Day 17

We went to the orphanage today. There were so many kids there today. There were so many teenagers that I had not seen before. We have gone there before and saw barely anyone but today they were coming out of the woodwork. When we got there our younger boy was upstairs. Classes had gotten out not that long ago and his class was cleaning their common room and their bedrooms. They were putting things away and making beds. Most of the older kids, including our older boy, were hanging out here and there. Of course, our younger boy went out to play soccer (football) with Dad but I didn’t want to freeze so I stayed inside with the other families and our older boy. We made friendship bracelets and talked for a while. I asked him if he had his English class today and he said yes. I asked him what he did in English and he said they watched a Russian television show. I asked how is that studying English? He said he thinks his teacher just wanted to do her own thing and keep the kids busy.

We didn’t stay too long at the orphanage today. First off, you start to run out of things to do with the kids. Secondly, one of the husbands had to take the night train back to Kiev and we had to go with them because we are sharing a van. She will be without her husband now until this is all done so as soon as my Hubby leaves, we will be sharing an apartment to make things easier and safer. We still seem on schedule for court on Thursday but that is not set in cement yet and could change. If it doesn’t change, Hubby will head out to Kiev Thursday night, spend Friday night in Kiev and to the airport Saturday. He, along with our friend, is not happy about leaving us here without them. We aren’t happy about it either but time will eventually go by and this will all be behind us. The weekdays are definitely easier than the weekends.

I would love to post more pictures but it takes at least five or so minutes to download to the site so I am just posting this one today. We are in the cafeteria or cantina as they call it and we were sitting at one of the tables. This is a picture of Hubby and I, obviously, our translator, Natalie, and our boys. I should tell you that each class (or age group) has a scheduled time to eat in this room. Certain children, on some sort of schedule, are designated to set the food out and serve their classmates. They have three meals a day and three snacks. Once Natalie and I were offered the drink they have with their snack. It was such a nice gesture. I thought that it was milk and I cannot drink milk so I politely accepted it and just held it for a while. I smelled it and realized that their drink snack is a coffee and milk drink. Healthy, huh?!? I told Natalie that in America we do not allow our children to drink coffee and she was shocked! Why not, she asked. That was interesting to explain but I did my best to explain that coffee has caffeine and other acids and things in it that we do not consider healthy. And, honestly, do we really want children to have more energy than they already have!

Another day down. We are gearing up for court. We are praying that the judge will have a soft heart and we will be blessed with the words we need to answer questions. Thanks as always for thoughts and prayers. Thanks Garth for the update on our family. We ask the kids what they are doing and they didn’t mention any of that so it is nice to know what is really going on. Love to everyone!!!