Friday, May 25, 2007

It is now Saturday morning, but I was so tired by the time we got home yesterday that I didn’t take time to journal! Yesterday was definitely a very interesting day…in some ways it was our best day so far and in other ways our worst! Our morning started off wonderfully when Svetlana knocked on our door and told us Sasha was on the phone for us. Sasha told us that he had spoken to the SDA and that he would be able to pick up Amina’s referral in the afternoon. We were so thrilled to know that we would be able to adopt Amina! Also, we had been praying that we wouldn’t have to go to Kiev for our second referral, but we also knew that the SDA rarely, if ever, gives out referrals without seeing the family face to face…even if it is a second referral. We were very excited to hear this! After explaining about Amina, Sasha said something very strange. He said that Ludmilla was very upset about some things that had happened and that we should probably buy fruit for all of the children in the orphanage. We were more than willing to buy fruit for the orphanage, but we were totally confused as to what Ludmilla was upset about. When we got to the orphanage to pick up the girls, we were called into Ludmilla’s office. I thought we were being called in to talk about Amina, but Mark and Christine came in with us. What happened next was very surprising. We spent what seemed like 3 hours, but was probably closer to 45 minutes being lectured by Ludmilla. She wanted to make sure we understood how much the orphanage does for the children and that we respected that. She felt that there were other families who did not appreciate how much the orphanage does for the children and does not put the needs of the children first. It had nothing to do with us…and I am sure that the families that she felt were not respectful were not intentionally disrespectful. I think it was a misunderstanding combined with cultural differences. The end result was that Ludmilla said that we were only allowed to spend one hour with the children and that it had to be on the orphanage grounds. The girls were very disappointed that we would not be taking them to lunch. I felt especially bad for Amina as this was the first day we would have been able to take her out! We were very disappointed. When we were finished our meeting with Ludmilla, we were told that the girls would have dance practice for an hour. We took that opportunity to run out and get lunch for ourselves and fruit for the orphanage. Svieta took us to her favorite pizza place. The pizzas were a lot more like a traditional American pizza. They let you choose what toppings you want and then hand make the pizza when you order. It was really quite tasty. I got chicken and mushrooms and Fred got ham and pineapple. When we were finished lunch, we headed to Amstor for fruit. We bought a ton of fruit. It cost us $60, but we figured it was quite worth it to restore our good relationship with the orphanage. When we got back to the orphanage, Fred and I began playing Frisbee with the girls while Mark and Christine were meeting with Svieta. While we were playing, a few children from the orphanage came outside. I suggested that we toss the Frisbee to some of the other kids. I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but eventually we had lots of kids playing with 2 frisbees and a soccer ball. We had such a wonderful time playing with all the children. It was exciting to get to know the children by name and to see Amina and Khrystyna interacting with their friends. We also were able to get lots of fun pictures of the kids who played with us. When we left the orphanage that evening, the children were all hugging us and telling us that they loved us! It was really cute. It made me wish we could take home more with us. Maybe someday we’ll be back for more! By the time we left the orphanage, it was 6 pm. We headed home for desperately needed showers and then we walked over to Papa Karlo (they have wi-fi) to upload a few pictures and to update the blog and let everyone know that we got permission to adopt Amina! WOOHOO! The day had been emotionally and physically exhausting, so we didn’t stay at Papa Karlo for very long. Mark and Christine were at Papa Karlo when we got there and their driver was waiting to take them home. Thankfully, he was willing to take us home too! I probably could write 10 pages on everything that happened today, but it’s probably better that I keep it fairly short.