12/6 Pictures Finally

Above are pictures from 12/6. The one of us is the first picture Nastia took of us. Today (12/7) we got them together for the first time, but due to the schedule of the internet office, we didn’t have time todownload our pictures in time to put them up tonight. So check back tomorrow. OK, here’s the story we wrote last night but couldn’t publish because our internet office had trouble with the connection:

The last couple of days have been AMAZING for us. Mostly filled with awe and amazement at the new, instant love that has filled our hearts and made our lives seem larger than they were before. The children seem like they are ours already, and we are moved to tears with joy for the lives we are about to begin with them.

There are some bureaucratic issues that have come up with one of the schools. I won’t get into it in this open forum, but we believe that we can resolve them, although we may need to spend more time here than we anticipated.

Each day begins with a small breakfast of eggs or blinchki (blintzes) or vareniki (small dumplings), juice and coffee. Then we pile into the little Lada that our driver plies between Zhitomer, where we stay, and the orphanages about 60 km away. We tried staying closer to them, but there is no public internet access there, and we need to stay in touch with the office. (Although as it happens, and this is why this posting is delayed, the 24 hour internet office around the corner was not working this night of 12/6 anyway.)

It’s cold here. Freezing and below. So we bundle up and wish we had brought more warm socks! And after an hour ride, we arrive at one or the other of the orphanages, or the office of the district administrator for forms or meetings. When we see the kids, they light up with joy. We are already friends after just a few days. Their smiles can each fill a room.

Today we saw Sasha first. His ‘class’ of about 12 kids also loves us. They all call us papa and mama and hang all over us. The caretaker has to shoo them away so we can sit with our little Sashka. He climbs on my lap (Michael) and sits with the little spiderman car we gave him and smiles. I don’t think he’s let it out of his hands since we gave it to him. If they call him away to eat, or if the car falls on the floor, he runs back and jumps on my lap again.

Today they let me and Lauren play with him alone while the rest of the class went outside to play. He got to pick from all of the toys without competing with the other kids for them. He showed us how he plays with each one, and then before moving to the next one, he put the old one carefully away! (Lauren says “we’ll see how long that lasts.”)

We played with his Spiderman car, pushing it back and forth to each other across the floor. We played with toy soldiers. He drove his pedal tractor. I pulled him in his wagon. We killed two hours fast. The best part for him I think is seeing the pictures from the day before that we took of his sister Nastia. He clearly loves and misses her.

We can tell that he is a smart boy, very focused, and loves to figure things out for himself. And as you can see from the pictures, he is absolutely adorable and we LOVE him to pieces.

Then we drove to Nastia’s orphanage. It’s about 20 minutes away in a little village called Vychevski (or something like that). The buildings were made into an orphanage after the war for orphans of “enemies of the people.” Many of these were people who had the misfortune of being held prisoners of the Nazi’s and when they returned to the Soviet Union, Stalin accused them of being spies and sent them to gulags!

Today it houses a lot of kids whose parents have not necessarily had their rights terminated, and also some true orphans like our Nastia.

She has such a smile! Today they took her to the doctor for a checkup, a requirement for their paperwork for the adoption. We waited for her a half hour and they served us a nice meal of borscht (beet soup with some meat in it), a chicken leg, a pasta rich with chicken fat, and some fruit juice. Lauren ate some bread with “mak” or poppy seeds, and drank some juice! It’s not easy to be a vegetarian here. We hoped that the kids get to eat this well, but we doubt it. They are all rather skinny, and as you can see from the photos, Nastia has some dark areas under her eyes. We worry that she isn’t getting enough nutrition.

She arrived with a big smile for us and the three of us sat on chairs in the assistant director’s office for at least an hour and a half. They had given her an orange which we helped her to peel and eat. We all got juice over our hands which made her laugh. And she gulped the whole thing down. She also made us laugh by mugging with the big pieces of orange we were feeding us and we realized what a good sense of humor she has. She even did a little “shtick” on our way for a walk, a funny walk that assured us she’ll fit in fine with our laugh-loving little family.

Then we drew pictures of Miami for her. The beach with fish, turtles, starfish, palm trees, dolphins jumping, birds. She loved it. We drew our house with windows for all the important rooms. In the window where our bedroom is we put mommy and daddy, which made her smile. Then in the kids room next door, we drew a little boy and girl. We asked who they were and she said the girl was her. When she realized the boy was Sasha she was thrilled! We drew Ernie and Clio and Otis and Snack in the living room. This was great fun.

She adores Lauren. She plays with her hair and her coat buttons. And she stares at her face. Lauren talks to Nastia in good enough Ukrainian for her to understand and though she’s still too shy to really say much in return, we think she gets it. One big response Lauren got was when she told Nastia that everyone in Miami was waiting to meet her. This brought a big shy smile to her pretty face.

She smiles and laughs at everything. We took her outside for a walk and of course there were about 20 kids following us around. She held onto Lauren’s arm very tightly and then took both of our hands as we walked around the yard.

I asked her through Svieta our interpreter what her favorite place was here, thinking she’d point to a part of the yard or a building, but she said “the cafeteria.” I told her that was my favorite place too.

Finally it was time to go. But tomorrow is a very big day for everyone. We are going to pick Nastia up around 10 and drive her over to Sasha’s orphanage where the four of us will get to be together for the first time. Lauren and I can’t stop planning for it. We are bringing bubbles to blow, crayons to draw with, some oranges and chocolates to eat. We’ll be sure to film the reunion for posterity. We hope it won’t be long before they’ll be together again permanently.

It gets dark here by 4:30 in the afternoon, so it was already dark when we headed back to Zhitomer. Lauren and I and Svieta had a nice meal in a coffee shop before we went over to the internet office, only to find that it was running at a snail’s pace and not worth the effort. I was hoping to get this entry and our photos up on our blog, as well as spend an hour or two on business correspondence and reading the news on CNN. Oh well, tomorrow is another day!