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!