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.