After picking out the movies, we headed into the café for lunch. After the girls picked out their food and sat down at a table, I left Fred to watch them and headed into the store to buy some laundry detergent and some hair stuff. Since it was cold and rainy outside, I also picked up a few mini puzzles for the girls to take to their group. Fred told the girls that they could have ice cream, so we each bought a scoop from the ice cream lady inside the door. Ice cream for the 4 of us cost 8 grivna ($1.60 USD) total. We thought that was a smokin’ deal! Our driver Mischa is wonderful and let the girls bring their ice cream in the car! They ate it on the way back to the orphanage. When we got back to the orphanage, we had Kseniya explain to the girls that we had a meeting in the afternoon and would not be able to hang out with them. They didn’t seem too disappointed. We said our goodbyes and headed home to prepare for court. We quickly got ready and were ready with 45 minutes to spare. I was so nervous I thought I was going to throw up! We spent some time praying together and I felt much calmer when we were done. Earlier this year, Fred and I memorized 1 Chronicles 29:11-12 and have been praying it since then. It has been a great reminder that God is in control. The verse says “Everything in the heaven and earth is Yours O Lord and this is Your Kingdom. We adore you as being in control of everything. Riches and honor come from You alone and You are the Ruler of all mankind. Your hand controls power and might and it is at your discretion that men are made great and given strength.” As we headed to court, I reminded myself of the truths in that verse over and over again. Since Svetlana was still in Kiev, we were told that we would meet Lena the official translator at court. When we arrived at court, we waited upstairs in the hallway with the orphanage social worker. She did not speak much English, so we had to wait patiently for Lena to arrive. We had arrived at 2:45 so we had a little bit of time to wait before court started. Lena showed up at 2:55 and we thought that court would start promptly at 3. Unfortunately, at 3:15, we were still waiting in the hallway. The judges for our case weren’t in the courtroom yet, so we continued to wait for them. When the judges finally showed up, it was 3:20. We entered the courtroom and had a seat. There were 3 judges presiding over our case. The social worker from the orphanage was there as a representative of the orphanage and the director of social work for the city was there as a representative for the city. There was also a prosecutor who was present to make sure all proceedings were legal. Court began promptly and Lena translated as the judges read documents. They weren’t pausing to allow for translation. They read documents quickly and Lena had to translate at the same time they were speaking. It was pretty impressive! After reading our application to adopt, the status reports for the girls along with their family history and medical history, they read excerpts from the letters the girls wrote requesting to be adopted by us. It was really cute. They then told us that they had questions for us and we stood up to answer their questions. They asked us if we would love Amina and Khrystyna and care for them as our own children, how long we had known the girls, if we felt we had adequate time to make a decision about adoption, and what our relationship was like with the girls. They also asked how we were going to help the girls with the transition to living in the US and learning to speak English. We were surprised that they didn’t ask more questions. They asked us to sit down and they asked for the opinion of the orphanage and the city. Both representatives stated that they believed that it would be in the best interest of the girls to be adopted by us and that they could tell by our interactions with the girls that we loved them very much. Next, they asked the prosecutor to stand up. He seemed very bored during the court session, but he stood up and said that he had been paying close attention to the proceedings and that everything had been legal. The judges then conferred among themselves for a minute before announcing that our adoption was approved and that after the 10 day waiting period, we could pick up our documents and begin the process of getting visas and passports for the girls. From start to finish, we were only in the courtroom for 20 minutes. We were not allowed to take pictures in the court room, but we took a few outside the courthouse to commemorate the occasion. We then headed to the orphanage to briefly see the girls. While we were in court, Mark and Christine met with Ludmilla and asked her if we could take the girls to the circus tonight. We wanted to take them before Fred left to head back home. She agreed to let us take them if we took an orphanage staff member with us. Kseniya agreed to go with us. When we got to the orphanage, Kseniya got the girls and we got a quick picture with them. When Kseniya explained that we would be going to the circus that night, they were ecstatic! Amina started jumping up and down! We told them that we were going home to change out of our dress clothes, but that we would be back to the orphanage to pick them up in an hour. When we got home, we changed into pants and long sleeve shirts…it has really gotten chilly! We have been amazed by how God has answered our prayers. After changing and eating a quick dinner, we headed back to the orphanage to pick up the girls. I expected the circus to be similar to the circuses in the US…big venue, lots of animals, and lots of space. Instead we pulled up to a small grassy area next to the cable car tracks that had a tent the size of our family reunion tent. It didn’t look very big and there were hardly any people there. When we got to the tent to buy tickets, there was a sign saying that they were closed June 4th and June 5th. We thought that was quite strange since all the signs in town say that the circus is in town from June 1-10. They don’t mention that the circus is town all those days, but not open on June 4th and 5th. The girls were very disappointed, but they handled their disappointment well. They asked if they could go to the park with the crocodile. We were a little concerned that none of the rides would be operating since it was cold and rainy and that the crocodile would be deflated, but we headed to the park anyway. When we got to the park, Masha, Christine, and Kseniya were waiting for us. Mark had headed into the park to scope out which rides, if any, were open. None of the rides were operating and the crocodile was deflated. We expected this to be the disappointment that pushed the girls over the edge, but they handled it in stride. They said they would play on the playground. The girls played on the playground for over an hour. The adults were all freezing. The playground only has 2 swings and it was interesting to watch the dynamics of who got to swing. Masha and Khrystyna got to the playground before Amina and took the swings. Amina handled it well and climbed on the jungle gym. Mark and Fred also played tag with her for a little while. After a while, Masha gave her swing to a little girl and joined Amina on the jungle gym. Masha and Amina then borrowed Mark’s camera and began taking photos of each other. It wasn’t long before Khrystyna joined in! Amina asked for our camera too and they all chased each other around the playground taking pictures. After a while, I noticed Khrystyna and Masha sitting on a bench with Fred. Amina was taking pictures of them and they were all practicing English…Ok, so it wasn’t exactly practicing English. One of the girls (and I have no idea which one it was) started using the phrase “Bad girl” They all began calling each other “bad girl” and chasing each other around the park. They were having a ball AND speaking English. It wasn’t the phrases we were hoping for, but it’s a start. Masha was also using the phrase “good job” tonight. We all enjoy it when they make an effort to speak English. After lots of running, the girls headed for the swings again. This time Masha and Amina got the swings. After a while, Khrystyna went over to Amina and said something while pointing to us. We were on the other side of the park so we’re not exactly what she said. All we know is that Khrystyna started running toward us and Amina followed. When Amina got close to Khrystyna, Khrsytyna turned around abruptly and started racing back to Amina’s swing. Amina beat her there and they both laughed quite a lot. I think Khrystyna tried the “mom and dad are calling us” routine and Amina fell for it! Khrystyna then began to poke Amina everytime Amina would swing forward. They totally behaved like sisters! It was really fun to watch. I think Amina eventually got tired of Khrystyna poking her because she got off her swing and gave it to Khrystyna. She played on the jungle gym some more before heading over and sitting dejectedly on the seesaw. Fred asked if she wanted him to go on the see saw with her and she said “No, Masha.” She then began calling for Masha and giving her sad puppy dog eyes. Masha eventually gave in and came over and climbed on the seesaw. When Masha was fully on the seesaw, Amina jumped off and stole Masha’s swing. Masha then sat on Amina’s lap on the swing. They spent the next 10 minutes trying to “share” the swing. While the older girls were carrying on on the one swing, Khrystyna was swinging her little heart out on the other swing. She had her eyes closed and she was smiling and singing to herself! It was quite cute. We think the girls will probably get a lot of use out of our swingset. Khrystyna used it a ton last summer and we’re guessing that Amina will enjoy it too. Although it was freezing, I could have stayed out there for another hour or so. I was thoroughly enjoying watching the girls play and it was fun to watch the dads play with them. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as fun for Kseniya and she eventually asked if we could go. We agreed and headed over to tell the girls that our time at the park was over. The girls then began telling Kseniya that they were hungry. Kseniya told them that there would be food for them back at the orphanage and that if they were really hungry, they could have that food. We finally got the girls in the car and headed for the orphanage. Amina and Khrystyna had bought chocolate bars at lunch today and since we are trying really hard to make sure that the girls don’t take anything to the orphanage that may create jealousy, we made the girls leave the chocolate with us. We allowed them to have some of it on the way back to the orphanage. After all, we don’t have much time left to load up the kids with sugar and leave them with someone else! Just kidding! When we got back to the orphanage, we made some plans for tomorrow before saying goodbye to the girls. When we got back to the apartment, we decided to take a walk outside. We found a little market on the corner in the opposite direction we normally go. I’m so glad I now know it’s there. They sell water and juice. We normally go to the grocery store that is 4 blocks away and walk home with our cartons of juice and gallons of water. I’ve been making Fred carry all the heavy stuff, so I’m glad to know that I can just walk across the street to get the heavy stuff! The store also sells minutes for our phone and that was one of the things we were looking for. All of our incoming calls are free, but it’s expensive to make outgoing calls and we were out of minutes. When we got back to our apartment, we loaded the minutes onto our phone and Fred called Sasha to find out the plans for Wednesday. We knew we would be signing paperwork, but we weren’t sure how much time that would take. Sasha said to not plan on doing much more than signing papers. He also said that Fred would be able to leave Wednesday night for Kiev and that he could go to the American Embassy in Kiev on Thursday morning. He told Fred that he could leave anytime after 11am on Thursday. Unfortunately, there were not any available flights on Thursday, so Fred will be heading back to the US on Friday. He will get into Fort Wayne late Friday night. We are going to talk to Sasha tomorrow to see if it will be possible for Fred to leave for Kiev on Thursday night instead of Wednesday night. I’d much rather him be here for an extra day than just sitting around Kiev doing nothing! Also, if he can leave Thursday night, he’ll be able to go to the circus with us on Wednesday. We should find out more tomorrow. I am happy to report that with our window open and the cold air blowing in, our apartment hit a record low today of 69 degrees…although we closed the window 5 minutes ago and the temperature has already risen to 73 degrees. In my opinion, that’s a pretty good temperature. It is now after 10 pm and I am more than ready for bed. Today has been a wonderful, life-changing, exhausting day! Thanks again for your prayers!

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Today, our plan is to go to the Extreme Park, eat lunch, and take the girls to a movie. We are going to spend time by ourselves today instead of hanging out with Masha and her family. We want to make sure that the girls realize that life will not always revolve around hanging out with their friends and that we use this time to really bond as a family. When we talked about it with Kseniya, we decided that our driver would take us to the orphanage at 10, that we would pick up the girls, and head to the Extreme Park. We got to the Extreme Park at 10:20 and were very disappointed to see that it didn’t open til 11. I think those may have been the longest 40 minutes of my life. The girls were EXTREMELY disappointed! We walked around the outside of the Extreme Park for a while, but after 20 minutes of walking, we still had 20 minutes of waiting. We really hoped that the girls would be a little happier once the extreme park opened. We had planned this day hoping it would create really fun memories, not really disappointing memories. When the park finally opened, we rushed inside and began deciding which ride to go on first. We told the girls to decide together which ride they wanted to go on first. We gave Amina the money, and she picked the ride she wanted to go on first. I thought Khrystyna was going to punch her. We explained that Khrystyna could pick the next ride and that they should take turns. The rest of our time at the park was wonderful! The girls did a great job of taking turns and we went on some very fun rides. Our whole family rode the rollercoaster together and we all went on the bumper cars. After our first time on the bumper cars, the girls wanted to go again. I just wanted to go to the chiropractor. I have no idea why people think bumper cars are so much fun! We bought tickets for the girls and headed for a shaded bench to watch them from. (Sidenote: Ludmilla has said that when the girls are out in the sun they need to have on hats or headcoverings. Khrystyna’s hair is in pigtails today her baseball cap is perched precariously on top of her pigtails.) The girls got in their cars, buckled up, and prepared to drive. Amina is more like me in the sense that she likes to drive the bumper cars, but she spends her time trying to avoid collisions. Khrystyna is all about hitting as many people as she can! During one of Khrystyna’s major collisions, her hat popped off her head and onto the ground. Khrystyna started to reach out of the car, but Fred and I both yelled “Khrystyna, No!” We were both afraid she’d get out of the car and end up with broken arms, legs, or worse. She heard us, shrugged her shoulders, and went back to driving. In the meantime, her hat was laying in the middle of the floor. It wasn’t long before people started hitting it with their cars and dragging it along the floor. It got pushed around by various people for the rest of the time. When the ride was over, Amina spotted the hat and ran over to get it. It looked as if it had been run over by 50 semis. It was covered in grease! Khrystyna laughed about it and then put it back on her head. I’m sure we’re going to get asked about it. I wasn’t sure if it would be better to take her hat and try to wash it, but I was afraid she’d get in trouble for not having a hat! After we finished riding all the rides they wanted to ride, our driver picked us up and we headed to lunch. We went to Vivattime for lunch. They were handing out balloons for the kids. The balloons were not helium…they were just blown up balloons on a long straw-like stick. Khrystyna got a yellow one and Amina got a green one. Fred and I were really hoping they’d forget them as we left the restaurant. We were heading to the movies next and didn’t feel like being responsible for balloons. We had about 45 minutes til the movie started, so we decided to walk through the park first. The girls wanted to jump on one of the large bouncy things in the park. We’ve let them jump on the larger of the 2 multiples times, but today for the sake of time and money we decided on the smaller one. The girls had a wonderful time and we got a great unstaged picture of Khrystyna punching this large punching bag thing in the face! When we finished at the park, we headed to the movie theater. We went to buy tickets for the 2:00 showing of the children’s movie, but it wasn’t being shown for some reason. The girls were translating for us and I heard Khrystyna say or Shrek 3. We told them that if they wanted to go to Shrek 3 again that was fine with us. The weather was very stormy and looked like there was going to be a downpour at any minute. We bought the tickets for Shrek 3 and on our way out the door, Amina said “Mom, 3”. I wasn’t sure what she meant at first, but I quickly realized that she meant that the movie started at 3 pm. That meant we have over an hour to kill. Fred wanted to take some of the stuff up to our apartment so I asked him to pick up a few flashcards and dry-erase books for the girls. The girls are still not allowed to go to our apartment, so we headed to the pet store while Fred went to our apartment. Unfortunately, the pet store was closed, so we walked to our apartment and sat down on one of the benches near the apartment to wait for Fred. While we were sitting there, it started raining. We headed for the shelter of the building’s overhang. Then Amina told me she had to go to the bathroom. I asked if she could wait until the cinema and she said no. She looked like it was an emergency, so we headed up to the apartment. After the girls had used the restroom, we headed back to the cinema. We now only had 50 minutes to kill! They have a lobby like area where you can wait for the movie you are going to see. It is a large concrete room with a few couches, a few video games, and a concession stand. We headed for one of the couches. I sat down and Khrystyna threw all of her stuff on the couch next to me before heading over to look at the video games. When Fred came over to sit down, I said “Fred, watch the balloon.” It didn’t seem that he heard me as he continued sitting down. I got out another “Fred, watch the” before there was a noise that sounded like a gunshot. One waiting mother covered her child’s head like she thought someone was shooting and the people who work there came running out of the office. Needless to say, it was quite an incident. Khrystyna was rolling her eyes like crazy and Amina acted like she didn’t know us! I’m sure everyone went home talking about the stupid Americans. After the balloon incident, we decided to try working on some English. We spent 15 minutes going over flashcards and writing our letters and then we let the girls play a few video games. We were so happy when it was finally time for the movie to start. When the movie was over, it was pouring out! We waited a few minutes for our driver and then headed back to the orphanage. We were all quite exhausted when we dropped the girls off. We headed back to our apartment and I had just enough energy to warm up some leftovers for dinner. Our apartment is cooler than it has been in previous days. It’s actually under 80 degrees. Court is tomorrow so we need to head to bed early so we are well rested for the big day.

Saturday, June 2, 2007

The day started off quite warm again. We arrived at the orphanage before Mark, Christine, and Kseniya. Masha was the first one to come outside. When we asked her where Amina and Khrystyna were, she mimed that they were putting on their bathing suits. A few minutes later, the girls came bounding down the stairs and outside. They were very ready to go to the beach. We went to a different spot on the beach today. It was very close to a large inflatable water slide. We set our towels in the shade of a large tree and headed out to the sea. Fred, Kseniya, and I took the 3 girls in. Khrystyna doesn’t know how to swim, so when we got to the deeper area, she spent lots of time having Fred lift her over the waves and help her float. The girls both seemed thrilled to be able to play in the sea with their dad. I think that Fred will end up being the “fun” parent. Our time in the water was absolutely wonderful. The water was cold and there was a very nice breeze. I didn’t feel hot at all while we were in the water. After 30 minutes, we headed back to the shade for a little while. Mark and Christine had brought apples and Pringles for a snack and I added some chips and crackers. While we snacked, I pulled out some dry-erase flashcards and workbooks and the girls worked on their English. They never seem really thrilled to have to work on English, but they’ve been pretty good about doing it anyway. After bored totally set in for the girls, they asked if they could go on the waterslide. We told them they could go and Mark and Fred headed to the slide with the girls. Each slide was only 1 grivna (20 cents) and they let the girls go a few times each. They really enjoyed themselves. We made them work on English a little more after the slide and then they wanted to swim again. They have all learned the phrase “I would like to swim.” When they started saying Swim…I said “I would…” before I could finish my phrase, they side “like to swim.” It’s amazing which phrases of English they retain. We headed back to the water for a little while longer. I had the brilliant idea that a beach ball would be fun in the water. I headed up to get it and Christine blew it up for me. When I got back to the water with it, the current and the wind were quite strong. The ball flew out of one of the girls hands and what ensued was a swimming/jogging marathon to get it back. When we finally got it back, we started heading back in the other direction, but the ball went flying again and this time, a lady and another child had to track it down for us. Maybe next time it won’t be so windy! When we got out of the water, Mark had the kite up in the air. Amina seemed fascinated by it, however, she didn’t get to play with it because our drivers had arrived and were waiting for us. The girls changed out of their clothes and we headed to Amstor for lunch. We also wanted to pick out a few things for the girls. After lunch, we told Amina and Khrystyna they could each buy a pair of shoes for the trip to America. Amina’s first pair of shoes she picked out were red strappy high heeled sandals with a sequined flower on the top. It appears she has my taste in non-sensible shoes. We told her that those weren’t very practical. The next shoes she picked out were orange sandals with ribbons that tie up the leg. She tried them on and they were cute, but completely impractical. Fred reminded me that we would need to go through security at the airport while wearing those shoes. We explained to our translator that Amina would not be allowed to buy those shoes because it would be too much work at the airport. Something got lost in translation. Kseniya told Amina she could buy the shoes, but that she needed to be prepared for the extra effort they would require at the airport! Kseniya said “She has her instructions and she will do it.” Oh well, it was too late to try to explain that we had said no. It wasn’t Amina’s fault things got lost in translation. Khrystyna originally wanted the same shoes as Amina, but thankfully Masha was able to help her find some black and pink flip flops. The girls seemed pleased with their shoe choices, but by this time, I could tell Khrystyna was exhausted and nearing meltdown mode. Mark and Christine were going to take Masha to the park, but we decided that it would be best for us to take Amina and Khrystyna back to the orphanage. We headed back to the orphanage and Khrystyna wouldn’t even talk or look up at us while we headed back. She could barely even keep her eyes open. We were glad we had opted out of the park! When we got out of the car, Khrystyna rallied for a few minutes and gave us a big smile and a hug. Amina gave us a hug and told us she loved us. Then Khrystyna said she loved us too. It was a long tiring day, but a good one. After we left the orphanage, we headed back to Amstor for a few groceries. While we were there, I noticed that my shoulders were feeling quite warm. Apparently they weren’t joking when they said the air is bad here and the sun is quite strong. In the 1 hour I had spent not in the shade, I got fried! Fred had SPF 35 on for half the time and he got burned as well. After we picked up our groceries, we headed home. We put some lotion on our sunburns and I made some spaghetti for dinner. We started packing for Fred’s trip home as well. Although we don’t know exactly when he will be leaving, we wanted to make sure he’s ready when the time comes. The rest of the evening has been spent the same way we spend most evenings, laying around trying to stay cool. Hopefully we’ll have something different to report soon!

Friday, June 1, 2007

Today is the big celebration at the orphanage. On Wednesday, we asked Svetlana what we should wear and she suggested that we just wear what we have on. She told us it would be very casual. I was wearing very casual shorts and a tank top when she said that. As we thought about the celebration, I wondered if we shouldn’t dress up a little…just to be safe. I’d rather be overdressed than underdressed. I wore a black skirt and turquoise top and Fred wore jeans with a button down dress shirt and black dress shoes. When we pulled up to the orphanage, we were so glad we had dressed up. Amina was waiting for us in a pink ball gown. She looked like a beautiful little princess. Khrystyna came skipping out a few minutes later in her cat costume with her face all painted! They were both so adorable! Our friends Mark and Christine showed up a few minutes after us and Kseniya (the secretary at the orphanage and our translator while Svetlana is gone) came over and told us that we would be going to the performance and that afterward, we would have a chance to purchase some handmade crafts. We followed Kseniya up to the hall where the performance was being held and she motioned us into the corner of the back row. The front row was reserved for orphanage sponsors and the second row was reserved for other important people. The performance started with ballroom dancing! There were 10 children (or I guess I should say pre-teens and teenagers in formal wear) who danced beautifully. When they were finished their dance, the teens who were graduating from high school, college, or the military stayed up front and the others went and sat down. Next, we sat through many, many speeches by orphanage sponsors. Although we couldn’t understand a lot of what was being said, we were able to understand what they were trying to convey. It seems that these orphanage sponsors care a lot about the wellbeing of these children. The sponsors also gave out awards to some of the children for their active role in orphanage life….i.e. singing, dancing, etc. Amina was one of about 8 children to receive this award. When the speeches and awards were finished, they began the main program. It took us a while to figure it out, but they were putting on a performance of The Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz was not exactly like our Wizard of Oz. There was a scene in which there were dancing cats. Khrystyna was one of the three dancing cats. She was really cute! Amina played various roles in the performance. She started out the performance in her pink ball gown. She then was in one of the wizard of oz scenes as a dancing tree. During this time she also dances with the tin man while wearing her tree costume. She came out in a later scene wearing a purple dance costume and danced the cha-cha with the tin man. She is quite the dancer. After she finished dancing, she also sang a song which some of the other children danced to. She has a really nice voice! Both of our girls and all of the other children as well did a phenomenal job! We were very proud of all of them. When the Wizard of Oz was over, there were a few more speeches and a few more gifts were given out and then we were dismissed. When we came downstairs to where the handmade craft items were, Amina and Khrystyna had already changed out of their costumes. They were each wearing new outfits. Khrystyna’s was turquoise and Amina’s was lime green. Each of the front of their outfits had a Barbie-like doll on it. Underneath the doll it said “Barby”. It totally made me laugh. They immediately started pointing out everything they had made. There was quite a lot! We tried not to buy too much, but at the same time, we don’t have a whole lot of their handmade projects from their childhood, so we wanted a few. We, along with our friends Mark and Christine, also purchased a cake and some cupcake/cookie things for the girls to share with their friend. The cake and cookies cost us $20…which we thought was a little high, but it was all for a good cause! While we were all shopping for hand made crafts, I noticed that Masha had on the same outfit as Amina. We got a picture of the 3 of them in their matching “Barby” outfits! While we were taking pictures, Kseniya came over and told us that it was time to say goodbye. She also said, “Tomorrow, we will go to the sea.” That wasn’t how we had originally planned to spend the day, but the thought of being in cold water was quite appealing. We told her we would be ready at 9:45, said goodbye to the girls, and headed home. We knew we wouldn’t have a driver or translator the rest of the day, so we planned to spend the rest of the day back at our apartment. After laying around our apartment for a while (it was over 90 degrees…too hot to do anything else), we decided to venture into town for some ice cream. We stopped at our favorite ice cream place, got some ice cream with fruit on it, and headed back to our apartment. Since we had plenty of time on our hands, we watched Madagascar. We bought a few movies while we were out that are in Russian and English. Madagascar was one of them, however, we watched it in English…not Russian. We also watched the news on 3 different channels. All of the news was in Russian, however, 2 of the 3 channels had coverage of the program at the orphanage. On one of the newscasts you could see the back of Khrystyna’s cute little cat costumer as she talks to a newscaster and on the other channel, they had a portion where they show Amina singing. It was very cool to watch! Other than our time at the orphanage, we pretty much just laid around the apartment trying to stay cool. Hopefully the weather will cool off soon!

Thursday, May 31, 2007 Part 1

Today started out quite warm again. Our apartment is currently 85 degrees! When we got up this morning, we uploaded some pictures of various kids from the orphanage to a memory stick so that we could take them into town to be printed. We figured we would venture out around 9:30 or 10, however, after talking to Svetlana about it, she said that she would have our driver pick us up at 12. She also told us that she would definitely be leaving today. We all had a lot of stuff to do in a very small amount of time. When 12:00 rolled around, we jumped in the car and headed to a photo shop. It’s not exactly what we’re accustomed to at home. Svetlana explained what we wanted to do and left us with the girl who worked there while she went to pick up Mark and Christine. We gave the girl our memory stick and she led us into a small room adjacent to the store. It had a computer set up and a memory stick reader. It had an Epson photo printer. The photos are 1.30 grivna…or 30 cents. We chose 41 photos to be printed and are planning on giving them to Ludmilla tomorrow. Mark and Christine also had photos that they uploaded after they arrived. When Svetlana dropped them off, she told us that our driver would pick all of us up at 1pm, but that she needed to go buy train tickets. She left and the 4 of us wandered around in the center of the city for a half hour. When we arrived at the orphanage, Amina was outside talking to Svieta. She ran over and hugged us and then went looking for Masha and Khrystyna. Khrystyna came out a few minutes later, but they weren’t able to find Masha. After waiting for a little while, Svieta said that she needed to take some papers to the social worker. She told the girls to look for Masha and that when she got back we would head for lunch. By the time she arrived back, we didn’t have very much time left. We needed to get lunch and get a birthday present for one of the workers from the orphanage. We headed to Amstor to eat at their cafeteria. The food was really good. This is my favorite lunch place so far! Khrystyna was in a little bit of a funk because Fred wouldn’t let the girls get soda. She asked for soda and Fred told her no, that she had to have juice. She didn’t want juice so she decided she would have nothing to drink. We told her that was fine with us. She was quite pouty throughout lunch. When Fred went back to the line to get more juice, Khrystyna and Amina went with him and they each got a juice. Amina had already finished her first juice by this point. After quickly eating, we explained to the girls that they each could have 10 grivna to buy a birthday gift and card. They could either each buy her something small or all chip into buy her something larger. They each wanted to get their own card and gift. Each of the girls settled on a little figurine and a birthday card. All of the girls stayed within the agreed upon price range. When we got back to the orphanage, the girls had to run inside because they were late for dance practice. We said quick goodbyes and the girls hurried inside. Svieta needed to talk to someone in the orphanage, so she asked us to wait for her. While we waiting, Khrystyna came out dressed in the cutest cat costume! She looked adorable. We took a few pictures of her. A few of the other kids came out in their costumes as well. The celebration at the orphanage tomorrow is a very big deal. The kids have all been working for hours on their programs. There will be a concert and a fair and lots of items that the children have made throughout the year will be for sale. We are quite excited. Tomorrow is also the day that we will be bringing all of the toys to the orphanage that we bought for the children. We purchased beach balls, pails and shovels for playing in the sand, puzzles, balls, and Frisbees. I think it will be a very enjoyable day for everyone! When Svieta finished in the orphanage, we came back to our apartment so Svieta could get packed to go back to Kiev. She left at 4:30 and now we are home alone! Woohoo! The TV and DVD player in the apartment our in the room that Svieta was sleeping in so we’ve been watching DVDs on our laptop. We’re quite excited to be able to watch movies on a regular TV! We’re planning on heading to the internet café in a few minutes to update the blog and maybe we’ll grab a bite to eat before we head back to our apartment. I am completely exhausted and am going to try to head to bed early tonight. I know I’ve been asking for this repeatedly, but please pray for the weather to cool off. In the time that it has taken for me to write all of this, the temperature has risen to 88 degrees. We’ll try to update again tomorrow night. We should be able to get tons of good pictures tomorrow…we hope. We were told not to speak English any more than necessary tomorrow and that if we do have to speak to do it quietly. There will be a lot of people at the orphanage and they don’t want people asking any questions about what the Americans are doing here.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

When we asked Svetlana if we had anything to do today, she told us that didn’t think so. She left our apartment around 11am to take some documents to the court. She told us that she would pick us up around 1pm. I was being lazy this morning and just hanging around the apartment since we didn’t have anywhere to be and since it was quite hot! I decided to hop in the shower around noon, however, I was distracted by a phone call. It was Svetlana calling to tell us she would pick us in 15 minutes. We were needed at the court to sign some documents. We quickly got dressed and headed outside. Unfortunately, from the time of her phone call to the time she arrived, was 45 minutes…not 15. When she arrived, we hopped in the car and headed off to court. We had to sign our application to adopt Amina and Khrystyna and to change their names to Amina Lynn and Khrystyna Ann. It didn’t take long to sign the papers and then Svetlana told us to wait for her in the car while she took the papers to the judge and tried to get a court date. (Funny side note…All of our documents we have signed have been in Ukrainian. We have had a translator interpret each document that we’ve signed and we’ve had to sign a bunch since we added a second child and there was a lot of extra paperwork. Each time they translate a document the document starts out with our full names, date of birth, and full address as well as our passport numbers. Whenever they read our address, they always put the word “Mister” in front of our city. They read our street address, say “Mister Fort Wayne”, state of Indiana. It totally cracks me up. At first I thought it was just some funny way that our translator was reading it, but after having multiple translators say this, I guess it must be just the way they say the city…although when they saw where our passports were issued they just say San Francisco…who knows? If anyone has an explanation…please post it in the comments…I’d love to know.) Back to our day… We waited in the car for 15 minutes and when Svetlana came out, she told us that if all went well, we would go to court on Monday. Please pray that all will go well!!!! While we were waiting in the car, we noticed that the sky was looking very overcast. We really hoped that we would have rain soon. When we left the court, Svetlana needed to pick up some folders at the office supply store. This is the store that I wanted to go to on Monday, but after walking there on Monday, we discovered it was closed for the holiday. I was so excited to go in there. It was a small store with various writing tablets as well as markers, pens, and pencils. I couldn’t find any 3x5 cards or even 4x6 cards for flashcards, but after asking, I was able to puchase a few packages of cardstock. The cardstock is about 5x7, but hopefully it will still work for making flashcards. We were able to purchase 5 packs of cardstock and a box of markers for under $2. I thought that was quite a deal! When we came out of the store, it was pouring outside. We got totally soaked in the 10 steps it took to get to the car. When we got to the orphanage, we waited inside for a little while for the girls. It didn’t take very long for Masha to show up, but we waited quite a while for Khrystyna and Amina. When they came downstairs, we headed out for lunch. It was so dark and gray outside that it seemed like night. Also, traffic was very slow due to the rain. When we got to Vivottime (I know I spell this differently everyday…I’m experimenting), we ran inside. We got in line behind Masha’s family and began our daily ritual of picking out food. The girls normally each get a bottled drink, a cup of juice, soup (Ludmilla insists the girls eat soup everyday), salad, and various other foods. They ask for soda almost everyday, but we usually say no and they end up with bottled water or sparkling juice. Today we decided to let them each get a coke. The café was out of borscht today and Khrystyna and Amina didn’t want the other kind of soup they had. I told them that they could only get one bowl between the 2 of them, but that they each needed to have 5 bites. They agreed, but Khrystyna had a hard time accepting that. As we moved down the line, the girls added potatoes and sandwiches to their trays. Khrystyna was rather impatient today, so she decided to pass everyone in line and head to the juice dispenser. She moved her tray over to the display of desserts and grabbed a glass of red juice. While Khrystyna and Amina were deciding on what dessert to split, Khrystyna inadvertently spiller her entire LARGE glass of RED juice all over her tray and the floor. The juice filled her plate of potatoes and created quite a mess. I think Khrystyna was really embarrassed. She just stood there looking at the floor. Amina quickly asked one of the workers for a rag and started cleaning up the floor. When I got Khrystyna to make eye contact with me, she looked like she was going to cry. I told her that we loved her, that it was OK, and asked her if she wanted more potatoes. Her sandwich was wrapped in plastic wrap so we were able to salvage that. When Khrystyna said she wanted more potatoes, Amina headed back to the potatoes, and asked for more. We held up the line for quite a while trying to take care of the juice issue and eventually we made it to the cash register. We had a ton of food, divided between 3 trays, and somehow I managed to leave the line with only mashed potatoes for myself! It was quite an experience! I’d like to say that lunch was completely normal after that, but things just got stranger! When we finally got everyone situated at the table (no easy task), we began eating our lunch. There was a man in his 60s and a girl in her 20s sitting at the table behind us. The mans’ chair backed up to Fred’s chair. A few times during the meal, I noticed that the man was leaning on Fred’s chair rather strangely. I even pointed it out to Mark and Christine, but every time they turned to look he was sitting up normally. I eventually tuned the man out and went back to discussing English with the girls. We have been practicing English everyday. Today we wanted to do something a little different so we asked each of the 3 girls to come up with 3 word or phrases that they would like to learn in English. Masha said that she didn’t want to learn anything because if she wanted to know something, she just asked Svieta and Svieta would ask us in English. Khrystyna told us in Russian that she didn’t have any specific phrases because she already knew everything. Amina seemed to think long and hard before she told us that she had something she wanted to know how to say. We were all expecting something like where are we going, what time is it, or the name of a favorite food. Instead, she asked “How do you say ‘lawyer’ in English?” We were all totally dumbfounded! I asked her if she wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up. She quickly responded in English…”No, a doctor” I guess Fred and I better start saving for med school. We still have no idea why she wanted to know the word for lawyer, but I guess we’ll find out eventually. Amina’s desire to become a doctor quickly sparked another conversation about what each girl wanted to be when she grew up. Masha said she would like to be a Professor of Russian Literature. When Christine asked her what kinds of books she liked to read, she responded…I like DVDs. We all think it may be a little difficult to become a Literature Professor if you only watch DVDs, but who knows. Khrystyna does not know what she would like to be when she grows up. We probably could have gotten an answer from her, but while we were having the conversation there was a very loud “THUD” Fred had moved his chair and the old man behind him fell on the floor! He seemed to be unconscious! He was laying flat on his back groaning or gurgling. We all jumped up…we were quite worried. When I turned around to look at the girl who was with the man. She was just sitting at the table eating and drinking as if nothing had happened. The man was still laying on the floor! He hadn’t even regained consciousness! We quickly moved the girls away from the man. Mark ran over to the man while Fred ran to the cash register and pointed to the man. Svieta went to the girl at the table and asked if the man was ok. The girls said that this always happens when he’s drunk. She didn’t seem to be the least bit bothered that he was still laying on the floor unconscious. At this point, security came over and began halling the man off the floor. We took this as our cue that it was time to leave. We headed out to the car, hopped in, and headed back to the orphanage. The girls had another dance practice so we said goodbye and headed back to our apartment. We wanted to spend some time uploading pictures from the last week, so we grabbed our laptop and headed to Papa Karlo. We were quite discreet this time with the use of our laptop. We kept it behind our bag the whole time and tried to not to speak English. Amazingly enough, the internet stayed up the whole time we were there. When we were finished uploading pictures, we headed back to our apartment. It was raining outside and had cooled down considerably. Although it didn’t stay cool for very long, it was a very welcome respite! When we got back to the apartment, we waited for Svieta to return from the train station and then headed to Amstor. We were able to pick up some “real” spaghetti sauce as well as a few other items. We have to pick up bread every few days because they don’t use many preservatives in their food. The bread is fresh and quite delicious! When we finished our shopping, we headed back home. I made spaghetti for dinner and it turned out to be delicious! Much better than the last attempt with the borscht sauce. I also picked up some garlic rolls at the bakery. It was a good dinner and I thoroughly enjoyed eating something similar to what I’d eat at home! When we were finishing with the dishes, Svieta came into the kitchen and asked if we would need to purchase any clothing for the girls. She told us that when we finally get permanent custody of the girls and go to pick them up at the orphanage, we must bring all new clothes for them. They are not allowed to leave the orphanage with any clothing. I brought a few outfits for Khrystyna and the girls are close enough in size that they can probably share those outfits, but I knew I would need to buy shoes. I wondered why she was asking about this now. We haven’t had our court date yet and we have to wait 10 days after the court date to pick up the girls. When I asked her about this, she told us that she may be heading back to Kiev tomorrow! She told us that she would try to pick up whatever we need tomorrow while she is still here. I thought she may just be heading back to Kiev temporarily, but she told us that she may not be coming back at all. We may be on our own from here on out! She’s still not positive if she will be leaving. She said she would let us know tomorrow. Although we will miss her if she leaves, it will be nice to have our own space. We’ll let you know what happens! After talking to Svetlana, we spent the rest of our evening making phone calls and working on the logistics for the rest of the trip. Fred spoke to his boss about his return to work. His boss has been extremely kind and flexible and it has really made the uncertainty of the trip a lot more bearable! We also talked to our facilitator in Kiev about Fred’s return to “Mister Fort Wayne”…Ok…so we didn’t say Mister Fort Wayne while talking to him, but I think it has a nice ring to it. It makes it sound like a much friendlier town! I’m beginning to ramble, so I should probably go to bed. We’ll keep you posted as things develop here! Thanks again for all your prayers! They are being answered!

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

This morning was a very lazy morning. Fred and I hung out at the apartment until 12:15pm. Svieta got a phone call at 10am to inform her that Mark and Christine would be having court at 11am…that morning. She quickly got dressed and headed out of the apartment. She told us that she would call to let us know when our driver would pick us up. We hadn’t heard from her at 12:15pm, so we decided to head out to get some money exchanged. When Svieta called us, we were on our way to the center of town to get more money. She told us that she would pick us at 12:45pm. We hurried to get our money exchanged and ran back to the apartment. We then headed to the orphanage to pick up the girls. The girls were a lot quieter than usual today. When we got to the orphanage, Svieta went into the orphanage to talk to Ludmilla while we played with the girls. When she came out she told us that Amina’s medical documents were ready to be signed. We quickly followed her into the orphanage to sign the paperwork. The doctor went over Amina’s medical history, Svieta translated, and Fred and I signed on the dotted line. It didn’t take very long since Amina is very healthy! When we headed back outside and played with the girls for a few minutes…then we were told that the girls had dance practice. The girls headed to dance and Mark and Christine headed to lunch with Fred and I. Svieta needed to take care of some documents so she went off on her own. We had asked her earlier in the day if it would be possible to take the girls to see Shrek 3. She said she would have to check with Ludmilla, but Ludmilla was very busy. After lunch, we wandered through the mall for a little while and then headed to the movie theater. Svieta had hoped to meet us there, but she had still not been able to talk to Ludmilla. She had our driver pick us up and take us back to the orphanage. When we got back to the orphanage, Svieta was still waiting to see Ludmilla. After a few minutes, we saw Ludmilla walking down the hall toward us. Svieta explained that we wanted to take the children to Shrek 3 and Ludmilla gave us permission. We quickly rounded up the 3 girls and headed to the theater. When we got to the theater, Svetlana helped us buy tickets. The theater only has 5 rows and you had to purchase tickets for specific seats. Mark and Christine bought their tickets first and we bought ours next. Unfortunately, our tickets were not all together. The girls decided that they 3 of them would sit in one set of seats and Fred and I could sit with Mark and Christine. Christine and I ran back to our apartment while Svieta pointed out the seats to Mark, Fred, and the girls. Svieta told us that she wouldn’t be going to see the movie with us. When Christine and I got to the theater, the movie had already started. Apparently, after Svetlana showed the girls their seats, they decided to move. There was enough seats for the 3 girls and Mark and Fred to sit together, but not for Christine and I. We ended up sitting in the row behind them. During the movie, my phone began to flash at me. (I had turned the volume off) I didn’t plan on taking the call, but I noticed it was Svetlana so I ran out of the theater to take it. I was quite surprised that she would call when she knew we were in the movie. She asked me to run outside of the theater to get the keys to our apartment. She told me she was heading out of town in order to get our documents to Sasha. She said that she wouldn’t be back until after 10 pm. When the movie ended, we called Svetlana to ask her how we would get back to the orphanage. She told us that Mark and Christine’s driver would be meeting us in front of the theater and that he would have another driver with him for our family to ride with. The two drivers would take us back to the orphanage where we would say goodbye to the girls and then Mark and Christine’s driver would take us all home. When we got to the apartment, we decided to walk over to Papa Karlo to get on the internet. We were able to upload our blog, however, we lost our internet connection quickly after that. It seems that the workers at Papa Karlo are not big fans of Americans. When we overstay our wecome, they unplug our wireless access point. After a while, we figured that they weren’t planning on plugging it back in, so we left. We headed back to our apartment. We watched a little bit of Shrek 2 (in English) before Svetlana got home. When she got home, we asked her why she had to rush off so quickly. She told us that she had all the necessary documents for Kiev, but that she didn’t have them in time to meet the train in our city. She headed to a larger city which is a few hours away and handed off the documents to someone on the train there. She then headed back home. She was quite tired and so were we. We said goodnight and then headed to bed.

Prayer Requests:

*Please pray that the weather will cool down. We are
tired all the time because of the heat and are not
sleeping well!

*Please pray that we get a court date this week. Fred
would like to be able to get back to work as soon as
possible. Also, I don’t want to spend my entire summer
in Ukraine!

*Pray for our relationship with the orphanage. Pray that
we would be a source of encouragement to the staff of
the orphanage as well as the kids.

*Pray that the children who are in the orphanage will be
put on the registry soon so that they can be adopted by
loving families and that those children who are already
on the registry will be adopted quickly!

*Pray for all the families who are waiting to adopt. It is
a long and emotional process. Pray for strength and
stamina and that things will move swiftly along.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Today was another scorchingly hot day. It is also a holiday! (No, it’s not Memorial day…actually, yesterday was a religious holiday. It has something to do with 40 days after Easter or something like that) Since the girls didn’t have school, we would be able to pick them up at 12 today instead of 1 or 1:30. When we got up this morning, I worked on what we wanted to teach the girls today. We really wanted to make sure they can express their feelings in English. I bought each of the girls a notebook and wrote their full name on the first page. On the second page I wrote their full name in cursive. On the following pages, I wrote out a few “feeling sentences”….I am happy, I am sad, I am bored, I am confused, I am hungry, and I am thirsty. Each of these sentences got one full page devoted to it. I had Fred draw a small illustration of each feeling at the top of each page, then I numbered the lines on each page 1-5. I figured that I would have the girls write each sentence 5 times and then draw a picture to illustrate each point. I also wrote the feeling in Russian at the bottom of the page. After getting the notebooks ready, I hoped that we could go to the office supply store to pick up some 3x5 cards. I wanted to have Fred draw his faces on one side of the card and write the word on the other side…homemade flashcards. We knew we would have to leave our apartment at 10 am since the cleaning woman would be coming so we figured that we could use that time to buy some notecards and make flashcards. Unfortunately, the office supply store was closed due to the holiday. The mall was open, so we spent a little time in the mall. We picked up another Frisbee…they tend to either get taken into the orphanage for the group, broken, or stuck up in a tree! We also picked up some bubbles for the girls. The mall is not air conditioned either and it was quite stifling in there. Part of the mall houses electronic equipment, and that section is air-conditioned. We walked around 4 of the 5 air-conditioned floors of the electronics store. I’m sure people were wondering why people who only speak English were looking so intently at stoves and washing machines, but we knew we still had an hour to kill and it was miserably hot in the rest of the mall. When we had spent as much time as we reasonable could in the mall, we headed to a furniture store that was adjacent to the mall. It was a really strange store. We had noticed a sign on the way into the mall that showed all kinds of Apple products…iPods, Mac Powerbooks, etc and the sign pointed into the furniture store. When you walk into the store, you immediately see all kinds of furniture, however, if you go to your right, there is a little freestanding Mac store area. If you go the left, it’s like and old 5 and dime store. It had notebooks, towels, toys, clothes, etc. We only had a few minutes in there before our driver was picking us up, but we found some inexpensive notebooks and colored pencils that we picked up for the girls. When we came out of the store, our driver was waiting. We hopped in the car, waited a few minutes for Svetlana to come out to the car, and headed back to our apartment to pick up our toys for the day. We didn’t want to be stuck walking around for 2 hours with a bag full of Frisbees, balls, rackets, water, and other necessities. When we grabbed everything we needed, we headed back out to the car and over to the orphanage. The girls were waiting for us when we arrived. They were quite excited to see us! We told them that we were going to go to lunch, work on English for a little while, then head to the park. Khrystyna and Amina had told us on Saturday that their classes at school were going to the park on Tuesday. Khrystyna reminded us about this and asked if she could buy chips for all the students in her class. I figured that since she goes to school with children from families, there are probably lots of times that parents send in treats for all the students, but that Khrystyna probably has not had that luxury. We agreed to buy chips for everyone! She was totally thrilled. We offered to do the same for Amina and she was quite excited as well. We told them that we would go to the grocery store after we finished lunch and worked on English. Svetlana had our driver drop us off at the cafeteria for lunch and Mark and Christine’s driver ran them by their apartment to pick up stuff for the day. Amina and Khrystyna decided to split a bowl of soup today and to split a dessert so that they could still have ice cream later. They finished their food fairly quickly and while we were waiting for Masha to finish her food, I pulled out the English books I made for them. Christine was completely impressed and asked if I would teach English to Masha too. Christine had an extra notebook, so I wrote the same stuff in Masha’s book and had Fred quickly illustrate it. When we were finished, we started our English lesson. The girls seemed to like the goofy pictures that Fred drew. When it came time to draw their own pictures of each feeling, Amina drew a big round smiley face. Masha did the same. Khrystyna is definitely the artist of the group. She copied Fred’s smiley picture. It was awesome. We did happy and sad while we were in the cafeteria and then headed out to the park to finish. By the time we finished all of our sentences, the girls were getting restless. Mark and Christine decided to take Masha shopping for a pair of shoes and we decided to take our girls to the playground and to the grocery store for chips and ice cream. While we were walking to the playground area, Khrystyna and Amina began asking about going on the big bouncy thing. This is the one that Masha and Khrystyna got to go on that has a crocodile, a cobra, a big slide, and lots of things to climb on. Khrystyna has been telling Amina about it every time we drive by that particular park. I told them that they could go on it after Masha left the park, but that I didn’t want them to say anything to her because I didn’t want her to be sad. They quickly agreed and when Masha and her family left the park, we headed to the bouncy thing. The girls had a blast and we were glad that Amina was able to experience it with Khrystyna. We are trying to be really careful to make sure that Amina gets to do the same fun things that Khrystyna did last week. We still need to plan a trip to the extreme park so that Amina can have that experience as well. After the girls finished jumping and playing, Fred suggested we buy ice cream from a lady with a cart in the shade. The girls got yummy strawberry popsicles and Fred got some coffee flavored ice cream creation that he said was really good. We then headed to the grocery store to pick up chips. We saw Masha and her family as we headed to the store. Svieta was with them and she asked if we wanted to stay at the same park or go to a different park. We decided to let Amina and Khrystyna make that decision. Of course, they decided on the crocodile park. We made the decision to head to the crocodile park after we went to the grocery store. Masha’s family decided to stay in the park we were currently in. Masha sat down on a bench and put her new shoes on and of course my girls had to go over and admire them. While we were walking to the grocery store, Amina said, “Mom, Masha’s shoes BEAUTIFUL!” I told her that we would buy new shoes for the two of them sometime later this week. They immediately began whispering back and forth…I think they are planning on what kind of shoes they will get! When we got to the grocery store, the girls explained how many kids they had in each of their classes and that they wanted to get individual bags of chips for each person. I took them into the store with me while Fred waited outside and we picked up chips for their classmates. Khrystyna also asked nicely for some cat food for the cat and kittens. I bought her a 40 cents bag of food for the cats. She and Amina immediately told Svieta that we got cat food when we ran into her again. It’s amazing how much joy they get out of the simplest things. After our grocery store run, we headed off to the park. The girls pulled out their rackets and began a rousing game of hitting the ball back and forth. We played in the shade and it was quite relaxing to sit and watch them. We only planned on being in the park 45 minutes and after 30 minutes of playing the girls began to ask about the crocodile. I told them that if the wrote their full name 9 times and “I want to go to crocodile.” 2 times that we would go. Amina’s name is shorted than Khrystyna’s and Amina is faster in general, so she finished much more quickly. By the time Khrystyna was finished with her name, she was frustrated. We told her that she only had to say “I want to go to crocodile” and that we would let her write it 2 times tomorrow. That seemed to be about all she could handle today. The lady at the crocodile looked extremely happy to see us. She even offered me a chair to sit down on while the girls played. I think she just likes us because we’ve given her enough money to put her kids through college.  When the girls were finished, we headed back to the car and then on to the orphanage. We spent a few minutes blowing bubbles and then the girls decided to feed the cat. The kittens are still too small to eat cat food, but that didn’t stop the girls from trying. They played with the kittens for quite a while. When Masha and her family got back, each of the girls as well as Mark and Christine grabbed a kitten and headed to the other side of the parking lot for a kitten race. We saw a few of the older boys doing this the day before and it seemed fun. You place your kitten on the ground and stand in front of it then slowly back up and the kitten follows you. Amina’s kitten was halfway across the parking lot before Khrystyna could even get her kitten moving. Since Khrystyna is very competitive, she just picked up her kitten, ran across the parking lot til she was even with Amina, and put her kitten back down. Poor Khrystyna…she picked a kitten that was completely content to stand in one place. After the kitten races, she put her kitten up on the wall and holding on the the underside of her, ran along the wall, letting her paws drag on the wall. I think she was trying to teach her kitten the importance of hurrying…a lesson that was completely lost on the cat. On the way back, she let go of the kitten and the kitten actually started walking. Khrystyna was so excited, that she started skipping back to us and she left the kitten all alone. We all started yelling for her to watch the kitten and she turned around just in time to catch the kitten before she fell off the wall. It’s amazing how much entertainment a few kittens can provide…even for people like Fred and I who aren’t big fans of cats. After playing with the cats for a while, it was time to say goodbye again. That’s the hardest part of this process for me…part-time parenting. During the day, you are the parent and you make decisions and then you have to give them back at the end of the day. I’ll be so happy when we can play with them during the day and tuck them into bed at night! After our goodbyes, we headed back to the apartment to pick up our laptop and then we went over to Papa Karlo. Unfortunately, the wi-fi connection was down and we were unable to upload our pictures to the internet or update our blog. Hopefully tomorrow the connection will be back up. When we got back to our apartment, it was nearly 90 degrees inside our apartment. By the time we went to bed, it had cooled down to 29 degrees Celsius…84.2 Fahrenheit. We were sooo hot. I slept with 2 frozen waterbottles snuggled up next to me. It actually kept me cool enough to sleep. When we woke up this morning, our room had cooled down to 28 degrees Celsius (82.4 F)…not much better, but it least it got cooler rather than hotter.